New mom

I had given milk to Prachi to drink.
Prachi: Amma, milk is too hot. You give dad cold milk, but always give me hot milk. You don’t love me. You love only dad.
Me: Ohooo
Prachi: You don’t love me, I know; you love dad.
Me: ok
Prachi: That’s ok. I’ll choose some other mom.
Me: ok
Prachi: I will go to Aditya’s mom.
Me: But then the other day, you saw Aditya’s mom spanking him in the toilet, is that ok with you?
Prachi’s idea to choose new mom is shaken, becomes thoughtful for a while.
Prachi: I’ll go to Seema aunty, Devanshi’s mom.
Me: Seema aunty has Devanshi as her baby plus she has Devanshi’s sister in her belly and when Devanshi’s sister comes out, she’ll be small and she might pee on your lap. If that’s fine please go ahead.
Prachi now abandons any idea to go to someone else’s mom but is nevertheless adamant. She caresses her trousers and then kisses it on the knees.
Prachi: Here onwards this trouser is my mom!

Growing old

I was applying moisturizer to Prachi and accidentally my nails slightly brushed against her thigh and Prachi got angry.
Prachi: Amma, you’ve hurt me. It’s paining.
Me: Oh, come one, that’s ok, no big deal.
Prachi: What come one! Look it’s paining now. I can’t walk. I’ve grown old now and can’t walk any more. I am old lady now and it’s hurting and I can’t walk….You hurt me and I am old, I can’t walk(the cribbing continued for a while and I tried my best not to laugh aloud and upset her further)

Making a mark

This was the first drawing created by Prachi. It is a fan. She drew this on the doorwith a piece of chalk in May 2010(at 1.5 years). As an over enthusiastic mom I captured it and thought my daughter was a budding artist before the age of 2. But alas! This picture was only an amazing coincidence.

Guess what is this? This is the picture of Shoorpanakha of Ramayan. This was done byPrachi in April 2011(at 2.5 years). She imitated the drawing done by her dad as seen on the right.

What is this? This is Incy Wincy Spider drawn by Prachi on her own without help from any one. She drew this in July 2011.

Green with jealousy

Could there be any possibility that a certain doctor doing his PG somewhere in Mysore is hated by a toddler who he has not met or seen or hardly knows is existent? Yes, there is!
This Dr.S is hated by Prachi for the one and only one reason that he was a pal of Prachi’s aunt in his childhood. My sister, Maithri is one person Prachi loves the most. She used to tell from age one, “I am aunty’s baby, not Amma’s(Haanv pacchhi baabu, ammale nayi).” Hence, Prachi is jealous to know that Maithri had a friend with whom she played and had fun. So this S is the baddie in all the stories Prachi constructs and her words go on the lines of “I will eat and become strong and beat S. S will run away without turning back.”

Colourless

Gender equality is a subject that is been discussed everywhere. When compared to India, the west overcame this problem fairly earlier. Women were given equal opportunities for education, employment and men started taking more responsibility in domestic thresholds initially in the west followed by India. While I am shopping for Prachi in the UK, I get a feeling that the gender discrimination is much deep rooted here. Pink stuff for girls and blue stuff for boys, Pink bags, blue waterbottles, pink sandals, blue shoes. Prachi loves blue, but pink is girls’ colour. Where have the vibrant orange, green, yellow and red colours gone? I love the bright colourful Indian scenes where kids, irrespective of boy or girl go out with a multicoloured umbrella, a green pencil box, an orange school bag. I hope the Indian consumer market does not follow on this pink-blue monotony.

Shame

It has been a week since the London riots. As is any person, I was shocked as well. Being an Indian, riots are not new to me. We have had many riots of varying severities in India in the past. But the difference between those and the one that occurred in London was that every riot in the past had a cause; religion related, language related or region related. But this one had none what so ever. It was only a primitive instinct of the species taking over its long evolved civilization. Man looting man with an intention to acquire goods. This could be empathized if it was backed by necessity, but no it was sheer greed. The desire for materialistic stuff had overcome the virtues deep within, if there were any! So much for the consumerism and materialism. Shame.

Story Time

All time of the day is story time for us; a story for breakfast, a story for lunch, a story to drink milk, a story for everything. These are unofficial story times, the official one being at the bed time. The bedtime stories are always nice stories i.e. moral stories or stories from Hindu mythology. Rest of the time the stories could be created by me, or could be incidents from the past. The stories generally have a moral where the virtuous is the final victor and the villain gets punished for his deeds. I have exhausted my large repository of stories and these days make it point to pick up a new story for the night.
Last night I read a story from the Hitopadesha and told her. A blind old vulture takes care of all the little birds in a huge banyan tree when the older ones go in search of food. A vile cat hatches a plan, befriends the vulture and eats up the young ones one by one. After a while the cat goes away. The parent birds suspect the absence of their little ones and on finding the bones decide the vulture to be the culprit. They peck at him and hurt him and throw him away.
But Prachi was not happy with this ending. The vulture was good and the evil cat had to be punished. So, then I added up a little bit from my pocket where the vulture goes and finds the wicked cat and pecks at his eyes and beats him. The cat finally gets lost in the forest and gets eaten up by rhino (This little bit was from Prachi’s pocket).
Generally during the breakfast I repeat her the previous night’s story. Today as I repeated the story she said, “Amma, today whenever I see any bird in the sky, I will scream and tell it that the cat ate its baby and not vulture.”
So much innocence!

For parents who want to venture into story telling, there is a nice series of moral stories called SriRam ‘s Moral story book . The stories are very simple and lots of pictures, good for starters. Even I read these books when I was a kid. I searched for these books in Bangalore and finally ended up buying them for Prachi in Puttur at the same old shop where I was bought these books. Most of the stories in these books are from Aesop’s fables.

Kid talk

Prachi and I playfully call each other names.
Me: You are a duck
Prachi: You are a hen
Me: You are a cat
Prachi: You are a mouse
Me: You are a tiger
Prachi: You are a lion
Me: You are an Ambode
Prachi is annoyed at me for spoiling the easy game. She calls HK who was lazily enjoying the weekend moments.
Prachi: Anna, look, Amma is calling me Ambode
HK: Hmm
Prachi (with a complaining voice): Anna, Amma is calling me ambode.
HK: Ok
Prachi: Anna, Amma is calling your daughter as ambode!!!Is it ok to call your daughter ambode?!
Off course after being provoked so much HK can’t stay silent, can he?

Note: Ambode is a fried eating stuff like vada/pakoda

Jadu, the magic

Prachi is having a soft toy of which she is overly possessive of. He was given to her by one of her cousins. Although initially he was grossly neglected he has been made up for it by more than 100 times. His face had reminded me of the alien in Hrithik Roshan’s movie Koi mil gaya and hence I named him ‘Jadu.’ Prachi’s obsession for Jadu at times irritates me. “Ammmma…He is my baby. Don’t hold him by his neck. You should hold him delicately. Look, you should hold him like this (demonstrates to me) carefully.”

Sometimes Jadu is her baby and at other times her sibling. Prachi and I just return from our shopping at the Tesco supermarket. Prachi runs to her Jadu and narrates to him, “Jadu, you know what; I and your grandma, Chaitra Pai had been to Tesco to buy stuff.”

Jadu was a boy; but of late Jadu has had a sex change.
Me: Jadu, eat your food quickly. Do not keep it in your mouth for long.
Me: Very good! Look Prachi, your Jadu eats so quickly. He is a good boy.
Prachi: Amma. Jadu is a girl! Don’t you see, he is pink in colour? He is a girl!

Child is the father of man

Scene1: Prachi has placed two of her play horses on the window sill overlooking the garden outside.
Prachi: Amma! Look, where are the horses standing?
Me: Wow gondu they are viewing the garden. May be they are looking at the trees.
Prachi: Or may be they are looking at the pigeons
Me: May be they are wishing they had wings to fly like the pigeons
Prachi: Or may be they are planning to pick the feathers dropped by the pigeon
Prachi: Or may be they are thinking of plucking the leaves
Me: Or may be they are looking at the grass and thinking, “oh wah! Such green grass. We should eat it.”
Prachi: Amma! What are you saying? Don’t you know that they are play horses? They are toys. They do not eat, ok?

Scene 2: HK is engrossed in his laptop.
Prachi (in a sing-a-song tone): Anna, look here.
No response from HK.
Prachi (same tone repeats): Anna, look here.
Prachi (same tone repeats): Anna, look here.
Prachi (same tone repeats): Anna, look here.
No response yet.
Prachi (neutral tone): Anna, look here.
Prachi (slightly annoyed): Annnna…look here at me.
HK (glances at her casually once): Yes baabu, one second, and then I’ll look what you have been up to.
But HK fails to keep his words. He is again staring at the laptop.
Prachi (Totally irritated): Annnnna…What do you have in there? Prachi Kamath?

Scene 3: HK and Prachi have a spat early in the morning, the reason being HK climbed down the bed before Prachi while she wanted to be the first.
Prachi: I am cross at you.
HK: Oooh
Prachi: I am angry at you
HK: Oooh
Prachi: I am really mad at you
HK: Oooh
Prachi: I love you
HK: Oooh
Prachi: But, I won’t care you at all

Who is Dangerous

Prachi now in London over 6 months found it strange to find a house fly in our house. She was not scared, but was feeling uneasy over its presence. She kept telling every 10 minutes, “Ammmma, look at this fly. It is flying around” (Well, what else can the flies do!)To pacify her I told her, “Flies are ok. Mosquitoes are dangerous.” Then I was thinking about the risks of flies and diseases it could cause and unknowingly said aloud, “Well, flies are also dangerous.” Prachi, who was playing around heard this and stared at me questioningly. I did not want to frighten my little kid and said very casually, “Baabu, they are not that dangerous. They are ok.” Prachi was satisfied and went out. Within a second she came back again and told “Amma, vyyyys is danger.”
Me: What chinno?
Prachi: I know vyyyys is danger
Me: Sorry babba…I did not understand you. What is danger?
Prachi: I know for sure vyyyys is danger. Remember, the other day dad got chicken pox because of vyyyys.
Me(Full of laughter): Yes Chinno, Virus is dangerous.

Treasure of Innocence

Prachi now knows the whole of Ramayan and many others from Indian mythology. The story of Lord Ganesh getting an elephant head is the one I have been telling since the age she has started listening to stories. After a long interval I thought of telling her that story again a couple of days back. The story starts from Parvathi creating a kid, the kid Ganesh refusing to let Shiva into the house followed by the fight finally ending up with Shiva cutting off Ganesha’s head.
Me: Baabu, then Shiva’s servants go in search of a head into the forest. They see an elephant sleeping. They cut off its head and bring. Then Lord Brahma joins it to Ganesha’s head and that’s how he has an elephant head.
Prachi: But why cut elephant’s head? He was just sleeping on his own. He is innocent. (Elephant paap nayve)

I told her Bhima’s story where Bhima kills the rakshas Hidimba and marries his sister Hidimbi. They have a kid and then eventually Kunti and her sons leave the forest and go to a village near by.
Prachi: Who go to the village?
Me: Kunti, that is Pandavas’ mom and all the five Pandavas
Prachi: And what about Hidimbi and kid?
Me: They stay in the forest.
Prachi: But then they should have gone, right? Why did Bhima leave his kid?
For a moment I was left with no words. Prachi did not like this situation where Bhima leaves his family behind. I knew if I did not give a decent explanation Bhima would become a villain instead of a hero.
Me: Look babba, Hidimbi is a rakshasi and rakshas can’t go out of the forest and humans should not stay in the forest. Humans should live in towns and rakshasas in the jungle, right?

My baby was happy and so was I!
Note: Rakshas= bad giant

God's gift

This is the scene from last evening.

Prachi and HK were playing and Prachi started getting unreasonable, it being the end of the day and her battery needing recharge. HK and I amusingly refer this state as “meter down.”(Happens all evenings, when she needs to go to bed and we parents have to over-stretch our patience thresholds)

She started throwing tantrums and HK scolded her and said “You are a pakat baby” (something on the lines of ‘you are a bad baby’). She cried, we pacified, she cried more, we cuddled and then she giggled and everything was under control.

We decided to wind up the day for her.
HK (with Prachi in his arms): I love you putta
Prachi: I love you too Anna
HK: You are my lovely baby…you are my sweet baby…you are my little angel
No comments from Prachi but never the less enjoying all those moments
HK: You are such a wonderful darling…You are a God’s gift to me (tu devana dillale baabu)
Prachi: But earlier you told pakat to God’s gift?? (tu devana dillale babbaka pakat malle??)

Word Building

It is not easy to speculate how kids relate words and remember them.

The other day Prachi and I had been to the library for the story and rhyme time and on returning as is the practice with us I was detailing to her in a story-like manner what we had done.
Me: Wasn’t it fun with all those songs and that librarian Alexander singing in weird voices?
Prachi: Who?
Me: That guy with along hair who sang for you. His name is Alexander.
Prachi (with a look of amusement on her face): Alexander? Goosey goosey Gander?

These days she is trying to pick up English words. We were playing this game where she said words in Konkani (our mother tongue) and I said them in English.
Prachi: Khelche samanu (meaning Play things)
Me: Toys
Prachi: Oh! what is that place where go to pee?
Me: Oh! That’s a toilet.
The point that she was able to recall by the similarity of pronunciation delighted me. On the same lines,
Prachi: What is a tiger called?
Me: Waaghu
Prachi: Lion?
Me: Simhu
Prachi: Cheetah?
Me: mmmm.Chirathe
Prachi: hehehhe.chirathe…karathe

Note: Karathe is bitter gourd/karela in konkani