Ultimate Mumbai Mum

On first encounter, Mumbai Mums appear pampered. With their drivers, and nannies, and cooks, and cleaners, and slightly different cleaners with advanced washing machine training… and someone to wash the utensils, someone else to put away the utensils… a jeweller, a tailor, a candlestick-maker; a houseboy, an iron-man, a fruit guy, a specialist fruit guy, a vegetable guy, an organic vegetable guy, an avocado guy (who, technically, should be grouped with the fruit guys, I know). And then with the parlour lady, the massage lady, the hairdresser, I mean, you can see how they end up looking pampered. 

OK fine, they literally are being pampered while a small army carries out all the tasks I would traditionally associate with running a household. That is to say, all the tasks I was brought up knowing how to do, and expecting to do as a grown-up — before I moved to Mumbai. Actually, no, that’s not entirely true. I enjoyed several of these privileges in Myanmar, before I had any idea I was going to move to India. 

It’s hard to say, now I look at it, if the first step I took towards becoming a Mumbai Mum was moving to Mumbai, or becoming a mum while still back in Myanmar but, whichever it was, it definitely happened. And I think at this point, it’s safe to say I’ve taken more than just one step.

How do I know this? Well, in the past two weeks I have made what I consider to be the Ultimate Mumbai mum move: I have hired a person to teach Jasper to ride a bike. Yep, this sacred rite of passage explored and endured by parents and their offspring since the invention of the bicycle; this ritualistic bonding over balance and bravery and bloody-mindedness; this public experimentation with expletives and their socially acceptable counterparts – all this is no longer my problem.

Jasper has been in the vicinity of several bicycles over the years. There was a balance bike that he face-planted off in South Africa three years ago. There was a charity shop steal of a bike that sat in the garage at Jersey Nana’s house one year after that. He was a very enthusiastic passenger on the back one his friend's bikes when they first met. And then there have been two differently sized bikes here in Mumbai, the first of which was passed on to its next owner with barely an increase in mileage, and the second of which is currently in the corridor outside our apartment. He did at least grasp the concept of pedals on the former of the two but, beyond basic propulsion, he showed very little interest or talent for riding. 

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As his apparent indifference for bicycles grew, however, so did his enthusiasm for speed. And as his friends all started to graduate from scooters to bicycles, so his scooting speed had to increase to keep up with them, putting him one misjudged push away from a tooth-shattering collision. I tried to explain to him that he would be both faster and safer on a bike but he expressed his reluctance through rage and, before long, I couldn’t so much as look at the bike without him flying into a rant about what an awful mother I was (sometimes still am). I politely suggested he go and find a new one — mother, that is — a better, kinder, less bike-forward one but, somewhat surprisingly, he didn’t leave home and so neither did the bike problem.

I have watched children being taught to ride bikes by professional bike-riding teachers since we first arrived here in Mumbai. And boy, did I judge the parents. I wrote them off as lazy, entitled and perhaps even unloving. I thought they had so little interest in their children that they just went out and found a ‘guy’ for everything, dismissing even the most quintessential of childhood milestones as yet another something to be delegated while they got their eyebrows done. I conducted all this judgement from atop a tower of my own conviction that I would 100%, without doubt, be sure to teach my own child this skill. 

Until, that is, I realised how hard it would be. I tried the tough love method (‘just keep peddalling!’), the towel method (look it up if you aren’t familiar with the work of this particular bathroom staple) and the ‘you still have one stabiliser, just lean that way’ method. I even took him to the new coastal promenade and offered to run alongside him for moral support. My error was that we did this while he still had his stabilisers on and he did not adjust his pace to accommodate someone without wheels. As fit as I thought I was, I was no match and we had to abandon this idea before one of us collapsed. And so, we did not achieve success with any of these experiments; unless success is two people threatening to leave home. 

Look at the joy in his face at how much pain he is causing me!

Obviously, the right attitude would have been to stick at it, to persevere and reap the rewards of resilience a little further down the road (literally). But if Mumbai has taught me one thing, and she has taught me many, it would be that there is no point in making your life harder than it needs to be. If you have a problem, find a solution, even if that solution is just handing the problem over to another person. Especially another person who a) has chosen to spend their time in this way, and b) is far enough removed from the family that they won’t cop the same abuse. 

Speaking of time, that’s something I have considerably less of now that I have started working. No, sorry, Dylan tells me I’m not allowed to say ‘working’ as I am not being paid. I am allowed to say I have less time now that I have started volunteering, but don’t be misled; it’s not as benevolent as it sounds. I am volunteering at a school while I do my PGCE. And not just any school. I am volunteering in the senior part of the school Jasper attends, also known as a School for Privileged Children whose Parents Hire Teachers for Bike Riding. Oh, the irony…that I am training to be a teacher and the first thing to drop from my list of responsibilities is teaching my own child a life skill. 

But do you know what? I feel good about it. I had a problem, and I handed that problem to someone else, and now Jasper and I are friends again. Can he ride a bike? Well, let’s just say that he’s a lot closer than he would be if I were still his instructor. But he’s probably also further away than he would be if we didn't live somewhere so riddled with human hazards (and this is inside our apartment complex.) Sometimes I go with him to his class and try to will people out of his way with my psychic powers or facial expressions. But to no avail.

Sometimes, however, I use the time while he’s at his class to do something for myself. Because, at the end of the day, I am a Mumbai Mum and that’s what we do.