I'm a bit overwhelmed at the moment. My husband is going to cover the World Cup in Germany. And my son and I will be joining him there just before the finals. Now, I have travelled alone with Riju before, but never on such a long haul, never to a foreign country (I've never been to a foreign country to begin with, darn it!), and never for a sporting tournament. Will I manage to reach Berlin safely where I meet my husband? We are travelling on an Emirates flight to Munich. After a 3-hr stopover at Dubai (strictly inside the airport for us), we'll be reaching Munich at 8.55 pm and then will proceed to Berlin on train. It sounds awfully complicated to me and god alone knows, how Riju will take to it. I don't know a word in German except 'Auf Weidershen' and 'Third Reich' and 'blitzkrieg'... none very useful I guess. Neither do I know a thing about emigration proceedings and stuff... what exactly goes on there? Please someone, assure me that everything's gonna be fine!

Last evening, I saw a film. Hotel Rwanda. It made me speechless.

The film, made in 2004 by Terry George, is set in Rwanda in 1994. It deals with the genocide stemming from the Hutu-Tutsi rivalry. I remember the clashes. I was working in The Telegraph then. I remember Joydeep, our foreign desk chief, getting agitated about the Hutu-Tutsi in-fighting and insisting on taking it on the foreign pages. We used to laugh about this then. Last evening, a line from the film, "They watch it (the carnage) on television, say 'My God', and then continue with their dinners", was like a slap across my conscience.

The film, based on a true story, is about Paul Rusesabagina (portrayed excellently by Don Cheadle), a manager at the Belgian-owned 4-star Hotel Des Milles Collines at Kigali. He is intelligent, suave, and resourceful, knowing exactly how to please his patrons. He is also a family man, with feet planted firmly in the grim reality, a man who's willing to go that extra mile, but only for his own kin. Initially, despite his wife's pleas, he refuses to be drawn into the ethnic friction because of a neighbour. Because he knows he risks his own loved ones then. But as the situation in the country spirals out of control, he finds himself sheltering, by hook or by crook, over a thousand persecuted Tutsis in the hotel. He averts a massacre almost every moment, yet lives with the realisation that he himself, along with his family and all those he sheltered, can be wiped out in one fell sweep.

The film invites comparison with Spielberg's Schindler's List. Here, too, is a man whose thoughts are as far removed from philanthropy as Oskar Schindler's. But here, too, he shows exemplary courage and humanity in rescuing the hunted. However, the holocaust unleashed by the Nazis are much, much better known and represented among the creative arts than the Rwandan genocide. Herein, lies the crucial difference between the two films. The Third World perspective, with the current Western powers refusing to intervene and stop the killing, is much more hard hitting than Poland during the second World War, with help from the Allied forces almost a shout away.

Hotel Rwanda was a harrowing experience. It was also a memorable experience. A film that everyone should see.

And this one's completely angst. I read in someone else's blog today that a recent study has found out that only 13 milliseconds are required to notice somebody attractive. Researchers found that people's reaction time to attractive faces were significantly faster than that of un-attractive faces. No wonder attractive people are likely to be more noticed, dated, hired, and promoted.

I'm doomed. But that's beside the point. Which is, does the research prove that it actually pays to get a tummy tuck, nose job, face lift etc etc? Is all that talk about being beautiful inside all bull, aimed at keeping the un-attractive happy? Are fairness lotions an investment after all, feminist rhetoric notwithstanding?

We have been travelling with our son Riju since he was six months old. In a short span of six years, he has been to Vizag, Puri (twice), Delhi (twice), Corbett National Park, Nainital, Bombay, Kashid, Matheran, Shantiniketan, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Gadiara, Digha, Dooars, and Sankarpur. Not bad, one would think. Yet I've met parents who believe they wouldn't be able to enjoy travelling with their kids. They feel fussing over their children would rob the pleasures of a vacation. They wouldn't be able to make time for sightseeing and every moment would be taken up by looking after the children.

Nothing can be further from the truth. Children do NOT need any fussing over. They are an amazingly adaptable breed, a trait that Bengali parents often overlook. A friend of mine recounts a horror story of the time she, a sensible mother, was travelling with her husband and kid with another family of three. The other set of parents, true blue Bongs, were perpetually paranoid about their child catching the cold. I forgot to mention that they were holidaying in the hills in winter. The 'thanda lege jaabey' bogey haunted the parents so much that they refused to let the poor child play in the park or remove his monkey caps even inside the hotel room with the heater blazing. The child did eventually run a temperature, but I presume it's more from the claustrophobic attention than from any thing else. The father, who was carrying a drug store around with him, must have felt vindicated.

To say that Riju had never fallen ill while travelling would be lying. He, not even three then, was running a slight temperature in Nainital and vomited all the way back to Delhi on train. Of course, we were worried, but at least had the common sense to realise that this could've happened in Kolkata as well. Riju was fine within the next couple of days and enjoyed the rest of the trip. Moral (reiterated): Children are extremely adaptable.

Besides, children love to travel. Riju falls in love with each place that he visits and insists that he be brought there for every vacation thereafter. He loves the sea, he likes the cool hill stations, and though he's yet to actually enjoy a jungle safari (he's slept through most of them), he doesn't mind a forest jaunt as well. Going anywhere out of the city that involves travelling on a train (his favourite), bus, plane, boat, or a car is fun where he's concerned. Even children need a break sometimes, and it's high time the 'fussy' parents realise that.

I think vacationing is one habit that relaxes you completely, whether or not you intend it to be that way. And vacationing with children (your own, please) simply multiplies the enjoyment. Try it!

This blog is also about travels. So let me talk about our recent trip to Sankarpur. Here was a beach in West Bengal, right next door to Digha almost, which was clean, unpolluted and uncrowded. For the first time in my life, I drove on the beach right next to the waves. Red crabs were scuttling away everywhere, much to the glee of the children. And plenty of shells. My son, Riju, enjoyed the waves tremendously. We did too.

Our accommodation was also neat. It was a cottage run by the West Bengal Fisheries department. Very new (inaugurated in December 2005) and very nice and clean. Quite large as well. We drank endless beers, vodkas and whiskeys on its spacious verandah. And of course, the machh bhaja... simply divine! If a tad expensive.

A friend's daughter (6-year-old) liked the place so much that she insisted she be brought here every time we plan a vacation. Riju did not disagree. But then he is usually the one to make such a demand at each place that we visit. He even wanted to stay on in the dirty and overcrowded Digha.

Recently, we took our son to see Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne on the big screen. He had already seen the movie twice on CD, so it was not exactly a first-time experience for him. But, like us, we wanted him to know the film's sparkling dialogues by heart too. We wanted him to cherish the experience of watching vintage Ray... maybe instil in him a sense of the nearly-lost Bengali heritage, for which, I'm sure, he'll thank us one day. Like I do my parents.

I was not even born when GoogaBaba first released in Calcutta and went on to break box-office records. The first time I saw it was on our huge black-and-white television. I was about four then and the only scene that stuck on in memory from that viewing was the dance of the ghosts. The same dance, which now, ironically enough, seems (at the risk of sounding blasphemous to all true-blue Ray-philes) tad long and tedious. Why, you can actually spot the humans beneath those 'ghostly' make-up, I thought, not for the first time, yesterday. I glanced at my five-year-old, fearing that he, exposed as he is to state-of-the-art cartoons all through the day, might be thinking the same. But he was staring at screen and, as he sensed me looking at him, turned and whispered, 'What are those ghosts called?' On screen, the fat ghosts were dancing then.

I needn't have worried. My son giggled happily at Goopy and Bagha's antics, asked us anxiously if the Halla king was good or bad, and nodded along with the songs. So did most of the children in the auditorium. And all the parents. Yes, the parents were enjoying the movie most. Each dialogue, a legend by now, was greeted by hoots of laughter and I caught quite a few grown-ups humming along. If for the children, the film was enjoyable, for the parents, it was fond nostalgia, a wonderful journey back in time.

Last evening, my six-year-old son expressed a wish to go to Japan. Why, I asked. “I want to meet Tyson,” he replied, Tyson being the main protagonist in a popular television cartoon series. I smiled and told him that Tyson is only a fictional character — he doesn’t exist in real life. “Then where does he stay?” my son asked. Only on the television screens, I replied and patiently added that cartoon characters don’t have a country or a place to their names. Do we really know where Tom and Jerry live? Or, Richie Rich? Even when they do have addresses, these are not real.

As I explained the fiction-reality divide to the six-year-old, I began to feel increasingly guilty. Was I robbing a child of his imagination? After all, it was only a few years before he would know, for sure, that Santa Claus doesn’t exist and that Beyblades (that marketing sensation to emerge from Japan) don’t really morph into dragons and fiery-eyed snow eagles at the turn of the top. Why would I shatter his superhero dreams just because I know they aren’t real? Didn’t I look for fairies and gnomes at his age?

Guilt-wracked, I paused in my discourse. My son, who had been listening patiently, if a tad anxiously, all this while, was staring at the floor. I winced inside; maybe the damage was already done. His childhood was gone forever. Then, he looked up at me. “Ma, where can I find a genie? I’ll ask him to take me to meet Tyson inside the television.”

Solemnly, I informed him that genies are usually found lurking around lamps, candles, or potted plants, only one has to look real hard.

As I left my son looking for genies beside the candle-stand, I promised to leave childhood alone. Always.