Dear Jasper

(An open letter to my son, in case he ever decides to Brooklyn Beckham us later in life.)

My dear boy, apple of my eye, thief of my sleep, tester of my patience, questioner of my decisions: what a life you lead. 

You don’t yet know that it’s anything special. In fact, today, you probably think your life’s downright unfair because I wouldn’t let you watch TV before school. And because I haven’t yet found that job in an ice cream parlour that you are so desperate for me to get. 

To you, this is just your life. Your frame of reference only extends back five years and at least half of that time you don’t even remember, which is actually a shame when you see what you’ve achieved! But let me tell you: it’s a good little life. 

You have family and friends all over the world; you get to travel long haul to visit them on someone else’s dime; you have sports classes on your front doorstep; you expect groceries (and the rest) to be delivered within 15 minutes of ordering; you get special treatment at restaurants; you think a birthday party should be as big as a festival; you have barely experienced cold weather and you think having a driver, a housekeeper and a nanny is completely normal.

It’s not your fault that you think these things are normal, of course. You didn’t make the choices that led you here: your father and I did. But just in case you ever accuse us of not doing enough for you, I thought I’d summarise the highlights from your first five years as our son. My high flyer, some of these highlights are so high, I’m afraid it might be all downhill from here. 

My little globe trotter, by the time you were two, you’d already been on 19 flights to and from 8 different countries; you’d lived in 3 continents and stayed in 7 hotels. We didn’t anticipate it being this way, but COVID and the Myanmar coup made our plans for us and apparently they involved a lot of travel. I will be eternally thankful that you have no memory of flying business class from the UK to Australia at the grand old age of one, because that is never happening again — not until you’re able to foot the bill, that is. For the foreseeable future, you’ll be at the back of the plane and, for that, I am not even remotely sorry. 

Now at 5 years old, your stats sit at 69 flights, 11 countries, 4 continents, 22 hotels and 8 villas. You’ve even lived in 5 different homes which says something for how very shallow our roots are as expats. Last year alone, you and I visited the UK twice and Australia twice — carbon footstomping for which we definitely should do more off-setting. In our defense, however, we mostly travel to visit family and friends, many of whom are in those countries, and there really is no substitute for time with family and old friends when it comes to taking a breather from life abroad. 

We’re so lucky that you are a good traveller. Imagine if we had a child with limited interest or capacity for watching movies? You, my square-eyed travel companion, are a dream on planes: you don’t eat, you don’t move and you can easily watch 6 movies back-to-back without so much as a squeak of discontentment. The only slight disagreement we have is when we land, and the airline wants us to unplug you from the matrix and remove you from the plane. I think you’d happily stay in your seat and go straight back to where you came from, if it meant more uninterrupted viewing. We have recently devised an anti-tantrum solution for this precise moment in a journey, however. By resting your tablet on a wheelie suitcase, we can lead you off the plane, through the airport, past the toy shops and right up to the next security checkpoint without you even noticing you’ve stood up. That a total stranger could commandeer the suitcase and lead you pretty much anywhere without you noticing you weren’t with your parents is a minor point of concern, but when weighed against the challenge of getting you off the plane without you turning savage, it’s barely worth registering. Does this take you up and over the recommended screen time limits for 5-year-olds? Undoubtedly, yes. But do we care about screen time limits when we are in the middle of a long haul journey? No, we most certainly do not. We’ll fix you later. 

My budding sportsman, when you’re not sitting for hours in a plane, you barely sit still at all. And with sports classes available a hop, skip and a jump away from our apartment, why would you? You don’t actually hop, skip and jump to classes. You take a lift, scoot a hundred metres through a garden, and run up a flight of stairs onto the roof of what they call The Clubhouse, but the result is the same. Two minutes after stepping out of the apartment door, you can be starting a football, tennis or cricket class. Or swimming. Or playing in the sand with all your ‘building friends’. I’ve definitely heard of people organising ‘hula hoop’ classes and I could even hire someone to teach you to ride a bike. You call it ‘playing down’, because you take the elevator ‘down’ to the podium level where all the activities are. But I don’t think there is anything down about it. Surely growing up in a community like this is up, up, up?!

And even with all these activities carefully curated within the apartment complex by other, more enthusiastic Mum-of-the-people type mothers than your own, you also take a few classes elsewhere in the city. We send you to a hugely overpriced gymnastics school in a giant warehouse, just off a crowded, one-way lane frequented by two-way traffic. We have recently trialled and decided to sign you up for parkour on an open-air rooftop where you’ll swelter in summer. And when your dedicated but slow to react mother gets her ducks in a row, you might even take swimming lessons at the Club. 

The Club. Oh, my Prince. You have a club membership. You don’t yet understand the elitism of a club membership but, let me remind you, not everyone can access this level of privilege. Club memberships in Mumbai, especially, are almost impossible to obtain without somebody dying. A lot of people dying, in fact, because legacy memberships are passed down through families and applications for new members are almost entirely closed across the private club board. Except, and here’s the loophole we are able to exploit, if you are a foreigner. We are lucky that one of Mumbai’s oldest clubs has recently opened their gate to fresh, temporary blood, welcoming a slew of ‘Short Term Foreign Members’. 

Founded in 1878, a quick google search will tell you that the Breach Candy Swimming Bath Trust, as ‘our’ club is officially known, does not have a history of inclusivity. It only allowed its first Indian members almost a century after it opened its doors and enormous swimming pool. But, stepping over its colonial origins and into its present day incarnation, we are very grateful to have been approved as members, purely by nature of being a) foreign and b) short term. The short term part might come round to bite us in the butt when our 4 years are up and we still live in Mumbai, but we will cross that bridge back to life outside its membership barrier, when we get there. 

For now, you and I, my high-diving water baby, are really getting our money’s worth. And to think, when we first joined in January, you didn’t like salt water! In fact, don’t tell anyone, but it made you vomit a little bit— in the pool. Now, you spend hours jumping and sliding into the stuff like it’s what you call ‘normal swimming water’. I hope this means that when we are in what I would call ‘normal swimming water’, or ‘the sea’ in Jersey over the summer, you will enjoy yourself and not cling to your grandfather like a koala. And perhaps you’ll even try pier jumping, since you are so fearless on the high platform. I warn you, though, getting into and out of the English Channel is considerably colder than you’re used to. 

At this early stage in our membership, we are even planning to host your birthday party there, all the way off in December. I know you think you need the full festival affair you’ve enjoyed at many of the parties you’ve attended here; the ferris wheels and bouncy castles and zip lines and magicians, but your father and I don’t think that’s necessary. The club has a huge lawn as well as its massive swimming pool and there are absolutely no restrictions on the fun that can be had by you and a bunch of friends with some good, old-fashioned party games. Following the abject failure that was my attempt at Pass the Parcel at your 5th birthday, we even have one of the games wrapped and ready to go. And this time, there will be no nannies around to separate and placate any brawlers. If you don’t like the rules of the game, you can fight it out amongst yourselves. I’ll probably just order ice creams to cool tempers afterwards. 

Speaking of nannies, Little Lord Jasper, you wouldn’t recognise your life without them. Your own nanny is gentler and more patient than your own mother and far better at tidying your toys. Haven’t you ever wondered why your playroom is immaculate every morning? Perhaps you think the toys just put themselves away like in Toy Stories 1, 2, 3 & 4 which you marathoned on the way to Australia last year. Not only do you have a wonderful nanny who organises your things, cooks delicious food and accompanies you to your classes, but all your friends have the same. You think it’s normal to have more adults than children at a playdate. Four children means at least four nannies, a couple of cooks or cleaners, and every now and then a brave mother pokes her head out of her hiding place to see what’s going on. She/ I will usually retreat quickly once she’s seen the chaos and realises she’s not qualified to get involved. 

As a mother, it’s not always easy to step away, I’ll have you know. The guilt weighs down on me, heavier every second I am away from you. But if I am ever going to get that ice cream parlour job, then I need the support system in place. And if I happen to lean on that support system so that I can play padel, volunteer for a non-profit, take courses, write my blog or spend an evening at the club with your father when I could, technically, be looking after you, then so be it. When in Mumbai, as they say…

This life of luxury that you (and I, let’s be honest) lead is not without its logistical challenges, it must be said. And the most complex documentation requirements have been yours, my administrative nightmare. Your first ever passport took 6 months to procure and the delay kept us in Myanmar several months longer than was advised by both your parents’ governments. Your second passport was an emergency one, for which we had to scramble an application while on holiday. Your third and fourth passports have been relatively straightforward to procure, but still require a certain mental dexterity to deploy. 

You don’t yet know about the visa applications, rental contracts, work permits, or insurance required to keep us safe and legal in a country that’s not our own. You don’t know how money works — other than that Papa earns it and you and I spend it! You don’t know what it is to miss ‘home comforts’ like the several kilos of sausages I pack into my suitcase every time we return to India. You don’t know about maintaining relationships across timezones, although you do know that you are loved by people from the four corners of the globe. 

You don’t need to know any of these things yet because that’s our job, as your parents. Your job, my petit bon vivant, besides the clothes modelling you’ve been doing so nicely these past couple of years, is to live life to the fullest. And that is a job you do so very, very well. 

So, please don’t come for us later in life. We are only doing our best.

And, you’re welcome, by the way.

All my love, 

Mama*

*Pronounced: ma-MAH!!! With expectation of immediate response and service embedded in the second syllable.