Mommyhood is a work-in-progress, writes Priyanka Chaturvedi

The summer vacations are here and for the first time ever, I am the most well-planned mother. Right from their summer camp to the summer holidays, everything has been sorted without last-minute planning that I usually am guilty of every single year. That is not all, I have also assigned myself the task of being a hands-on mom who drops and picks up the kids from their camp, who also patiently waits for their class to end with newspapers in hand to catch up on the news stories of the day.

One day, after her class, my daughter came running excitedly to me with a cookie in her hand. On asking who gave it to her, she told me her friend’s mum is an excellent cook and she baked it at home and  that she baked all kinds of delicious things at home. I felt all shades of guilt for not living up to my daughter’s baking expectations but I refused to take the bait. I can do anything for the kids but nothing can get me into the kitchen to bake a cake or a cookie or a muffin. I start hearing Meatloaf’s I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) loudly in my head!

While I was hoping against hope that she wouldn’t get me to bake a cake at home for her, she did just that. Trust the kids to do exactly what you don’t want them to do. It is like an in built sensor system during their growing up years. So I told her, that we’d do something in a couple of days, again in the hope that she would have forgotten about it but the daughter however is determined and isn’t giving up easily on this demand.

I can cook, exceedingly well too, if I may say so myself! Since no one who has last got a chance to eat mere haath ka khaana will ever say so. But the kitchen is my least frequented place and if the reason is for cooking then very rare indeed. This time however my daughter ensured that there was no getting away. So off we went and got all the ingredients for the baking. Just seeing her excitement made me feel extremely guilty for not trying hard enough to make the effort sooner. As the Hindi saying goes der aaye durust aaye.

But durust didn’t really happen as the final outcome in a bake-a-cake experiment  turned out to be a disaster and had to be quietly thrown away, but for some inexplicable reason, the child of mine was extremely happy that at least I had attempted to do something which I wouldn’t have if not for her pushing. Also, she said it gave her the bragging rights to be able to tell her friends that even her mum knows how to bake. 

Also, hopefully, that will ensure that she doesn’t get me to attempt this again! 

At the end of this summer holiday, I am so going to get the two to award me the Best Mommy trophy? So what if I am not the best, the attempts to reach that exalted position (if it exists) is a work-in- progress!