Serves us right

Our entry, last year, into the tennis playing group in our neighborhood was a bit like baptism by fire. As neither of us (RRS or I) were as good and unlike in a team game where you could choose to hide in the background when you were a bit off color and pretend to be part of the game without being where the action is,  in tennis our shortcomings stood fully-exposed between double faults and unforced errors. The only thing we were good at then was turning up everyday, our game had no choice but to improve. It has been a fantastic addition to our life style. Apart from being a lot of fun learning to play the game and having a great bunch of people to hang out with, it has just seamlessly fit into our schedule. Largely because the court is a two minute walk from home and it is therefore easy for RRJ to join us once he is done with playing with his friends from the next block.

RRJ of course has his own set of reasons to like the whole tennis thing as:

• he gets to watch us play and take the parental role of nagging and giving expert comments like "why is your service so mokka (= bad)" and then proceed on to giving tips on how we could improve it, like "you need to do regular shadow practice"etc.!
• he is not told off for being late in coming back from play.
• he gets to play some more in the park adjacent to the tennis court.
• he gets to play a few shots at the end of our game in a proper tennis court meant for grown ups.
• and the aspect he perhaps loves the most is that without him needing to argue for it, he gets most of the days off from studying as by the time we are done and reach home, the scheduled study hour has elapsed by and there is only time for the bare essentials like food and sleep. He often hops around the house with that look of disbelief that all this is happening for real. 

Thankfully I am in that phase in life where I am getting the hang of how to observe my parental guilt with some detachment and not follow it up with a session of self-flagellation. Unfortunately though, I am yet to reach that phase when this detachment is sustainable even when exams are in sight. I pause my philosophies and tennis for those days and operate on damage-control mode and go through his notebooks, textbooks and worksheets as if it is my parenting that is due for assessment. My beastly avataar had a lump in her throat, when she read the sentence that RRJ had made in his class notes with 'greatest of ease':