Saturday, May 19, 2012

Totka To Make Children Walk

"You daughter is afraid of walking. You will have to do a totka", our maid's mother stated.


A totka is a household creative solution for variety of issues based on folklore and old wives tales.


My daughter started to walk at the age of 1. She had couple of incidents in which she fell while trying to walk and got afraid of this activity. So much so that she started to cry whenever we would let her stand independently. She would readily move around the house holding a hand but not independently. We tried every trick in our books but to no avail. Watching our dilemma, our maid's mother stated that she had a proven totka to make children walk, that they employ this totka on every child in their social circle. Hearing the solution, my wife and I just laughed. Who the hell does that we said. Illiterate people! And so 3 months passed further.


Now we really were in a quandary as to what the solution could be to take the fear out of her of walking. One day, we both laughingly agreed to use the totka as the last option available and see what happens. We were laughing when we were using the totka, we even feigned the same accent that our maid's mother uses and in their language. It was not going to work so what the heck, let it be fun.


And the totka. According to her, we were to tie a rope around the legs of our daughter - not tightening it but a symbolic gesture of legs being tied. Three twirls around the legs with that rope. Then we were to take a knife, my elder daughter was to be asked 'Shall I cut the rope?' and she was to reply 'Yes, cut the rope' and the first twirl would be cut. Three times this activity of question-answer and cutting the 3 twirls of rope. 'She will start running after this you will see', the maid's mother had claimed.


An hour passes...


My daughter gets up and starts to walk. She walks and walks all by herself so much so that she did not want to go to sleep that night out of excitement. We laughed before the application of this totka and laughed when we saw the result. This is totally bizarre. Had I heard it from someone else, I might have doubted it but I did it  myself and I saw the results.


Truly unbelievable.

2 comments:

Me said...

And this makes me thinking..
who is to reply 'cut the rope', if its the case with eldest baby;p

Unknown said...

Very unique out of the box totka. I will try tomorrow on child.