“Oh good morning, pray how do you do, we are babies come to sing to you. Cheeks like roses, hair all in curl, how you like to be my baby girl.”

My grandmother used to sing this to her daughters after they moved from Mumbai to California. It’s how she woke them up in the mornings. She read it somewhere, in a magazine, and then she would sing it to her daughters, including my mother, to get them up and ready for school. She said she would  go to their room and they’d all put a pillow on their head and shriek, “No!” I asked my grandma to tell me this song, because she used to sing it to me when I was very young as well, so it has a lot of meaning for my family. I always felt special because the way the lyrics are, you can’t sing it for boys, so my brothers never got to hear it; it was special and just for me.