aliens and oxygen

“What is this”, asked Daivik, pointing to a cement mixer. When I told him what it was and explained the purpose of it, he got into a mood for fun and said, “Appa, cement mixer is made of grass”. I gave a surprised exclamation, which seemed to satisfy him and we got into a game of what things are made of.

“You are made of plants too”, he said.  “You know Daivik, plants and me are the same”, I said, partly in jest. Perhaps this put him in some confusion, he became quiet. So I explained, “Actually, both plants and me are made of the same thing called Carbon”.  “How”, he asked and I gave an explanation of the different elements, which seemed to satisfy him. The game continued, now including the names of some of the elements. “Moon is made of carbon”, he said. I said that it was actually it is made of various elements. We then started thinking of what other planets are made of, and I was telling him that only earth has oxygen and other planets do not and that is why you do not see life there.

I thought by now he was in a listening mode. But the mention of lack of life outside the earth triggered something deeply personal. “No”, he protested with a vehemence that was both instantaneous and spirited. “There is life outside earth, there are aliens”. Then, as if to defer any further doubts on this matter, he added, “They are all my friends”. “Okay Daivik, of course there are aliens. But how do they breathe?”. He made an imitation of how they might be breathing. “But what about oxygen?”, I asked. “If there is no oxygen, they cannot breathe. There is no oxygen in other planets”. “Appa, you don’t know. They need oxygen to breathe, but they don’t need lots of it. A little bit is enough”. “So, how do they get that little bit?”. “Oh, they come to earth. You see, after you drop me in school every day, I actually take a rocket, go to other planets, bring the aliens to my school so they can take some oxygen and then they take the rocket back to their planet”. “Who is sitting in the class and listening to the teacher then?”. “Appa, I don’t sit in the class, I tell my teacher I want to play outside and then I actually go to other planets”.

Hmmm…have to check with his teacher.

small things, big things

For some reason, Daivik’s backpack caught Akshara’s fancy and she insisted on carrying it. Convincing Daivik to let her carry the bag was not too difficult (“But she has to give it back to me, promise, appa?”).  So, Akshara sat on her seat with the bag on her lap. I was focusing on the road. Somewhere along the way she started whining. These whinings have a certain signature to them. Overtime one gains a deep understanding of these signatures and learns – through trial and error, mostly error - to interpret them. This whine was persistent, but low intense. Okay, so something is bothering her, but it is not alarming.  Has she removed her gloves again? Was she feeling a bit cold?  

“Akshara, are you feeling cold?”

 “No”.

“Shall I put your gloves back on?”

“No”.

“Is the belt too tight?”

“No”.

My repeated failures must have frustrated her. The intensity of the whine increased slightly, so very slightly. But the new signature said : this demands a solution.

“Have you dropped the bag?”, I asked. The mention of the bag triggered something and she notched up her whine quite perceptibly. Breakthrough! It’s something to do with the bag. I turned to her and asked, “Don’t you want the bag?”. “No”, she said again, and the whine became a proper cry.  The double negative momentarily confused me. But I sensed that I was closing in. “Shall I remove the bag”, I asked, reaching out for it. “No”, she said again and raised the cry up another notch. Tears started welling up. So, that’s not what she wants. 

My hands were almost on the bag when I noticed that the bag had flipped and the front smiley face was turned away from her. “Shall I turn the bag?”, I asked. Her eyes lit up immediately. “Yes”, she said, still crying. I did the simple task of flipping the bag, she could see the smiley again. Her eyes declared, yes, YES, that is exactly what I wanted.

In an instant, happiness poured into her whole being. And then out of her. Those little droplets of tears were still hanging in those twinkling eyes, the chillness of the winter had decorated her cheeks with a natural rouge, her bunny teeth were sparkling in the morning light, and she started laughing…peals and peals of laughter, marvelous glorious laughter.

Who would have thought that that single bag, that simple act, can release so much of happiness? Or, is it the other way round: simple acts, small things can be portals to a universe of happiness.  And that we, the non-children,  close those doors with alarming efficiency as we lose the child in us ?

Gods and Demons

Who / what is God? And what, exactly, is a demon?  Heavy questions!  I’m not qualified enough to discuss these issues at any length at any level.  Most certainly, I’m not going to.  However, Daivik gave me a lesson today touching upon these areas, a lesson that I will be well served to remember, a lesson that left me pondering. How does a child’s mind perceive these apparently heavy topics? Is there an element of simplification? And in that simplification, can we, the supposedly “grown-ups”, find answers that often elude us?

This is what happened. Daivik got angry when I told him something that he did not particularly like (something like, okay, shall we stop the cartoon now). Now, five year olds are well known for their tantrums, and they can be, well, taxing at times. His anger raised a trigger and I responded to that. Things were getting a bit heated up between us. It was pretty unnecessary. Even as I was realizing that, Daivik stopped his anger show quite abruptly, gave me a lovely smile and said, ”Okay Appa, I will not watch any more cartoon today”. That defused all the tension and we exchanged smiles and pleasantries.

Both the flare up and its defusing were abrupt and left their marks. After the smile, Daivik explained it in the following words. “See Appa, I got angry and the demon in me came out. This invited the demon in you. Then the God in me came out and killed that demon and made me smile. This killed the demon from you and brought out the God in you”. His logic was both simple and astounding. It made for a neat model.  A model where the god and the demon are both within us and neatly partitioned according to a binary scheme of things, each responding to one particular call: good and bad, right and wrong, god and demon. According to Daivik’s logic, the demon comes out more easily and spreads by inviting other demons, but the god has more power. And the god in him can not only kill the demon in him but also influence the demon in me and by virtue invoke the god in me.  How elegant!

This left me wondering. How exactly do children get ideas from? How do the ideas crystallize and evolve? In this case, neither of his parents told Daivik such a concept in so many words. How did he arrive at this? And what gave him the conviction - and confidence - to actually put it to test? It will be the most fascinating thing ever to understand this process! Of course, as he grows older, he is going to realize that at times these divisions are not entirely black or white and could get somewhat fuzzy. How will this model evolve then?

Can’t wait to find out!

Feeling happy

Jatila had to cross the forest on his way to school but was scared to cross it all by himself.  He told about his fear to his mother who provided a solution. His big brother Madhusudhan, who lives in the forest, will join him from the next day, but Jatila has to call out for him. The next day Jatila reaches the forest edge and calls out for Madhusudhan, who does not come at first but after seeing Jatila’s persistence comes out and agrees to walk with him across the forest.

At this point in the story, Daivik started laughing. There was no obvious reason to laugh, I did not tell any joke, but there he was, laughing away. It was a splendid laughter, a deep throated one, and it was coming in waves. It was the sort of laughter that is so rare for its spontaneity, for its gaiety, for its merriment, for its sheer joy.  It was a laughter that transcended its source and delved deep into the being of the person. It is the sort of laughter that life has an uncanny way of taking away from you. I basked in the glory of that joyful laughter for a moment. But then, reason raised its head. What exactly is he laughing for? As one wave was subsiding, I asked him softly, “Daivik, what are you laughing for?”. “Jatila found Madhusudhan”, he said simply and continued to laugh. I did not understand. I repeated my question. “I’m happy”, he said, without elaborating further.

When I put the two together, I was stunned. Daivik was happy that Jatila found Madhusudhan, that Jatila does not have to cross the forest alone. And that happiness was coming out in the form of that laughter!  

“I’m happy for you”, we say this sometimes. We say this to people who have gained some form of happiness, a new car, a new home, a new job, a new partner, a promotion. We say this as a way to share that happiness.  We claim to feel the happiness of another person partly because we can identify with their situation, we can put ourselves, so to speak, in their shoes. We may even be genuine about it. Daivik’s identification with Jatila was so complete, so unalloyed by any traces of falsity,  that I doubt if Daivik could have been any happier had he himself been rescued from the situation. I seriously doubt if we, the non-Daivik's (and by Daivik, I include all his peers as well), with all our compulsions and complications, can reach this level of identification with another. And Jatila does not even exist!  Daivik’s case suggests that this state is, however, not entirely unreachable. Perhaps it is another instance of things that are innate in us which we “grow out” of as we “lose” our childhood. 

A for Apple

Or, perhaps an Ant. That is how it used to be when I was learning these things.  Apparently, it has changed. When Daivik and me were walking past our park, a supermarket van crossed us. The van had a huge “E”, the logo for the chain Edeka, written on it. Daivik said, “Appa, see, that is the Edeka van.” “How do you know?”, I asked. “There is an E written”, he said, adding, “E is for Edeka”. This sounded somewhat odd to me.  I was taught in school that E is for Elephant. I asked him, “E is for Edeka, Daivik?” “Yes Appa”, he replied with an unnerving conviction. “Like A is for Aldi”. 

Gods must be crazy

Daivik and me were looking at flashcards of wild animals from the Savannah. We went through the habits and habitats of Zebras, Rhinos, Giraffes, Lions ("Daivik, where does the Giraffe live", "At the Zoo"!). Daivik knew most of the animals, but Hyena was new for him. "What does Hyena do", he asked. The flashcard said it was friends with the Lion. When I told this, he had more questions. "Does it eat humans then?", he asked. I remembered a scene involving a little boy and hyena from the "Gods must be crazy, part II", the scene where the little boy increases his height by holding a piece of wood above his head. "If you are taller than the Hyena, it will not eat you", I said. Right away Daivik stood erect, straightened his spine further, and asked, "Am I taller than Hyena".

It occurred to me that it might be a good moment to actually watch the said movie. He might be interested in the little boy and the hyena. I could, of course, watch it again. I asked if he would like to watch the movie 'Gods must be crazy'. He liked the ring of the words in the title. "Gods. Must. Be. Crazy", he repeated slowly but right away realized the apparent contradiction the title held with the conception he had of "God".  "But appa", he said, "Gods are not crazy".

Meanwhile, I was scouting the Youtube for videos of the movie. But Google, in its infinite wisdom, was ignoring my requests for 'Gods must be crazy,' instead showing unsolicited suggestions for videos that we might be interested in. While I managed to find the trailer of the movie, Daivik caught a glimpse of Mr. Beans in one of those suggestions. We watched the movie trailer but Daivik's mind was on Mr. Beans. The moment the trailer was over Daivik insisted on Mr. Beans and we ended up watching his antics in the swimming pool.

But the Gods had not disappeared. After the Mr. Beans video, Daivik repeated his earlier assertion, "Appa", he said, "Gods are not crazy".  But it is not enough to just negate something. You need to provide an alternative too. "Appa", he said again, "Gods are not crazy. Mr. Beans is crazy". 

bribe

The teacher was first showing them how to fall. Bend the knees, fall forward and keep the arms on the side. Then he was making them fall down deliberately. Finally he let them to practice the skating. They kept falling down anyway, sometimes correctly, sometimes not. Either way, it was not a pleasant experience.
There were tears and franatic cries, "Mama!". Daivik kept falling down too and not completely comfortable with the situation.

After the class was over, he saw me and came running, with the skates on, and without falling down. "Appa, I kept falling down", he said, teary eyed.  "The teacher asked us to fall down all the time" he said and declared "I don't like the teacher, I don't want to skate". "But you did not fall down now", I said, to encourage him. This only made it worse. "I don't like the teacher, I don't want to skate", he cried again. The teacher was approaching us with a big smile. Daivik was facing me and did not see him coming. He started repeating his mantra "I was falling so many times, I don't like the teacher, I don't want to skate". The teacher, unaware of his current status with Daivik, patted him on the back, said "Daivik, you did very well", gave him some chocolates and walked away. It took about 3 seconds to happen. Daivik could not believe his eyes.  A heavily rationed item lands on its own accord, right into his palm. He is thrilled. Somehow, miraculously, the tears metamorph into a broad smile. "Appa", he declares, "I love my teacher, I love skating".

evolution

Daivik was excited to see the well preserved complete skeleton of the super-large Dinosaurs at the Berlin Natural History Museum. As a souvenir we brought a replica Dino that could open and close its jaws at the pull of a trigger.

And that was how Daivik ended up becoming the all powerful 'Dino-master', who could command the Dino to eat up things or people that did not obey his wishes. Like the tram that did not stop when he signaled for it. Or the Dad that did not turn on the games in the computer.  

When he insisted on having more gummy bears, I  played the Dino game and  told him that there are no more gummy bears in the supermarket because a Dino walked into the shop and ate them all up. It was acceptable to have a Dino under his command, but when I told him about its appetite for gummy bears, he grew skeptical. "But there are no Dinos any more", he said, not very confidently. "Where are they", I asked and he replied,  "they are all gone, they are all dead". What followed was interesting, it would have made Darwin proud. "How did they die?", I asked. He thought for a moment and said, "They got old and died. And there were no more Dinos left". That made sense, but I told him, "But what happened to the baby Dino's then. There are also kinder Dinos. They will grow up and become big again". This idea was new to him. He thought about it seriously. After some intense moments, he declared boldly, "Actually, there are two types of Dinos. One with wings and one without. The one without wings got wings and they became birds. That is why we see many birds now and no Dinos".

ten heads, twenty eyes

I was showing Daivik images of Ravana, the demon emperor from the epic Ramayana. Ravana, with his ten heads, was bound to elicit Daivik's curiosity. I was wondering what he might ask. The most obvious question was why does he have ten heads ? Instead, he asked something far more interesting. "What does he do with ten heads?". This question took me off the tangent and I ended up wondering how exactly does Ravana control and co-ordinate all the thoughts that arise and criss-cross across all of his heads. One head is already sometimes a little too much for me...

Daivik was waiting for an answer. Without thinking much about it, I asked, "So, if he has ten heads, how many noses does he have". "Ten", replied Daivik promptly. "And how many eyes?", I asked.
Daivik thought for a moment and hesitantly ventured, "ten?".  I asked him to explain it, he could not. Then I told, "Okay, he has ten heads and two eyes in each head. So how many eyes does he have in total?". Instinctively Daivik pulled his fingers out to count. But then, how exactly does one count things when it is not clear what needed to be counted. Fingers frozen mid-air, he asked, "What do you count?". "This is called multiplication", I said and tried to explain the concept to him. However, I stopped soon enough as it was getting a little complicated. Addition, subtraction and the concept of zero were easy. How do you explain multiplication in a fun way ? (and, later on, division, division by zero...)

At school, we were forced to commit the multiplication charts to memory first. (from 1x1 all the way upto 20x20!). Perhaps the assumption behind it was that once you have the facts ingrained, understanding and appreciation of it will follow, or can be thought later. Maybe that is true. But, while forcing that commitment was easy, teaching that appreciation was not. Since people largely tend to do what is easy, the said appreciation never quite followed. For me personally, the intricate beauty of Mathematics (and Physics) remain sadly buried behind those scary formulas. I wonder now if it should be the other way around. First teach the appreciation, facts can follow.

As I was mulling over this, Daivik offered me a way out. "Is it the same as ten plus ten", he asked.

That's right, yes, of course, exactly, that is what it is.

Archimedes principle

Daivik noticed that when he entered the bathtub, some water always flowed out. When he shared this finding with me, I said, "this is called Archimedes Principle". He asked me to repeat it and I pronounced it out for him slowly. He let the heaviness of the phrase sink in before asking what it meant. I said "When you get into the bathtub, 18 kilos of water will come out, and depending on how full the tub is, some of it might flow out of the tub". He got excited immediately and added, "and when I get out, all that water will come back in". I said, "yes, that is correct, but not all water will come back because some has overflowed the tub and it cannot get back inside".

I don't know how much he understood, but he thought about it for a minute and gave his verdict : "It is so funny". 

Hate, and Love

Daivik was glued to the television for some days. In the last four days he watched more TV than in the preceding 40 months, mostly cartoon channels. Presently, he was fussing again over food but wanted to play with me. In one of those irrational moments of parental stubbornness, I told him he can play with me only if he finishes his breakfast (a strategy strictly not recommended!). He tried his tricks, made a face, whimpered a bit. And then he said, "I hate you". I stopped on my tracks. This word was new.  I asked him if he knew what it meant. With an accuracy that was at once alarming and astounding, he said "It is the opposite of I love you". It was not amusing. I asked him where he learnt it, and he said "from TV".

Okay, television OFF.

Later in the day, when I was busy with something else, he ran to me, hugged my neck and said, "I love you". I just nodded. He then taught me : "Appa, when somebody says I love you, you have to reply, I love you too".

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".

Alphabet Dreams

Very early in the morning, 3 AM to be precise, Daivik got seriously interested in err... alphabets. Apparently he was just dreaming about "alphabets" and his eagerness to share the dream happened to be, well, timeless. With hard-to-curtail enthusiasm dancing on the sleep-defying eyes, he announced, "appa, I was dreaming about this alphabet". And using his finger as pencil, he started tracing the contours of the alphabet on an imaginary sheet of paper in front of him. Even as he was 'drawing' the alphabet, he remembered another one. Furiously he rubbed out the previous one from the 'paper' and redrew the new one, only to erase it and draw another one. After a few moments, his movements started resembling a sword fight, or more realistically, a 3AM attempt to evade a recalcitrant fly. Evidently he was having difficulties in getting the alphabet right. I'm not sure if it was the frustration of not remembering the correct alphabet from the dream or the lack of a commensurate skill  in portraying it correctly, or the tussle with an instinct that was screaming get-back-to-sleep-now, the enthusiasm slowly gave way to a whimper and hands still raised mid air and pointing at the 'paper', he drifted back to sleep. Most amazingly, when he got up in the morning-morning, he remembered the dream again, and started writing on his 'paper' right away !

I was taken back to another time, maybe 3 years ago. Daivik was making the fascinating discovery that the sounds he was learning to make, consciously, distinctively and reproducibly, actually carried meaning. They were not randomly generated noise but indeed denote something. He was mentally cataloging these sounds and associating them with objects. It was a charmingly transparent process that was absolutely mesmerizing to watch : every now and then a new word will grab his attention, he will become concentration-focus personified as we point out to the object the word denotes. Usually he will repeat the word once or twice and look at or feel the object. That's it. A sound becomes a word and suddenly acquires a meaning, the transformation is complete. Now, as words gets more abstract, the process becomes more complicated. One fine day, night rather, 3AM (again!), he sat bolt upright and started reciting all the 'words' he knew at that point.

Perhaps the same mental processes are in operation again, as he is perched on the cusp of another exciting discovery. Just as sounds becomes words and gets an identity, shapes are becoming alphabets that fill up the books !

I wonder about the 3AM connection, though :)

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!

funny

Several months ago I mentioned the word 'funny' during the course of a conversation. Daivik, ever alert for new words, promptly asked "what does funny mean". 
I was a little hesitant to give him my impression of such a subjective word, instead we decided to figure out the meaning together. This evolved into a little game.
Every once in a while, he would point to something - a passing car, agrowing plant, the occasional blue sky - and ask "is this funny ?".
Few weeks back when we were in a shop, he burst out laughing and told me "appa, look, this is so funny". The definitiveness of the statement caught me and I turned to look at the object. It was a funny (!) looking balloon in the shape of a mouse. I asked him why he thought it was funny. He said it is a balloon (something he could identify) but shaped like a mouse (something wierd) and "made me laugh". Pretty close, I would say, to how I would have defined it.

Of course, I had to buy that baloon !