Innocence can kill too

Innocence can be a powerful weapon. How else can you embarass an elderly well respected person. Not that you want to but here is what happened yesterday. Nidhi was feasting on her lunch on a plantain leaf sitting next to neha & veena at a family gathering. An elderly man who is very well respected, admired by all kind of personality, was sitting opposite her. Here is the conversation he tried to have with nidhi:

elderly person: shall i also come to your school?

nidhi: but you dont have uniform

elderly person: then i'll wear your uniform and come

nidhi: then your underwear will show and my madam will say 'shame shame poppy shame, all the monkeys know your name, thatha'

elderly person: probably wanted to dig a hole and bury himself there

Fit for cows

Yesterday Neha returned from school and frowned at veena "ಏನಮ್ಮ ಮಕ್ಕಳು ಬಾಳೆ ಹಣ್ಣು ಹಾಕು ಅಂದ್ರೆ ಹಸು ಬಾಳೆ ಹಣ್ಣು ಹಾಕಿದೀಯಾ?" (amma, instead of putting banana that kids eat, you've put banana that cows eat, in the lunch bag). I know the expression that neha wears when she talks like that. I captured that expression today morning when we were waiting for the school van. It would have been something like shown in the snap.

Veena was taken aback by the comment and wondered what it meant. She had to jog her memory about an year back to understand neha's comment. When we were staying in h'nagar, there used to be stray cows on the street. They weren't stray actually, an insensitive man had a cow shed and also used to sell firewood. After extracting milk to sell, he would let the cows on the street to find some food & clear their bowels. They were a big nuisance and numerous efforts to drill civic sense into that stupid guy's head had failed. Kids love banana and we used to buy them regularly. If the bananas were not consumed in time, they would ripen to death and turn black. We used to let kids feed such bananas to these stray cows.

So it turned out that the bananas veena packed in their lunch bag yesterday were a little more ripe than usual (not black or close to black as neha exaggerated). The expression in the snap is not exactly what she wears in these situations. That is artifically created and hence little exaggerated as well. Suits her. She will probably fight with me about this snap 5 or 6 years from now. I'm ready :-)

I'm also attaching a snap of nidhi that I took today morning. She bought her elephant today to play for those 5 to 10 mins before the van arrives. When they see this blog, they search for how many photos I've put of them. This post should have just carried neha's snap but I'm putting nidhi's as well to make her feel good. I have to be conscious of their sensitiveness when I fill up the real estate on this blog.

Some Silly Snaps

I was browsing all the snaps I had taken on my cell phone. These snaps are the more spontaneous ones unlike the regular camera snaps where kids are dressed up and are posing. I saw some really stupid poses and silly photos. Here is the collection that neha & nidhi will be embarrassed about when they grow up :-)

# Snap 1 - Taken in home town mall last Saturday. They posed in front of a huge ad hoarding. Nidhi wanted a snap of her touching the girl in the ad.

# Snap 2 - This ain't silly but cute. They used to love the play home that they were going during their 3rd year - tender lily play home at gavipuram. They would usually get ready before time and sit on the steps in front of the house (the rented house at h'nagar where we stayed for a couple of years) waiting for veena to get ready and sharada (care taker) to come and drop them to the play home

# Snap 3 - Wearing juttus! check the art on the wall that they have created with crayons and pencil. It costed me 8k to get that rented house repainted when we left.

# Snap 4 - Nidhi sitting in a basket on the street in front of the house. I don't remember the exact reason but i know it was a mark of protest for something we didn't buy her.

# Snap 5 - kids wearing my shirts

# Snap 6 - As you could see in snap 4, the street was very close to the house (or there was minimal area in the compound). So we had got this half door done to disallow kids from rushing to the street. This half door was around 3 feet tall. Neha & Nidhi used to watch the kids playing on the street by standing near the half door. Nidhi would stand on her toes and was tall enough to see beyond the door. Neha devised a method to view the street. She would balance on the skirting and lean against the door. She used to do it pretty well. Just one day she forgot to wear her something on her bottom and I clicked :-)

# Snap 7 - A more recent snap. Nidhi applied a little more makeup.

# Snap 8 - Few months back, we went to puma store to buy veena jogging shoes. Kids hid themselves in the racks and were playing hide & seek with me while veena was picking her shoes.

to be a good teacher, be a good student first

Life comes full circle - quote by Tracey Gold

The circle in one particular instance seemed small & hence boomeranged back on me pretty soon.

To avoid nidhi & neha from getting confused about the way people should dress, we taught them that it is bad to dress skimpily and since then we discouraged them to watch photos in the magazines where models are dressed rather inappropriately in advertisements. They seemed to have watched a few photos and deciphered that if a girl is showing her umbilicus (that means navel button :-)), then that is bad and should not be seen.

This lesson we taught them hit me back hard when one day I came back home from work and was watching TV. I was surfing around when one channel was play dhoom-2 song "crazy kiya re...". I just got my fingers off the channel button on remote and was beginning to enjoy the song when nidhi barged into the living room, saw the TV and said - "ಥೂ! change ಮಾಡಪ್ಪ ಅವಳ ಹೊಕ್ಕಳು ಕಾಣುತಾ ಇದೆ.

("thu change madappa, avala hokkalu kaantha idhe")

Cricket is the safest thing to watch on TV, for me these days. The other one is the aastha channel. Thankfully I've not grown that old in life yet to dig into that.

Another joke around death

kannada films (even telugu & tamil ones AFAIK) seem to glorify death & scenes following one. I dont know who likes to watch the gory details when there is a death in hero's family. But film makers seem to use precious reel time showing each step in detail. They show everything from covering the dead body's face with the white cloth to hero getting a mundan!

This was the root cause for another joke on death by kids the other day. They obviously have seen a few such scenes on TV & have a fair understanding on what is death.
I happened to overhear one of the conversations they had in the balcony with kriti (their friend): "why do they put cotton in dead man's nose?"
I think it was nidhi who responded to that question - "so that he does not become alive again"

Parents Wish List

Before you become a parent, you usually make up your mind thinking I'll not impose my wishes on my kid and not expect them to achieve what i didn't. Once you become a parent, you usually change that thinking and start building expectations around your kids.

I've been lucky so far cos I have not weaved any major goals for my kids. they are still 3 years old :-)

One thing i plan to teach my kids though is swimming. When i say teach, i mean through some trainer obviously and not myself. There isn't that possibility cos I've learnt very little swimming. I did not swim till i was 32 years old and then I went to learn. I can float a while & do a few strokes before i get tired or I'm conscious of moving towards deep end and stop. that's about all i do in the pool. The difference between me & a non-swimmer is that if both of us are thrown off a boat, I'll die probably 10 seconds after the non-swimmer dies.

Anyways, the bubble of my kids learning swimming almost burst the other day (in nidhi's case) when I splashed a little water on her face while giving her a bath and she screamed frantically ಅಯ್ಯೋ ಅಪ್ಪ... ನಾನು ಮುಳಗಿ ಹೋಗ್ತಾ ಇದ್ಹೀನಿ

ಕುಕ್ಕರ್ ಥರ

this incident happened about 6 months back. veena was busy in kitchen while neha & nidhi were playing in the living room. they were creating a lot of noise and toys were thrown around. veena came to the living room, saw the mess & started shouting at them. neha watched her for a while with her usual sharp stare and cut veena's lecture by saying "ಏನಮ್ಮ, ಒಳ್ಳೆ ಕುಕ್ಕರ್ ಥರ ಕೂಗ್ತಾ ಇದ್ಧೀಯ?"*

* - yenamma olle cooker thara koogtha idheeya

ಸತ್ತು ಹೋಗ್ತ್ಹಿಯಾ?

when nidhi was around 2 years & was adding new words to her vocabulary rapidly, I realized she had heard about "sattu hogu" (die) and somehow seemed to know what that means.

One day I was back home from office early and down with my migraine headache. As always I popped in a pill, slept in the room with lights off. Nidhi came inside the room, patted on my chest & asked
"ಏನು ಆಯಿತು ಅಪ್ಪ?" *
I said "ತಲೆ ನೋವು ಚಿನ್ನಿ" *
she enquired "ಸತ್ತು ಹೋಗ್ತ್ಹಿಯಾ?"*

* - yenu aithu appa
- thale novu chinni
- sattu hogtheeyaa?