Sunday, November 25, 2012

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 !

Monday, November 19, 2012

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.


Thursday, November 8, 2012

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.