Archimedes principle

Daivik noticed that when he entered the bathtub, some water always flowed out. When he shared this finding with me, I said, "this is called Archimedes Principle". He asked me to repeat it and I pronounced it out for him slowly. He let the heaviness of the phrase sink in before asking what it meant. I said "When you get into the bathtub, 18 kilos of water will come out, and depending on how full the tub is, some of it might flow out of the tub". He got excited immediately and added, "and when I get out, all that water will come back in". I said, "yes, that is correct, but not all water will come back because some has overflowed the tub and it cannot get back inside".

I don't know how much he understood, but he thought about it for a minute and gave his verdict : "It is so funny". 

Hate, and Love

Daivik was glued to the television for some days. In the last four days he watched more TV than in the preceding 40 months, mostly cartoon channels. Presently, he was fussing again over food but wanted to play with me. In one of those irrational moments of parental stubbornness, I told him he can play with me only if he finishes his breakfast (a strategy strictly not recommended!). He tried his tricks, made a face, whimpered a bit. And then he said, "I hate you". I stopped on my tracks. This word was new.  I asked him if he knew what it meant. With an accuracy that was at once alarming and astounding, he said "It is the opposite of I love you". It was not amusing. I asked him where he learnt it, and he said "from TV".

Okay, television OFF.

Later in the day, when I was busy with something else, he ran to me, hugged my neck and said, "I love you". I just nodded. He then taught me : "Appa, when somebody says I love you, you have to reply, I love you too".

Pradeep

We were visiting an acquaintance  who heads a school for children near our place in Coimbatore. Most of the kids are from the surrounding villages.  As we were coming out of our meeting, we saw lot of kids playing in the ground. One particular kid was standing behind a tree, half-hidden, and watching us leave the building. Daivik was dressed in a bright blue superman T-shirt. Perhaps this attracted the kid, perhaps not. As we approached the tree, he ran forward, thrust something into Daivik's hands and ran back. Daivik held it out to me. It was a toy car (with two of the wheels broken). I turned around to look at the kid, who was standing shyly behind the tree. He was about Daivik's height and build, bare-footed, all the buttons of the shirt open and ample evidence of carefree hours spent playing in the dust. Most impressively, he was sporting a wide grin, showing all his teeth, large and impossibly white. And the sparkle in those eyes ! It can be so luminous only on somebody  unencumbered  - yet - to the vagaries of life. Or reached its beyonds.  I called him forward, he hesitated. I told Daivik to go introduce himself and thank him for the gift. Daivik, generally hesitant with strangers, ran forward, shook his hands and said "I'm Daivik". The kid said "I'm Pradeep". I frantically scouted my pockets for something to miraculously materialize, a chocolate, a toy, anything...my fingers touched the wallet and I froze. The wads of currency was so totally meaningless in front of the child's smile and his random act of kindness.

It was getting late. We waved good-byes and left. I looked back as we turned the corner, Pradeep was still standing there, waving back to us cheerfully. Pradeep, your smile and sparkling eyes have been a blessing. I do not know why you chose to give your gift to Daivik, but I know that the cheerfulness of your smile and sparkle of your eyes will fade from our memories with time. I do hope these few words capture - and retain - a bit of that luster.  

disc dosa

The pan should be hot enough now. To just the right degree. Rashi tests it by sprinkling a bit of cold water. The little droplets sizzle up as they encounter a hot flat surface and noisily bounce around, simultaneously shrinking at an alarming rate. Very soon, they vanish into a nothingness, leaving behind a final hiss and a little vapor  Rashi judges it as hot enough. She takes the batter, pours it in the pan and expertly spreads it around in a circular motion. It makes a perfectly round dosa, 15 cm in diameter and 2 mm in thickness. The batter itself has undergone a fair amount of soaking, grinding and most importantly fermenting over the last 48 hours to reach its current stage of near perfection. A few minutes later she turns the dosa over. This is a critical moment of truth. If the preceding preparation has been correct, it will show itself now. Sure enough, the whole thing comes out in one sweep and as she turns it over, it shines with a golden brown hue. She turns off the heat. Now as the pan cools at a predictable rate, the dosa will become crisp. And stiff. Like a disc. Like how Daivik prefers. Like how superman would want.

She takes the dosa to Daivik and puts it on his plate. "Here is your disc dosa", she says, sporting a satisfied smile. He gives a disinterested look, takes an ant sized bite and says "yuck". To rub in extra salt, he adds "I don't want this, I want bread". 

acknowledgement

Daivik took a bubble blower with him to the kindergarten. It was about 30 cm long and filled with soap water. To use it one has to remove the handle that is dipped in the soap solution and either blow into it wave it around. Large bubbles slowly emerge and follow the contours of the motion for a while before taking their own course.

Daivik was pretty excited about it and was showing it eagerly to Frank, who happened to be the first person he met, and started giving an animated description of its intricate mechanisms. Frank was beginning to get interested in it and was on the point of embarking on a deeper inspection. Quite suddenly, Daivik, catching another friend approaching,  snatched it from Frank and ran to the new friend and started describing the details again.

What Daivik did was - by adult conventions - a rather rude thing. Now, imagine if you are Frank, observing and getting interested in an object - something, anything - and it is abruptly, forcibly snatched away.  Frank didn't twitch his face, his smile did not vanish. He simply turned around, and in the space of that simple movement found another thing to transfer his interest to. Daivik's grin remained intact throughout this show-snatch-show again procedure.

It took less time to happen than a single heart beat of either Frank or Daivik. Perhaps it is nothing much to write about, but it did keep me rooted in thoughts for a long time afterward. I think what struck me most was the sheer nonchalance of it, a sense of non-happening. In the snatching away act, no offense was meant and certainly none taken. A simple act was performed, it is over, and therefore doesn't exist anymore. In that singularly beautiful act of not acknowledging it, Frank liberated the moment from its potential weights. The weights of, say, an unreturned call or an unsent email. In the process, he easily, effortlessly extricated himself - and Daivik - from its tyrrany.

Hold on to it kids, hold on !

like a diamond in your eye

All moments are beautiful, but some are stunningly beautiful. Sometimes they catch us unawares or prop up unannounced in the most mundane of places. Like, in a shopping center.

Akshara was crying in her pram as we were going through the customary Saturday shopping. Perhaps she was sleepy. Now this is one aspect of  crying that I never quite understand. I mean, it makes sense to cry when you are hungry, you need food / milk, you cannot get it yourself, you need somebody to get it for you. You cry. But when you are sleepy, just sleep, why cry ?  Anyway, she was sleepy and she was crying. I did what most parents do in this situation, take the pram for a bit of pram-dancing on busy shopping aisles. She promptly folded her middle and ring fingers from the right hand and took them into her mouth. It is one of the unexplainable curiosities, her motif to announce I'm-going-to-sleep-now. In a few minutes she was asleep.

We entered a gleaming elevator. It was coated with glistening steel on one side, a full length mirror on another and full length glass on the two remaining sides. The floor was made of a reflecting marble. Little lights were strategically placed. As I pressed the button and turned around, the arc of my vision crossed through Akshara's face. A single drop of tear had accumulated in the corner of  one eye and had positioned itself smugly between the closed eyesand the nose bridge. It was a combination of the angle of my sight, the position of the lights, the rotation of the earth, the scheming of the planets,  the smile of the angels... as the arc of my vision crossed her face, this single drop absorbed and reflected all that fancy light. For a brief moment, it shone like a brilliant diamond.

It was a single moment, a singular moment. Atleast as long as it existed, that drop was definitely worth more  than that diamond.

Interpretations

For several days in a row, Daivik and me have been waving bye-bye to his little sister as we left home for the kindergarten.  For the first few days, Akshara did not react, then she started flashing her magic smile. One day suddenly, she waved back !

I thought, 'wow, she is learning associations'. There was a predictable pattern to the bye-bye ritual : it happened at more or less the same time, more or less the same place (door-step) and was always accompanied by a wave of the hand, a smile and a sing-song 'ta-ta-aaa'. So my reasoning was that she has managed to associate the events as a single entity and figured out that she had to imitate it.

Daivik had a different interpretation. "Appa, look", he said, "she knows my age". Her four fingered wave was apparently an answer to a question that was never asked, 'how old is Daivik'.

how many times

'Stinging nettle' is a common weed that populates open spaces in spring and summer. (An aside : it has wonderful medicinal and nutritional properties). As the name implies, it, well, stings, a rather sharp semi-intense burning sensation that gradually fades over few minutes.

When Daivik and me went to pick up Strawberries early in summer, I pointed this plant and told him to avoid it as it stings. I didn't know its name then, and referred to it as 'ow-aa' plant. Turned out that he knew the name, 'but this is Brennnessel', he said, referring it by the German name (that's right, with three consecutive n's in the middle). Remembering unfamiliar names is not an easy task, it requires effort. So why take the trouble, particularly when facts and information are literally on our fingertips, just one tap away? There is always Google. Or, in this particular case, Daivik !

Some days later, I was stung by the plant and got a mildly red patch. When somebody asked me about it Daivik was handily nearby, and all I had to do was ask "Daivik, what's the name of the ow-aa plant?" How convenient ! I simply gave up even trying to remember the name.

But small joys are short-lived. When I had to get the name out of him a third time, he replied really slowly, "Bren-ne-sil" before adding, "how many times should I tell you".

Take the stairs

For a while now, I've been encouraging Daivik to take the stairs instead of the lift. After passing though the customary series of why's, he somewhat understood that stairs are better. One evening, as we returned from the kindergarten, he insisted that we take the stairs. But there was a logistic problem, we were on the bicycle that had to go up three floors. What to do ? Daivik started 'thinking'. When he 'thinks' like that, it is quite fascinating to watch. He grows unusually quiet  and starts tapping the sides of his forehead with the tip of his forefinger, quite literally knocking at the doorsteps of thoughts. The result is usually quite transparent, you can actually see the thought emerging from the depths of his brain and light up his eyes ! Now, he gets an 'idea'. "Appa", he said, "we can leave the cycle inside the lift, press number 3, come out of the lift and run up the stairs before the cycle comes there".

It was a good solution, it allowed us to take the stairs as well as to transport the bicycle. So we did exactly the same, and collected the cycle from the lift in the third floor. This minor deviation from the routine was such an exciting thing for him that he hurriedly reported it to his mother.

The next day he wanted to repeat the exercise, this time leaving his sister's pram inside, sister included. 

heaven

Two grown men, with beards in need urgent trimming and a friendship going back someway, meet after a long time and are catching up over coffee. The talk turns to their kids and after going around for a while finds its groove in the extremely intricate art of preparing them for school every morning, and the multifarious forms this seemingly innocuous task can take. Understanding the relativity of time, it turns out, does not need mastery over complicated mathematical equations. "Those fifteen minutes" are enough to understand all that is needed to be understood on the topic.

"and then there are days", says one of them, "when he just does it all by himself. It is hard to believe that it can be really so simple". The other concurs, the two friends encountering a brief plane of intersection in their separate lives, and lets his words diffuse slowly into the silence "these days are heaven".

hoo-ha-hai

Picture this: A 8 month old is lying on her tummy, palms pressed on floor, arms straight, head up, in a classical bhujangasana pose, and surveying her domain. Her eyes come to rest on her father who was trying to watch her unobserved. She holds her gaze as their eyes lock. The moment continues to prolong and eventually reaches a criticality. It becomes obvious that something must happen. Somebody has to say something. The father gets excited. She is going to say her first proper word, of course, it is going to be 'appa'. As if reading his thoughts, she flashes a winning smile. The father moves to the edge of the seat. Aha, here it comes...he holds his breath...she says "hoo-ha-hai", and turns away to continue her survey.

There is of course no doubt that at some point of time in history, in the lineage of some language, spoken somewhere, this word relates to fatherhood. Question : When where and which is it ? 

a million stars

It was 2 in the morning when Akshara decided it was the right time to play. Thankfully, she did not disturb anyone but was comfortable playing by herself and making non-stop conversational sing song sounds. I woke up to these sounds and was just lying there, listening to their melody. Soon enough curiosity got the better of me. What exactly was she doing ? I looked into her bed...I had to get closer to the bed in that low light to get a better view. She was shuffling around her dolls and it looked like she was talking to them. Few moments later, probably feeling my presence, she turned around.  In that near-zero light, her eyes shone like a pair of light bulbs. From her perspective I probably appeared as a dark undifferentiated mass. I thought she might cry. However, she stopped her sounds and tried to focus better in order to deconvolve that silhouette. It was an amazing sight to watch. Her eyes appeared to literally zoom in on me as her pupils began to dilate more and more (and more) to collect extra photons. Those already enormous lit eyes became impossibly large and neon bright. As the photons traveled via the optic nerves and reached the brain, recognition dawned on her that the figure belonged to her father. Like an elaborate fountain suddenly springing to life, like a gorgeous butterfly spreading wings in the blink of an eye, like a thousand petaled lotus opening up at the whiff of dawn, she broke into a smile. It was but a little curve on those tiny lips, however its sheer brilliance was so dazzling that the whole room was enveloped with the effulgence of a million stars.

I looked outside. The stars did not try to compete. They were content to witness the moment, with a beaming smile of their own.  

synergy

Daivik came to me with a book in his hand and insisted that I read him the story. The thing is the text was in German and I could not comprehend it entirely. But he, for some reason, insisted on that story. We assessed the situation and made an analysis of our strengths and limitations. Our conclusion was : I could read the words better than him and he could understand their meaning way better than me. So we decided that I read the sentences first, he tells me their meaning and then I tell him the story !

I started reading and he started telling me the meaning of the words. And so it went on, one painful sentence after another. Daivik was having difficulty comprehending my terrible pronunciation of words. We braved on, and with the pictures to help us along, figured out that the bear and the mouse were planning a surprise birthday party for their friend, the goose.They  make a list of things they need, which runs like a) invite friends, b) bake a cake, c) get a present, d) decorate with balloons. But they have only one day to get it all done...the rest of the story is about how they do it.

At the end of it, Daivik was a darling. He completely ignored  his own contribution to the process, and told me with great sincerity (?) that it was a nice story and I did a good job of reading it to him ! He then went to his rack and came back with a new picture book, with an Italian text !

a little daughter turns one !

Imagine reading an action packed fast paced thoroughly enjoyable page turner, with the twist that the pages cannot be turned at will. It is set to a 24 hour timer. We cannot do anything about it. We cannot go back to a specific page to re-read a particularly pleasing phrase, nor can we sneak up few pages ahead to break a mini-suspense. The book has to be appreciated at its pace, which in a way adds up to its appeal. Now, as this book completes one glorious chapter, impressions from random pages breeze across the memory lanes, in no particular sequence.

***
You are supposed to cry, to gasp in the first burst of oxygen. but your lips are zipped, your eyes are shut tight, your face is squirmed, all reflecting the tremendous journey you have just been through. The doctor has just - this very minute - taken you out of your cozy residence of the past months and brought you out into the world, into the chirping dawn outside. but your remain silent. He wraps you in a towel, takes you to a warmed up table, lays you down gently as i follow him helplessly. He gives a gentle practiced rub on your chest. The fluids in your tiny lungs gush out and there is now space for air. Aha, the oxygen rushes in as you let us hear your voice. No, it is not a piercing splitting cry, nor is it a whimper, somewhere in between..that cry ensures the lungs get their supply and your systems makes the magic switch to your first independence. The doctor smiles, looks at me and says, congratulations.

***
Your have two angles to watch the world. In the most common, most boring one,  you are lying on your bed and looking at the ceiling. Everybody is looking at you from such a great height, everything looks upside down, sort of one dimensional. There is no depth perception. And there is always that roof. Unchanging. Every once in a while, different faces get into the frame, make different sounds, and leave. Then there is that other view, when somebody holds you vertically. You get a better angle of vision, you can see things for what they are, at their right proportions and when they carry you around, at the right pace and distances. This view is definitely better than the other one ! Why then do they leave me down, to that boring ceiling. Today, for the first time, you decide to make this point clear. When they put you down, you protest...you open your mouth and let out a wail. Here they come running, they pick you up. You get back you preferred view. Wow, what a discovery ! You reward them with a smile.

***
They say canyons - as in the Grand Canyon - are formed not by the sheerness of force but by their persistence. This is something we need to learn from babies. The first time I noticed this was when you were trying to turn over by yourself. It was not a sudden thing but a very gradual result of weeks of effort where you were doing nothing else but that. Day in and day out, all your waking hours, you were trying to turn over. First on one side, you lift your one shoulder up as much as you can turn your whole body and try to turn over as much as you can, then you fall back, then you try again, and again, and again. The same process happened when you learnt to sit by yourself. And now when you are trying to take that first free step, it is the same intensity, same persistence...

***
You are playing by yourself and probably getting bored. You look around for some new toy and spot your sleeping brother. Your mind is made, the target is set. You move to him in a  focused crawl. You get over him and let your fingers play over and make little sounds. He does not move. You find his hairs. Hmmm, this looks interesting. You grab it in your little palms, exert a surprising force and pull it towards you. This definitely is funny ! You let out a laugh. Your big brother sits up with a start, rubs his eyes and starts to cry.

***
For a very long time, your singular readout for exploration of your environment is to grab the objects and put them in your mouth. One fine day, as you stand holding a little table you spot something interesting, grab it and  promptly bring it near the mouth. But then you stop and look around with those big brightly lit eyes until you spot me. Then you hold aloft the thing as if showing me and move it slowly to your mouth. I say slowly "no".  Very deliberately you keep it back and look at me with eyes drooling innocence, as if asking "i kept it back. is it okay now?"

Malgudi days

I see that smile ! Anybody who grew up in India in the 1980's cannot but smile with fond recollections at this name, or that "ta na na...na na" tune.

This much-loved television series is a faithful adaptation of the genius of everybody's favorite author R. K . Narayan. It follows the life of  Swami, who, like every other 10 year old, loves playing cricket, listening to stories from his grandmother and hates books, writing exams. These stories are a gentle reflection of those times, when life was characterized by a lazy simplicity. Everybody seemed to have all the time in the world. Particularly Swami.

Partly to introduce Daivik to this simplicity, but mostly to indulge myself in them again, we start watching a random episode from "Swami and Friends". Swami's father wants to wean him away from cuddling up with grandma's stories before falling asleep. So he insists that Swami sleeps by himself, to much opposition from his mother and grandmother.  Fifteen minutes of delightful non-events passby thus at a gentle lazy pace.

Much to my surprise, Daivik stays rooted to the story. Soon we end up in an argument. Some kind of invisible rule asserts itself as Daivik sides with Swami and I with his father.  Daivik says "Appa, why should he sleep alone if he is afraid". I reply something like "so that he can face his fears and get rid of them".  Daivik, suddenly getting very logical, introduces a delicious circularity into the argument. "But appa", he says, "if he is afraid to sleep alone, he cannot sleep alone, so he need not be afraid of sleeping alone".

Meahwhile Swami twists and turns in his new separate room when a thief decides to break into the house, of course through this very same room (quite hilarious the way he 'breaks in', by the way!). Swami, in his half-sleep, rather accidently find the thieve's legs (!) and as an impulsive reaction bites into it. The thief cries out aloud and gets caught. The next day, the police felicitate Swami, even as he finds it hard to stop bragging to his friends about how the thief tried to attack him and he fought the thief and caught him with great difficulty.  

"See", Daivik says, "if he was not sleeping alone, he would not have met the thief". "But see", I say, "he became a brave boy and caught the thief". No, Daivik is not ready to give up. "But appa ", he extrapolates, "what if the thief has attacked him. I think he has to go back to sleep with his grandma". This, incidentally, is the precise argument of Swami's mother and grandmother.

I don't know if Swami went back to sleeping with his grandma, but looks like Daivik found a brotherhood. Not sure if we should continue to watch the series :)

pass the banana please

Consider the following points :
a) you are 11 months old
b) you cannot - yet - speak any of the adult words clearly
c) you really want that banana

What are the options ? You can, of course, cry. But that is a rather non-specific thing to do. It will bring either appa or amma, they might talk something to you, or lift you up, take you to another room or give you a toy. But that is not what you want... it is the banana you want, lying there, on that table, just out of reach.

There must be a better way to get that banana. You keep a smile poised, make random sounds, and wait. Sooner or later, somebody is bound to look at you. Aha, there, you see, Appa is looking at you. Now, right now, is the moment for that dazzling smile. Sure enough, he smiles back and says something. You stretch your hand, turn to right and look at the banana, then look back at him. Just to make sure the message is clear, you repeat this process five times, all the while keeping the smile intact and saying 'ha', 'hai' and 'humm'.

See, it works ! He picks the banana, peels it and ha ha, hands you a bite. Yummy.

Alphabet Dreams

Very early in the morning, 3 AM to be precise, Daivik got seriously interested in err... alphabets. Apparently he was just dreaming about "alphabets" and his eagerness to share the dream happened to be, well, timeless. With hard-to-curtail enthusiasm dancing on the sleep-defying eyes, he announced, "appa, I was dreaming about this alphabet". And using his finger as pencil, he started tracing the contours of the alphabet on an imaginary sheet of paper in front of him. Even as he was 'drawing' the alphabet, he remembered another one. Furiously he rubbed out the previous one from the 'paper' and redrew the new one, only to erase it and draw another one. After a few moments, his movements started resembling a sword fight, or more realistically, a 3AM attempt to evade a recalcitrant fly. Evidently he was having difficulties in getting the alphabet right. I'm not sure if it was the frustration of not remembering the correct alphabet from the dream or the lack of a commensurate skill  in portraying it correctly, or the tussle with an instinct that was screaming get-back-to-sleep-now, the enthusiasm slowly gave way to a whimper and hands still raised mid air and pointing at the 'paper', he drifted back to sleep. Most amazingly, when he got up in the morning-morning, he remembered the dream again, and started writing on his 'paper' right away !

I was taken back to another time, maybe 3 years ago. Daivik was making the fascinating discovery that the sounds he was learning to make, consciously, distinctively and reproducibly, actually carried meaning. They were not randomly generated noise but indeed denote something. He was mentally cataloging these sounds and associating them with objects. It was a charmingly transparent process that was absolutely mesmerizing to watch : every now and then a new word will grab his attention, he will become concentration-focus personified as we point out to the object the word denotes. Usually he will repeat the word once or twice and look at or feel the object. That's it. A sound becomes a word and suddenly acquires a meaning, the transformation is complete. Now, as words gets more abstract, the process becomes more complicated. One fine day, night rather, 3AM (again!), he sat bolt upright and started reciting all the 'words' he knew at that point.

Perhaps the same mental processes are in operation again, as he is perched on the cusp of another exciting discovery. Just as sounds becomes words and gets an identity, shapes are becoming alphabets that fill up the books !

I wonder about the 3AM connection, though :)

Don’t tell lies

The Background

At home Daivik was told that if he tells lies, a crow will bite him. In the kindergarten, for the same offence, they told him that his nose will grow long.

Vignette 1

A small family run circus company camped near our home. They advertised heavily around the neighborhood, with pictures of tigers, elephants and giraffes. Of course when we visited them, they had two horses, two dogs and a goat. Daivik, who was eager to see the tiger and elephant, was not impressed.  When the circus did not close down at the appointed day and instead extended their stay, he started scanning the sky and quipped, “I think lot of crows will come now”. He further clarified: They told many lies, so their nose will grow so long (shows how long). So many crows will come now to sit on their long nose and bite them.

Vignette 2

We were crossing a green field when Daivik spotted two crows sitting on the grass. He went near them. The stubborn city crows did not seem to consider the grinning three foot object approaching them as a threat. Daivik told them, in Hindi, “I’m not from India”. The crows didn’t care. He told his mother, “look, I told them I’m not from India, and they did not bite me”. His mother said, “But these are German crows”.

He bent down deliberately and told the crows in slow, measured and very clear German “There is nobody in Germany. Everybody has gone to India”. 

where do babies come from

It is true. This question is inevitable !

Daivik already knows part of the answer (first mummy's tummy grows. and grows and grows. then the doctor takes the baby out). But when the said question arrived in its proper form it was completely out of the blue. 

First he asked a very complicated question to his mother. "Mummy, when you were inside my granny's stomach, where was I?" (!) His mother smiled at me. I smiled back rather stupidly before realising that she was actually passed the baton. To be sure if I heard it correct, I asked Daivik to repeat the question. Now, Daivik talks to his mother in Hindi and to me in Tamil.  Languages, like the people who use them, have their own idiosyncrasies. So Hindi has two different words for the two different grandmothers but Tamil largely uses one. Hindi has genders for nouns while Tamil does not. So by the time this complex question was reformulated, with contexts and genders corrected, the impact was diluted. So he tried again, this time getting really close to the mark. "Appa", he said "how do babies get into the stomach's of their mothers in the first place". 

I could see he was curious but suggested that we could have this question as our bed time story. He completed dinner and  other pre-bed rituals really fast. In the intervening time I tried to think of a proper answer but none was really forthcoming. I thought he might just about forget the question. However, the first thing he said after getting into the bed was "hmmm, now tell me. How do babies get into their mummy's tummy". "Well", I found myself saying, "actually half of the baby is already there inside the stomach". He found the concept pretty incredible and let out a loud gasp. He kind of missed the half-baby part, though. "Wow" he said, "but how did they get there". I said they do not get there because they are already there. To explain it better I asked him "why do you see roses only in a rose plant and not in a pea plant". Again, it was an incredible concept for him. "Yes, I did not see any rose in the pea plant. But why ?".

I explained :  "That is nature". 

This word caught his fancy. NAT-URE, he started repeating, NAT-URE, NAT-URE...the excitement of the discovery was too much for the little bed to contain. He jumped out of it, ran to his mother and reported "Mummy, I know where babies come from. Do you also know ? Actually, babies are already there in their mother's stomachs. It is called NAT-URE"

the four goals of Novak Djokovic

I was watching a tennis match between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal when a grinning Daivik came by, shuffled around my legs without a word and took seat in my now optimally reconfigured lap. There was a rain interruption in the match and they were filling up the time by showing some football. Suddenly there was a cheer in the game. Somebody had scored a goal. Daivik joined in and to my amusement, shouted "four...four". I said, "Daivik, this is not cricket, this is football, you don't shout four here". "What do you shout then?", he asked. Well, what do you shout..."Goal...Goal", I said, rather simplistically.

By now tennis was back and Djokovic found his groove almost immediately. I started clapping at the end of another wonderful point when Daivik, eager to join in, started to cheer. But then what game is this ? It does not look like Cricket or Football, how to cheer ? The cheer, however, has been committed. The committed cheer of a sports fan, like a  fully taut arrow, cannot be denied. The Daivik arrow hits a mark. Hands raised in excitement, in a high voice, he shouted, "Four...Goal". Thus Novak Djokivic found himself a rather unique accolade from his newest fan, an amalgamation of the high moments of cricket and football bestowed upon him for his tennis point, a feet even he is going to have tough time replicating.

The moment over, the arrow spent, Daivik turned to me and asked, "appa, is this correct ? what game is this ? what do you shout?". I didn't bother to correct him. 

It’s raining, It’s raining

We were on our way to the kindergarten. It was raining lightly and we decided to walk instead of bike. Our little routine under these circumstances is that I carry Daivik on my shoulders and he holds the umbrella for both of us. We walked silently for a while but I started to hurry up a bit as the rain was intensifying and my shoulders were beginning to complain. Suddenly Daivik's legs, dangling near my chests, started dancing and I could feel him swaying sideways as he started singing rather loudly.

It's raining, it's raining
the earth is getting wet

The little song had a nice ryhme to it. It's contextual spontaneity made me forget the shoulders. After some minutes I noticed that he was making it up his own lines while remaining faithful to the tune

My rubber boots are wet
That yellow flower is wet

At this point we were crossing a park and a little mouse scurried past. I thought of pointing it out to him but did not want to interrupt his flow. He noticed it too, called me by a sign, pointed the mouse and without breaking the rhythm continued

That little mouse is wet

We reached the kindergarten, the song continued

Our kindergarten  wet
The trampoline is wet
Andy is getting wet

The tune was catchy and the rain persistant. I ended up adding my own lines and humming it all day  !

stop the rain

Daivik and me were walking to a friend's house when it started raining lightly. Usually I carry an umbrella, but of course on that day I did not. After some minutes of the rain, Daivik looked up at the sky and said "rain, you stop, now". I was amused at this and beginning to have a hearty laugh internally, but his next sentence effectively froze that laughter. "Stop, now", he was telling, "otherwise, I will tell my papa".

The last time I checked, I was not endowed with this particular power. Right now, I was not particularly willing to put myself in fire over this.  So I cheated a bit. "Look Daivik, we will try to sing the stop-the-rain song. If we sing it properly, maybe the rain will stop". Then and there I  invented the said stop-the-rain song and we began singing it.

Of course, the rain did not stop. "Maybe", I said "we did not sing it properly. Shall we try again?". By the end of our second attempt, thankfully, we reached our destination.

understanding zero

When Daivik was learning numbers, we were employing couple of tricks. Our favorite was to imagine our fingers as various objects and count them.  One day he held out his five fingers and said, ‘look, I have ice creams…1..2..3..4..5’. I told, ‘okay, now give me one’ and closed one of his fingers. I then asked, ‘now how many ice creams do you have’. He counted, and said ‘four’. In this way I kept ‘eating’ his icecreams until only one remained. I said, ‘okay, I will take this icecream also', and closed his last finger. 'Tell me, how many ice creams do you have now'. For a long moment he kept staring at the empty space that was previously occupied by his finger. Suddenly he got excited. 'Appa', he exclaimed, 'if you take away the last icecream, nothing remains'. To emphasise this, he pointed to the recently emptied space (using the other hand!) and said, 'look here, there is no ice cream'.

At this point he realized that there were no more ‘ice creams’ and started crying that I ate them all!

piggy on the railway

...picking up the stones
Down came the engine, and broke up its bones
Ah, said the piggy, that is not fair
Oh, said the engine driver, I don't care.

It came back ! My favorite nursery rhyme came back ! After three decades of hibernation !

As Daivik was insisting on stories from "when you were small", and I was digging into memory for authentic accounts, this rhyme just came into being. Again. And with it, in very vivid details, the house we lived in then, the railway track across the (now non-existent) rice fields, the 7:40 AM diesel engine train, the shrillness of its whistle as it pierced across open spaces, the gooseberry tree, the parrot green berries, their distinctive sourness...

It was like bumping into your best friend from high school as you turned a corner in an unfamiliar city, the friend whom life just took you away from, without a reason, without even a fight. I was thrilled, and ended up singing this silly rhyme in one continuous loop, until everybody cried STOP. But then it is committed in more memories now.

Piggy, you are safe.

conflict resolves

The bug or chocolate conflict was continuing for few more days. To facilitate a resolution, I left the thing in a very visible place, but it was not working. Daivik was getting increasingly convinced that it was not real ("otherwise it will not be still here", "see, the legs are still bent outside"), but paradoxically was trying hard to convince me to open it for him. When it was not working, he asked Avin who came home one day to open the chocolate for him. Now Avin had no idea of the preceding drama, and was about to open it. Daivik's eyes lit  up brightly and with a wide grin he started to wait for the finally-now moment. I tried to explain the situation to Avin, but how to do that without dampening Daivik's excitement or Avin's eagerness ?

Daivik was getting restless with the almost opened I'm-sure-its-chocolate in front of him, I was eager for an amicable resolution to the conflict, Avin was half comprehending the situation and trying to think fast. The chocolate was still with Avin who was still in the process of opening it but was starting to try to ask Daivik more about it. The moment became pregnant, everybody involved were on the edge and it became obvious that something was definitely going to happen. The choco-bug was getting ready to finally meet  its destiny, it must have been a terrible suspense for the poor thing. 


What happened next is a bit of a blur. In a matter of microseconds, the chocolate exchanged hands, the cover was forcibly torn open and the whole of it ended up inside  Daivik's mouth. After few seconds of all around silence, a still grinning Daivik made a chocolaty announcement, "Appa, see, it is not a real bug".

conflict

Early in the morning Daivik wanted a big chocolate that was shaped like a lady bug. I remembered his previous rather, er, positive experience with lady bug. So to discourage him from the large chocolate that early, I asked him gently if he was sure it was a chocolate and confused him further by suggesting, "perhaps it is a real lady bug?". The effect was dramatic : he immediately flung the thing down.

But a chocolate - real or not - is a chocolate. After the impact had subsided he suggested to me "can you check if it is crawling ? If it is not, I think, it may be a chocolate". So, I "checked", and, what a wonder, it was not crawling. I reported it to him. He suggested that in that case, I should keep it on the table for further examination, which I compiled with. He had a good look at it from a safe distance and reported his results : "Appa, I think it is not real bug because a) real bug is small, this is big (shows the size by hand), b) real bug has black spots, this has white, c) real bug's legs are "bent inside", this is "outside". Therefore it is chocolate bug. Can you open it".

I said "if you are so sure it is not real bug why not open it yourself". The next moments were precious. He was simultaneously taking a step forward and withdrawing it, drawing his hand forward and retracting it. I realised I was witnessing a rather primal contest, a conflict between conviction and fear, between the decisions we make and the ones that makes us. I thought perhaps it is better if he makes this important choice by himself. When I returned back after some minutes it had taken a funny form. He was standing at a safe 1.5 feet from the "bug" and asking it, literally, "lady bug, are you real ? Or not ? Tell me. Now. Soon".

call everybody

'Daivik, come let's have dinner'

'Daivik is not here'

'who is here'

'This is spiderman'

'Spiderman, come for dinner'

'This is also superman'

'Superman, come for dinner'

'This is also fire engine driver'

'Fire engine driver, come for dinner'

'This is also police'

'Police, come for dinner'

'You have to call everybody, otherwise how can we come?'

'Spiderman Superman Fireengine driver Police, come for dinner'

'Okay, I'm coming'

girls like it !

Daivik and me were working in the garden when I spotted a lady-bug on a leaf. The large palm shaped leaf was almost fluorescent green in the afternoon light, the bright red ladybug with black spots was sitting right in the middle, making it a very pretty sight. I called Daivik to have a look. He saw the scene and asked if he can ‘pink’ it. I didn’t quite get if he said pink or ping, but said okay mostly to keep him engaged, wondering at the same time how do you ping a bug (does it have a RFID tag or something…).

He took a pink colored chalk and started painting a nearby wooden board rather furiously. I got curious after he continued it for longer than his usual attention half-life of 2.3 seconds. So I asked him what he was doing. He was making the board pink. And why? With utmost sincerity he said ‘because girls like pink’. I didn’t understand the connection until he explained the logic: Ladybug is a girl, girls like pink, so he is making the board pink.

I was too flabbergasted to react, but he continued onto his next project of dissolving the remaining chalk in a bowl of water. He was making a pink swimming pool for his lady (bug).

Friendship

When I entered the kindergarten to pick up Daivik, I was greeted by the following sight : Josephine was engrossed with wooden building blocks and Kuby was watching her work intently. Daivik, with a long face, was standing at a distance and looking at them. 
As soon as he saw me, his eyes welled up and he said ‘appa, Kuby is not my friends anymore’. I looked at Kuby, who confirmed the fact, adding for good measure ‘he will never be my friends again’. This broke the dam and Daivik burst into tears, somehow managing to tell me amidst sobs, ‘see, I told you’. Josephine, not to be outdone, started rattling the names of all her friends, not including Daivik, bringing about a fresh wave of tears. I turned to Kuby and asked, ‘why is Daivik not your friend’. Kuby reported that Daivik destroyed the wooden house Josephine was building. By the time I turned back to Daivik, he was ready with an answer. ‘It was an accident’, he said, adding rather paradoxically, ‘it will not happen again’. ‘Can you say that to Kuby?’, I asked. So Daivik went to Kuby and repeated it, stressing the will-not-happen-again part. Kuby started smiling and they held hands for a moment. Josephine, watching the show, started the names again, this time including Daivik. And, just like that, everybody were smiling, everybody friends again. Daivik included me in this joy. “Appa, see”, he said, this time amidst peals of laughter “we are friends again”.

How simple !

funny

Several months ago I mentioned the word 'funny' during the course of a conversation. Daivik, ever alert for new words, promptly asked "what does funny mean". 
I was a little hesitant to give him my impression of such a subjective word, instead we decided to figure out the meaning together. This evolved into a little game.
Every once in a while, he would point to something - a passing car, agrowing plant, the occasional blue sky - and ask "is this funny ?".
Few weeks back when we were in a shop, he burst out laughing and told me "appa, look, this is so funny". The definitiveness of the statement caught me and I turned to look at the object. It was a funny (!) looking balloon in the shape of a mouse. I asked him why he thought it was funny. He said it is a balloon (something he could identify) but shaped like a mouse (something wierd) and "made me laugh". Pretty close, I would say, to how I would have defined it.

Of course, I had to buy that baloon !

Perspective

It was a long and narrow street, perhaps 2 meters wide. As I was biking back home on a fine spring evening, I saw a little girl of about 4 rushing towards me. Her hairs were carelessly tousled, hands spread wide, as she was zig-zagging across the street in an easy carefree joyous way that only four year olds are capable of. The sun was setting somewhere behind her and the low soft rays were refracting through the tossed hair, casting a dynamic halo. 


With the spring flowers, the evening light and the dancing object, it made a pretty photographic moment. But poetry was far from my mind as I was keen on averting an impending collision. I stopped on the side of the street to let this dancing joy cross me. As she passed, she gave a very non-chalanct glance in my direction, and without pausing, mid-stride into her dance said one of the most remarkable things I have heard in recent times. It stunned me and made me smile. It gave me a new definition and a privileged glimpse into the universes we leave behind as we "grow".

She said : "Hallo, Daivik's papa".

No, I did'nt recognize her!

eat me

I caught Daivik singing this "song". Turned out he had just made it up...

Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate
Told me Eat me, eat me 
Full box chocolate
Told me Eat me, eat me

atleast one

I happened to overhear the following conversation between Daivik and his mother.
"Mummy, I want one chocolate"
"No, I will give you two"
(giggling), "Okay, give me two"
"No, I will give you three"
"Okay, give me three"
"No, I will give you four"
...this continued until twelve, at which point an exasperated Daivik said :
"Can you give me "atleast" one" !!

The Home and the World

"But Daivik, tell me one thing, when you have lunch in your kindergarten, do you get out of the table and keep running around ?"
"no"
"so why then do you do it here?"
"but this is not kndergarten, this is my home" 
"what happens when you try to get up from the table during lunch in your kindergarten?"
"the teachers do not 'allow' it"
"okay, I will also not 'allow' it at home"
"but you are not my teacher, you are my father"

lolli-tree

Since the start of this spring, Daivik has been busy in the garden. He has sown seeds, waited and watched them sprout, observed the contours of the first leaves, the magic of the first flowers and amazed that vegetables come out of flowers. Today, as we were holding a lolli-pop between us and discussing the pro's (tasty) and con's (not good for health) of eating it, and negotiating for a reasonable compromise between the two, he had his eureka moment. Even as I was watching him, his eyes lit up and in less than a flash, a wave of inspiration washed over him. He explained it to me in a HurriedExcitedAnimated tone :
"appa, we will dig up the soil and put this lolli inside and cover it up. (shows how he will do it). then after sometime, "magic" will happen and 'lolli-tree' will come out. first we will have lolli-leaves, then another magic will happen and we will have lolli-flowers and then many many lolli's. after that I will pick them up all and eat them. (picks up and eats)"

So, we went out and 'planted' his lolli. We are going to wait for it to sprout. 

Question : will we get that lolli-tree ? How will it look ?

everything

The breakfast table was unusually quiet. That should have warned me. But I was completely unprepared for the bolt that struck. 
"Appa", said Daivik in a rather contemplative tone, "do you know everything?" (!!)
No darling, I most certainly don't. (otherwise I will be out of job !). But how to tell that ?
Holding my breath, I asked "what, exactly, do you want to know?". Turned out, the pressing question was why we don't see dinosaurs on streets. 
Phew, what relief ! 
"well" I said "they disappeared long before there were any streets anywhere". 
I was preparing the best possible answer for the next WHY question that was bound to follow. Instead he seemed to accept it. 
A few moments later he even complemented me. "see", he said, "you know everything".

wrong time

Daivik was getting bored in the tram. In front of him, but facing away from him, was an attractive girl in her 20's who was getting rather busy with her boyfriend. Daivik tentatively pulled her hair. She turned back, looked at Daivik, gave a hesitant smile and went back to her business. He tried again.

"Daivik !" came a warning call from his mother.

"what mummy", he asked, in a perfectly innocent voice.

"what are you doing"

"nothing"

"No, you were pulling her hair"

"how do you know"

"I was watching you"

"how do you know what I was doing NOW"

"I'm ALWAYS watching you"

"why do you keep watching me in wrong time"