Everlasting conversations

Nischal is bored, and unwell - not being allowed to go run around with his buddies. I blurt out without thinking "Do you want to come to the office?". The phrase barely left my mouth, and his mom pounces on it faster than a leopard on a wounded bunny.  In a couple of minutes he's walking with me - drawing book, pencils and stuff in hand.
I'm still recovering from a dengue-like virus - my walk is more of a panda's shuffle. After a couple of rounds of running ahead and coming back to me, he decides to walk with the panda. The questions start to fly.
"Pappa,  is it true that if you do something very good and die, you will become a God?"
These days, I think teaching religion to young kids is pretty harmful. So, I counter: 
"If you do something very, very good to people, they'll treat you like God?"
"Do you need to die to be treated as God? " comes the next rapid-fire question.
"Not really" I say, "but some people take so much effort doing good stuff that they die from it"

 A few moments pass.
"Pappa, if you do bad things, you'll go to hell.. right?  ..and heaven if you do good?"
" I don't know. People say that, but none have seen heaven or hell ", I say.
"Ajja (grandpa) has seen heaven, I'm sure" he says.
"Maybe, but he's not come back to tell us that, has he?" I reply.
"No..  " comes the reply grudgingly.
I pounce on that pause:  "Do you feel good when you do something bad to somebody? Or rather, when you do something good to people, don't you feel good? " 
"Yes, I do... and I am very careful. I don't do bad things" he says.  My eyeballs nearly slip out through the corners. But I continue
"So, that is enough for you to do good things? Do you need heaven or hell? " I ask. He nods in agreement.

We get to the car by then. The next round of fire starts as we drive out of the gate.
"Why don't we have everlasting life?"
I'm sure that is intended to impress. I don't smile in surprise, or react to the usage. His mom - would stop the car, get on the hood and do a dance number in celebration. Instead, I go ahead with my trap: "Should people keep on being born, and not die?" I ask( he nods ), "then won't the earth get so full of people that there won't be any standing room? "
His eyes widen in realization of the problem. I push further. "What about food? What happens once they eat up all the plants and animals on earth? Will everlasting people live without food?"
He spends a few seconds thinking if everlasting beings can die if they don't eat.
"How about making plants also everlasting?"
"Many a time, we eat the whole plant - like the coriander you love in your daal? Can a plant be everlasting after it's eaten whole?" I ask.

The car is silent for a few seconds. I then break his rumination : "You know, your Ajja is still alive in a way". That perks him up.
"Our bodies have small things called 'genes'. They decide how you look, whether your eyes are like your dad's, how tall you will grow, how smart you'll be.. etc. These genes come inside you from either your dad or your mom."
His face is still blank. I connect the dots some more..  " So, I have genes from Ajja/ Ajji, and you have some of those same genes along with your Amma's. That's why you look like me in some ways, and like Amma in some other ways. So, you're also carrying your Ajja's & Ajji's genes. So, you have some part of your Pappa, Amma, Ajji & Ajja inside you and will have them even after they die."
His eyes widen in amazement at the thought. He takes a second look at himself and smiles.

I push further "So, when you get married & have kids, and although I'll get old and die, I will still be in your kids.." - I stop when I'm faced with his authoritative little palm.
"I'm not planning to get married. I hate girls" he says abruptly and with utmost confidence.
"Yes, that's the way you'll be now .. but .. "
"No, I'm not getting married" he says pulling himself up to his full 7 year old height.
I just nod slowly.. going back to when I used to say such stuff... and see that we've arrived. I start talking about not banging car doors, and watching for traffic. 

The Dining Table Thespian

Your arm is hurting like hell. The pungent fumes rising up from the volcano don't make it easier. You've been hanging on the cliff edge for what feels like forever now. You're feeling so weak that letting go seems a pleasurable act. The fear of falling down hundreds of feet into molten lava has lost it's dark sheen and seems like a cloudy & fluffy end.
You look up and you see him. Your dad. The man who's responsible for your being here, and is looking at you with empty eyes. Unyielding, unmoving and not reaching out an arm to help.
But still, with the last vestiges of energy, you speak "Pappa, ... I just can't do it. I'm done". Your voice chokes and falters towards the end as more acrid fumes rise up. Your eyes tear up - not sure if it's the burning, or the emotion.

The emotion is true, although the scene is marginally different. Replace the volcano with a half-eaten dinner plate, and fumes for that horrible food our cook prepares. Ok, it's not the arm that's hurting.. it's just my butt, from sitting at the table for so long. I was done with these vegetables even before they were planted in the ground, but this cold & heartless Dad seems to not care. For all his fancy degrees, he doesn't seem to have a vocabulary beyond 'No'. How many ways of saying 'No' are there? He 'No's them all.
Actually, I'm mostly done. I've carefully spread out the food so at no individual point is it more than 1 cm high. Then he says he wants the plate cleaned out. So, I created smaller clumps of food so some plate surface shows beneath. But it still fails his 'plate surface area percentage' metric.
I've even 'accidentally' dropped some food. Still, it's not enough. Doing a 'Shawshank Redemption' without raising suspicion requires some freedom of movement, and moving is hard when you're under observation: searchlight beams trained on you, and probably machine guns behind them ready to fire. To add to this, the chair I'm sitting on is rigged - it squeaks & groans when I try moving a little. Thankfully Dr. No doesn't get on the floor and count morsels.
You might have sniggered when I said  "search lights & guns". That's only half the picture. There's the vengeful watch dog. He sits almost next to me. He's big, growling, watching, and ever ready to get the aforementioned Captain Negativity's attention. He derives great pleasure from my pains. So, he's ready to get his revenge by calling out 'Pappaaa.. '.
At this point you're either googling 'talking dogs', or have surmised I'm talking about my big brother. His desire for revenge has a grain of validity, although grossly disproportionate. I might have told on him to the aforementioned authorities. I have also been generous in not telling on him for many days. But instead of gratitude, I get called a blackmailer. I called it exchanging favours, but this guy adores Sensei No No - being his son and all. So, the negativity is not at all surprising. I might have done other minor things - breaking his model airplane, irritating him continually, teasing him on everything he's embarrassed about, breaking his painfully constructed lego superstructures, etc. But that's what loving brothers do. He just doesn't get it.
Both of them look through my carefully constructed film of tears, and Father No says: "Finish it! You're a bag of bones already! Soon you'll get shipped to E****ia". Seriously, I've heard that for the past 5 years -and so have my play-buddies. I guess fathers memorize from shared cheat cards- given their rather limited vocabulary.  

Just then the doorbell rings. My despair turns to joy. Enters my dear Mother from the gym .. and sees me in my agony. I bring back the cliff and the volcano to my mind, and the tears I shed are enough to douse one.  "Let him be!" she says. "The food is cold already. He can't eat this anymore. Torturing him like this .. that food won't even digest". I don't bother to correct her distorted sense of the digestion process, but quietly start to slink away. "But he does this everyday!" retorts Captain Negativity, but he doesn't hold a candle to the brightness of Wonder Woman. That war was lost long before I was even born. These words are like those American Civil war reenactment battles - shooting blanks.

It's only 15 minutes later she yells about the amount of food I've spilled off the table, but I pretend to not hear. This isn't the first time, and she will never connect the dots, though; those cliff-hanger-imagery induced tears have the power to cloud all logic that moms can muster. One hug from me erases all irrelevant data and she's composing poems about me.

Wonder Woman is putty in my hands. Heh Heh Heh.