Don’t tell lies

The Background

At home Daivik was told that if he tells lies, a crow will bite him. In the kindergarten, for the same offence, they told him that his nose will grow long.

Vignette 1

A small family run circus company camped near our home. They advertised heavily around the neighborhood, with pictures of tigers, elephants and giraffes. Of course when we visited them, they had two horses, two dogs and a goat. Daivik, who was eager to see the tiger and elephant, was not impressed.  When the circus did not close down at the appointed day and instead extended their stay, he started scanning the sky and quipped, “I think lot of crows will come now”. He further clarified: They told many lies, so their nose will grow so long (shows how long). So many crows will come now to sit on their long nose and bite them.

Vignette 2

We were crossing a green field when Daivik spotted two crows sitting on the grass. He went near them. The stubborn city crows did not seem to consider the grinning three foot object approaching them as a threat. Daivik told them, in Hindi, “I’m not from India”. The crows didn’t care. He told his mother, “look, I told them I’m not from India, and they did not bite me”. His mother said, “But these are German crows”.

He bent down deliberately and told the crows in slow, measured and very clear German “There is nobody in Germany. Everybody has gone to India”. 

where do babies come from

It is true. This question is inevitable !

Daivik already knows part of the answer (first mummy's tummy grows. and grows and grows. then the doctor takes the baby out). But when the said question arrived in its proper form it was completely out of the blue. 

First he asked a very complicated question to his mother. "Mummy, when you were inside my granny's stomach, where was I?" (!) His mother smiled at me. I smiled back rather stupidly before realising that she was actually passed the baton. To be sure if I heard it correct, I asked Daivik to repeat the question. Now, Daivik talks to his mother in Hindi and to me in Tamil.  Languages, like the people who use them, have their own idiosyncrasies. So Hindi has two different words for the two different grandmothers but Tamil largely uses one. Hindi has genders for nouns while Tamil does not. So by the time this complex question was reformulated, with contexts and genders corrected, the impact was diluted. So he tried again, this time getting really close to the mark. "Appa", he said "how do babies get into the stomach's of their mothers in the first place". 

I could see he was curious but suggested that we could have this question as our bed time story. He completed dinner and  other pre-bed rituals really fast. In the intervening time I tried to think of a proper answer but none was really forthcoming. I thought he might just about forget the question. However, the first thing he said after getting into the bed was "hmmm, now tell me. How do babies get into their mummy's tummy". "Well", I found myself saying, "actually half of the baby is already there inside the stomach". He found the concept pretty incredible and let out a loud gasp. He kind of missed the half-baby part, though. "Wow" he said, "but how did they get there". I said they do not get there because they are already there. To explain it better I asked him "why do you see roses only in a rose plant and not in a pea plant". Again, it was an incredible concept for him. "Yes, I did not see any rose in the pea plant. But why ?".

I explained :  "That is nature". 

This word caught his fancy. NAT-URE, he started repeating, NAT-URE, NAT-URE...the excitement of the discovery was too much for the little bed to contain. He jumped out of it, ran to his mother and reported "Mummy, I know where babies come from. Do you also know ? Actually, babies are already there in their mother's stomachs. It is called NAT-URE"

the four goals of Novak Djokovic

I was watching a tennis match between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal when a grinning Daivik came by, shuffled around my legs without a word and took seat in my now optimally reconfigured lap. There was a rain interruption in the match and they were filling up the time by showing some football. Suddenly there was a cheer in the game. Somebody had scored a goal. Daivik joined in and to my amusement, shouted "four...four". I said, "Daivik, this is not cricket, this is football, you don't shout four here". "What do you shout then?", he asked. Well, what do you shout..."Goal...Goal", I said, rather simplistically.

By now tennis was back and Djokovic found his groove almost immediately. I started clapping at the end of another wonderful point when Daivik, eager to join in, started to cheer. But then what game is this ? It does not look like Cricket or Football, how to cheer ? The cheer, however, has been committed. The committed cheer of a sports fan, like a  fully taut arrow, cannot be denied. The Daivik arrow hits a mark. Hands raised in excitement, in a high voice, he shouted, "Four...Goal". Thus Novak Djokivic found himself a rather unique accolade from his newest fan, an amalgamation of the high moments of cricket and football bestowed upon him for his tennis point, a feet even he is going to have tough time replicating.

The moment over, the arrow spent, Daivik turned to me and asked, "appa, is this correct ? what game is this ? what do you shout?". I didn't bother to correct him. 

It’s raining, It’s raining

We were on our way to the kindergarten. It was raining lightly and we decided to walk instead of bike. Our little routine under these circumstances is that I carry Daivik on my shoulders and he holds the umbrella for both of us. We walked silently for a while but I started to hurry up a bit as the rain was intensifying and my shoulders were beginning to complain. Suddenly Daivik's legs, dangling near my chests, started dancing and I could feel him swaying sideways as he started singing rather loudly.

It's raining, it's raining
the earth is getting wet

The little song had a nice ryhme to it. It's contextual spontaneity made me forget the shoulders. After some minutes I noticed that he was making it up his own lines while remaining faithful to the tune

My rubber boots are wet
That yellow flower is wet

At this point we were crossing a park and a little mouse scurried past. I thought of pointing it out to him but did not want to interrupt his flow. He noticed it too, called me by a sign, pointed the mouse and without breaking the rhythm continued

That little mouse is wet

We reached the kindergarten, the song continued

Our kindergarten  wet
The trampoline is wet
Andy is getting wet

The tune was catchy and the rain persistant. I ended up adding my own lines and humming it all day  !

stop the rain

Daivik and me were walking to a friend's house when it started raining lightly. Usually I carry an umbrella, but of course on that day I did not. After some minutes of the rain, Daivik looked up at the sky and said "rain, you stop, now". I was amused at this and beginning to have a hearty laugh internally, but his next sentence effectively froze that laughter. "Stop, now", he was telling, "otherwise, I will tell my papa".

The last time I checked, I was not endowed with this particular power. Right now, I was not particularly willing to put myself in fire over this.  So I cheated a bit. "Look Daivik, we will try to sing the stop-the-rain song. If we sing it properly, maybe the rain will stop". Then and there I  invented the said stop-the-rain song and we began singing it.

Of course, the rain did not stop. "Maybe", I said "we did not sing it properly. Shall we try again?". By the end of our second attempt, thankfully, we reached our destination.

understanding zero

When Daivik was learning numbers, we were employing couple of tricks. Our favorite was to imagine our fingers as various objects and count them.  One day he held out his five fingers and said, ‘look, I have ice creams…1..2..3..4..5’. I told, ‘okay, now give me one’ and closed one of his fingers. I then asked, ‘now how many ice creams do you have’. He counted, and said ‘four’. In this way I kept ‘eating’ his icecreams until only one remained. I said, ‘okay, I will take this icecream also', and closed his last finger. 'Tell me, how many ice creams do you have now'. For a long moment he kept staring at the empty space that was previously occupied by his finger. Suddenly he got excited. 'Appa', he exclaimed, 'if you take away the last icecream, nothing remains'. To emphasise this, he pointed to the recently emptied space (using the other hand!) and said, 'look here, there is no ice cream'.

At this point he realized that there were no more ‘ice creams’ and started crying that I ate them all!

piggy on the railway

...picking up the stones
Down came the engine, and broke up its bones
Ah, said the piggy, that is not fair
Oh, said the engine driver, I don't care.

It came back ! My favorite nursery rhyme came back ! After three decades of hibernation !

As Daivik was insisting on stories from "when you were small", and I was digging into memory for authentic accounts, this rhyme just came into being. Again. And with it, in very vivid details, the house we lived in then, the railway track across the (now non-existent) rice fields, the 7:40 AM diesel engine train, the shrillness of its whistle as it pierced across open spaces, the gooseberry tree, the parrot green berries, their distinctive sourness...

It was like bumping into your best friend from high school as you turned a corner in an unfamiliar city, the friend whom life just took you away from, without a reason, without even a fight. I was thrilled, and ended up singing this silly rhyme in one continuous loop, until everybody cried STOP. But then it is committed in more memories now.

Piggy, you are safe.