- Mark Twain

These days, I am telling the kids stories of Shivaji, and I happened to be talking about the fact that Dadoji Konddev was Shivaji’s teacher, and how he taught Shivaji horse-riding, archery with a bow and arrow, fighting with a sword etc. And for effect, I asked Rabad, “Does your teacher teach you fighting?”

A little crestfallen, Rabad said, “No, they only teach A-B-C-D and things like that in my school.”

And after a little pause, she added, “But I learn fighting from watching Ben-10 on TV.”

me – Kambakkht Ishq

abu – how was it?

me – BAAADDD!

abu – why?

me – it didn’t have a story.

abu (all tense and worried) – then what will you write?

me – i will write about the acting, the jokes, the story – not what, but that it didn’t have any

abu (still tense) – but if there was no story how will you write

me – i’ll write "you won’t find a story even if you looked with a magnifying glass"

abu (sudden gush of relief) – ha ha ha ha ha.

mamma, how did you decide you want to write reviews?

anyway, so cricket and thus ipl comes up in our daily phone conversations.

me – so, will you be excited if mumbai indians wins today or the deccan chargers?

abu – i won’t be excited if anyone wins.

me (nirvana, already?) – come on, one must be little exciting than other?

abu – mamma, both are India only…

me – :-/

so we have some 7 tubes running in and out of her. obviously the nurses didn’t want to take them on and off if she wanted to use the bathroom. so, they put on a diaper for her.

i wasn’t allowed to be with her all the time. the nurses would call me in every once in a while. in one such trip, a nurse tells me, "she just didn’t pee till we took her to the bathroom"

me – yeah, i can imagine that.

rabad called me to her with a broad smile – mamma, they told me that if i don’t pee in the diaper, they’ll give me an injection. right, as if they can do that…they were trying to fool me.

* * *

another one from the hospital. i was trying to comfort her telling her, that it was alright. since both abu and rabad love listening to their birth stories, i told them how i was hospitalized similarly when she was born.

me – see, i’m fine now.

rabad – mamma, i’ll have to come to hospital two times. one now and one when i have a baby

me giving her a high five – yes! just like me. i came to the hospital once for abu and once for you

rabad – oh, then i’ll have to come three times. one now and two for two babies…

yep! i should have seen that coming!!

rabad (in the sweetest of tones) – i don’t want you as mamma, i want a different mamma

me – ok

rabad – pappa too. i want a different pappa

me (feeling a tad better) – ok

rabad – and you know what i’d tell the different mamma and pappa?

me – what?

rabad – the same thing, that i want a different mamma and pappa

now, can anyone capture the essence of life better than that?

So now, apparently, they want more creative control. If you remember, the title of the last post was dictated by Abu. Now this whole post has gone up on the insistence of Abu.

“Pappa, this story is too funny. You have to put it up in Abu-Rabad site,” he told me a few days back. Partially because I was busy, and partially because I did not really think the story did belong on the site, I did nothing. So today, he asked me again, “Did you put up the story I told you on the Abu-Rabad site?”.

So, here is the story.

We had all gone to a hill station for a vacation with extended family. Abu and Rabad had gone with their cousins for a walk among the hills. n didi is one of the cousins. When they came back, Abu told me,

“Pappa, a funny thing happened. n didi went into the hills and found some shiny stones. After that, she saw a white thing. She thought that thing is a bag. When she picked it up, it was a diaper! Ha ha.” He is giggling even now as he repeats the story to me.

When Rabad found out about this, she insisted that she wanted to see the “white thing”. No amount of persuasion would dissuade her. She rested only after she had made her cousin go back into the hill, and find the diaper, and had said “Eeww.”

Now Abu wants me to print this so he can send it to his friend TQ. “Because he’ll laugh also.”

In our house, this is usually code for, “Can I watch TV, Pappa.” Of course, he knows that watching too much TV is frowned upon, so he will not directly ask the question. Rather, he asks “What shall I do now.” And if I suggest any thing other than TV, he will say, “No, I don’t want to do that.”

In turn, we keep suggesting more and more non-TV / non-computer things for him to do, in the hope that he will will say “Yes” to one of them.

Anyway, today we started this ritual again:

“What shall I do now, Pappa?” asked Abu.

I definitely did not want to allow him to watch TV, so I asked,

“Do you want to play Monopoly?”

Even he must have gotten bored of saying “No” over and over again, so he got creative this time.

“Pappa,” he said, “in my mind, there is a game, with a circle around it, and a slanting line.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked him to explain. So, he said,

“Pappa, see. In my mind, there is the game Monopoly” – at this point he gestured in the air with his hands, drawing a square, and continued, “and around that game, there is a circle.” And he drew a big circle around the imaginary Monopoly he had just drawn. “And then there is a slash,” and he slashed the air, pretty much smashing the imaginary monopoly.

I believe, what he had in his mind, was this:

“That means, no Monopoly,” he explained.

So instead of playing Monopoly, or watching TV, we sat together, photoshopped the above image, and composed this blog post. Problem solved!

(By the way, the title of this post has been suggested by Abu. Also, he corrected some of the dialogue, “That’s not what I said, Pappa. I said … etc.“)

rabad (she’s sitting and hugging my feet while i stand)- mamma, i like you very much. i like you more than i like myself.

who said i wont be using this forum to brag?

but seriously, can’t believe the layers that that one sentence has. obviously, the brag. but then the fact that she likes herself quite a lot. and that she has enough confidence to say that out loud. 

then again, maybe i’m reading too much into this. damn, i need some confidence lessons from this 4-year old.

We’ve had a few sporadic conversations about the terrorists in the following few days.

Often, I read newspapers at the breakfast table. And sometimes Abu and Rabad want to know what I am reading, and I try to tell them the “news of the day” in terms that they can understand. (Just want to clarify, this is on “normal” days too, not just those marred by terrorist activities.)

So on Friday, Abu asked me, “What is in the news, Dad?”

“136 people have been killed by the terrorists in Mumbai,” I told him.

“Oh. That’s too many,” he said, and then after a slight pause continued, “Thank God, they didn’t kill Rabad.” He was very casual, and natural. Not at all worried, or afraid, or “affected” in any other way, as far as I can tell. What I found most interesting is that it wasn’t “us” or “me”. It was “Rabad”.

* * *

On Sunday, we were just driving somewhere when we passed a “raddi paper” (old newspaper recycling) shop. They had huge stacks upon stacks of old newspaper ready to be taken away. It looked interesting and impressive, the kind of thing that Abu would find cool. So I told him, “See Abu, how many newspapers.”

“Wow! Cool!” he said, and then added, “All of them are about terrorists?”

“What? Why? Why would you say that, Abu?” I asked.

“I’ve seen the newspapers at home Dad. They are all about terrorists all the time.”

* * *

Later, we were talking about the news again, and I told him, “The terrorists have been killed. The situation is now normal. The problem is over.”

“Over?” he asked, “Have the dead people been reborn?”

I was flabbergasted. I swear I am not putting words in his mouth, nor did I prompt him in any way.

But he is right. The dead people are not going to be reborn. It is not over.

* * *

I just want to point out that Abu is not obsessing about the terrorists. In the last few days, we have talked about Harry Potter, and birthday parties, and restaurants, and teachers, and snakes-and-ladders, and tennis, and badminton, and cricket and all the other things that kids normally think about. Right now he is very excited about having reached level 3 of BlockABilla (don’t ask! some computer game.) It’s just that I have picked out the few conversations about terrorists and posted them here. I guess maybe I am obsessing about the terrorists.

The aftermath of the Mumbai terror is a very confusing time. One is sad, because the “dead people will not be reborn”, and at the same time, one is thankful because “it wasn’t Rabad”.

abu – mamma, what happened?

me – mmm…

abu – pappa, what happened?

navin – bad uncles are shooting at people and throwing bombs at buildings.

abu – oh…

me (pre-empting his why) – and you know what, we don’t know why (wondering if even they know why)

abu – i know why. they want to kill someone in the building.

me – some times that is not how it is. they do this to scare everybody.

navin – see when you get angry at pappa, you throw a book. you don’t want to really throw a book, you just want to show pappa you are angry. just like that, these people are angry about something and they want everyone to know

me – and neither is a good thing. you shouldn’t throw a book and they shouldn’t be doing this.

navin – yeah, throwing book is -10 (minus 10) points and shooting people is -10,000 (minus ten thousand)

abu (puzzled look) – shooting people is more important than throwing book. it has to be -infinity means -never-ending, means minus till they die, minus when they are reborn also.

you b@$!^*%$, may this 6-year old’s ill-wishes reach you. may you be in the minus till you die and in the after-life too.

and from me – may your death be slow and painful. may the hands that get to torture you be pitiless and the most brutal around.