gems

I'll try to recollect some incidents in my life as a parent that have stood out for being hilarious or innocent or thought provoking. I'll build this post in the next few days as and when I remember the incidents:

incident #1

This happened about 3 years back. Veena loves the song from "amrutha varshini" and used to play this often:

"ತುಂತುರು ಅಲ್ಲಿ ನೀರ ಹಾಡು ಕಂಪನ ಇಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರೀತಿ ಹಾಡು

ಹಗಲಿರಲಿ ಇರುಳಿರಲಿ ನೀನರದೆ ಹೇಗಿರಲಿ

Couple of days of hearing and nidhi was humming the mukda well till the second line.

Cute gunda nidhi would say "ಹಗಲಿರಲಿ, ಈರುಳ್ಳಿ ಈರುಳ್ಳಿ..."

incident #2

we had to send something by post. Neha showed the letter box for our flat in the apartment and said why don't you put it here. The postman who comes to drop letters there can pick those as well. I wonder why that cant happen.

incident #3

This one is more for record keeping. This year in school, focus is on building the vocabulary. Teacher gives them a dictation test every Monday. Kids were doing pretty well till this week. They had their first failure scoring 1/8 and 2/8. I just found it cute that both did badly in the same week.

incident #4

This one happened yesterday. kids are learning tables at school. I'm not sure if they understand the concept of multiplication but are enthusiastically mugging up and know till "five one za".

neha observed the tables for 11 in the book and saw that it is an easy pattern to remember and mugged it up silently. She went to veena to showcase her learning. She recited the entire table correctly and closed it with "Eleven ten za Eleventy".

pic

An artist's impression of neha & nidhi, on our visit to that amazing place - chitra kala parishat

anagram and word game

When I came back from work last Tuesday, nidhi was super excited to tell me about the discovery she had made that afternoon. She shouted "appa" and then said "wait", ran to her room and got her hindi words book, showed the cover and said "look, there is a nidhi in hindi". Till that time, I or Veena hadn't thought of this anagram. After she showed, it seemed to be sitting there fairly obviously, always.

This left neha morose and needing attention. So we started looking for words that contain letters to make a neha. We stopped at elephant and were able to spin out the following words - neha, ant, pant, hat, at, an, plant, pet, net...

last few days kids are on a reading spree, looking at boards, newspapers, magazines, plastic covers, bags for words that would contain their names, either jumbled up or within.

conversation on death

Two days back, we visited kids' doddajji at mysore. (great granny) She is recovering from a heart attack. we had told the kids that she had high fever and since she was weak, had been admitted to the hospital. When the nurse got doddajji out for her stroll on the wheel chair, nidhi burst out crying. She was shocked to see her condition - weak and on a wheel chair and wearing a hospital gown. She asked "appa, doddavarge jwara bandhre ee thara aagthara?" After granny was taken back to the ICU, kids had a conversation with me that was tough and hilarious at the end:

nidhi: appa, why hasn't her husband come to see her?

me: kandha, dodda thatha died 3 years back.

nidhi: why did he die?

me: cos he was 100 years old and weak and he died. everyone has to die when they are old

(he died when was around 80, 100 is the age that kids have in picture when they think of death. so I didn't want to change that image; there isn't much now use in changing either. the sense of time they have now is that they can make out what day after tomorrow is; not beyond that; weeks, months, years are terms they use without understanding much)

nidhi: what happened to him after dying? did he become a star?

me: yes, god takes his life from his body and converts that to a star

(effect of watching mythological movies that they think people become stars after dying)

nidhi: which star is he now? show me?

me: god doesn't tell us which star is who, so we cant make out.

neha: how does god pull out the life from body? he would be wearing a shirt right?

me: god has powers to do that kandha

They seemed satisfied and remained silent for a while. I was feeling relieved. After a couple of minutes, Neha tried to start some other conversation, "appa, when I'm in tenth standard.."

Before she completed her query, Nidhi stopped her

"hey bide, appa aavaga star aagirthaare"