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 :)