What are you going to do about this girl?

"Papa, where are you going tomorrow? " - Nischal seeing my packing.
"Mumbai" I say.
"Why are you going there? " - comes the next question.

We are sitting in the office.. Anu is sitting in the living room. Nischal is sitting at the computer table.. so his back is facing the other room.

"I'm going to a marriage there" I answer.
A brief silence.
"Then, what are you going to do about this girl? " comes the next question.

I look up to see his palm pointing to the room behind him over his shoulder.
I'm confused - for a moment - before I recover.
"What about her?" I ask.

He thinks for a beat before he says " Oh.. your other girl is going to stay back in Mumbai? "
"She can come here also, you know. If you like" I counter with a smile.

He puts down his pencil casually. "I want to go to Amma "
"Not until you finish writing that 49" I reply - not fooled by the nonchalance.
The page is filled up with number 49 in record time, making me think I should emulate Calvin's dad more. He runs out to his mom. I follow him.

"Amma.. pappa is getting married!" . She gives me a puzzled look, but catches on quick.
"Good for you. You're always complaining about how much I hug you, kiss you and all"
He is now taken aback by this turn of events.
"No.. I'm fine with your kissing. ... I like your kissing. But I want you only, Amma " The panic in his voice does it for her.
She hugs him and says "No my little baby, I'll only be your Amma. Pappa was just joking! " He's not fully convinced. Then she picks him up and the kiss assault starts.

Only when I see his escape attempts start, I know he's convinced .. or dad's bigamy is not a priority item anymore.

Fun with 'Pun'

Nischal's homework today was to write a page full of 'un' words. After losing a long negotiation  that he'd do it tomorrow coz 'tomorrow is a holiday!', he finally got his pencil and eraser to the book.

"I can't write! I don't know any 'un' words!"  was his declaration, threatening to drop it all and go back to the soccer ball.

Mom pitched in "I'll get you started. Ff .. un! "
"Fun?" Nischal said, although he was clearly re-evaluating mom's sanity associating this word to his current situation.
"What else?" mom asked.
"Pp - un. Pun!" he said.

I too nodded in surprise, wondering if he knew what it meant.

"What is 'pun' ? " asked his brother.

Before either of the adults could form their words, Nischal screamed out " I know, I know ! "
As we looked at him expectantly he blurted out "Pun means babies!"
As I slowly shook my head to correct him, he repeated " Yes. Our teacher told us. They do good things to everybody, and they look like babies!"
Looking at our disagreeing faces, he repeated with confidence, and said "yes, they also cover their heads like this" making a motion with both hands starting at the top of his head, down his cheeks and ending at his chin.

Mom realized first and laughed out loud. "No chinna, that's  'nun' ! "

Nischal just gave his mom with a "now who taught you english?" look.

What do you want to be when you're grown up?

Papa, what do you want to be when you're grown up?

I'm already grown up, Nischal.

But what do you want to be ?

Well, I suppose I'll be an engineer.. like I am now.

I mean when you are even more grown up than now. What do you want to be?

hm...

I'll tell you what I want to be ?

yes..

I want to be a Ninja. Like in Lego Ninjago.

[ He's been watching a lot of this video ]

We went to malaria today

"We went to Malaria today" Nischal said.

After a couple of fruitless whaats,  I moved on to "What did you do there?"
"We had dosas there" he said ".. and then we saw planets"
"We saw Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Uranus, Neptune, Earth .." he said while swinging arms to make a circle each time, and ended with a shake of the head - "..But no Pluto".
"Why didn't you see Pluto?" I asked
He explained, shaking his head, " Pluto is not a planet, Papa. It has been taken away"
Avaneesh jumped in "pluto is a planet.. it's a dwarf planet"

I had to interrupt the 'yes-no' argument that went on for a minute - " What else did you see at the malaria?"
"We saw stars.. and also one girl crashed in the rocket"

Avaneesh explained to my puzzled face "They must have showed him Kalpana Chawla"

 "What else happened, Nischal?" I asked.
"They told Mangala (Mangalyaan) is next to that planet.. that Mars" he said. Avaneesh was puzzled at "Mangala" and his mom explained it as the Indian term for Mars.

"They told the Earth is moving, and the sun is in the middle. The Earth is moving around the Sun. And.. we had to sit in the dark.. "
He came up to sit on the sofa next to me and demonstrate " and we had to sit like this (folding his legs) .. it was very difficult"

I nodded with empathy (a physio had recently lost a few kgs trying to fold & flex my legs).

"When the second movie was coming, okay, everyone was laughing laughing laughing."
"Why" I asked
"Because of the God song there," he said " then .. they showed a lot of rocks following the planet"
"It's called the asteroid belt -" explained his brother.
The little guy cut his elder brother short and continued   ".. then they showed Earth .. and everybody was jumping around for that. Then they showed a rocket, Kalpana Chawya.. and they were all in the rocket that went up & down again and again"

Then his voice went up a notch "Then, there were two naked girls" .
My eyebrows shot up with alarm - what were they showing at this planetarium ?!?
"..They were doing potty everywhere ..and messing up the plants.." he continued
"Oh .. you had come outside ? " I asked .. relieved this wasn't part of the show.
"yes.. and I got to see their bums also" - apparently it was - as far as he was concerned.

"Then?" I asked.

"Then we all came back in the bus.. and everybody was laughing and shouting.. Kalpana Chawya! Kalpana Chawya!"

A Simple Plan..

We are reading 3 letter words. Nischal is finding it less boring since he gets to draw the words on the iPad. In parallel, the older brother is being quizzed on types of houses, and factors that influence their design.
With Nischal - 'M's sometimes are written as 'W's the first time, but we make some progress.Answers to 'PAT' , 'PAN' , 'RAT', 'RAN' start coming pretty fast. So, I get a little ambitious and have him write 'PLAN'
'Pu' 'Lu' 'A' 'eN' - gets pronounced a few times, but 'PLAN' doesn't get pronounced identifiably because of trailing vowel sounds especially with the consecutive consonants.
No sooner than I give up and blurt out 'PLAN', comes the question; "What does PLAN mean? "

"Plan.. " I stumble " ...means something you decide first before you actually do it"
" like , like .. you decide to scare me each time I come home, get behind there ( I point) and yell 'boo' at me "
(Yes, each evening when I get home,  I get 'scared' when the big monkey jumps out. And I get even more surprised and let out a bigger yell when the smaller, louder monkey jumps out a couple of seconds later - Every evening.) 
Nischal gives it a moment's thought before he starts with his objections. Before I can hear them, the older brother starts blurting out his Nth wrong answer to "How can one keep snakes & rats out of the house?"
He's already rejected Dad's options of "Sit outside and blow a snake charmer's bean", and "Sing 'snake snake, go away; Come again another day.."  with a couple of short derisive laughs.
 
Nischal finally gets back my attention with his persistent 'but's.
"But we don't decide before" he says, "we hear the sound at the door and just get in here.  Is that a plan ? "
"No" I concede quickly. But it turns out to be too quick coz the older guy points out "So what if it was decided just before? It's still a plan, right? "
I deflect that one by "If you 'block' the drainage like you just said, can you imagine what else will get blocked ? "

While the big one is pondering that, Nischal has decided we're done- "We're done now, right ? " to which I nod almost eagerly.
As he tries to leap off my lap, I manage to catch him in a hug. But soon as my precious few hair strands get into trouble, I offer to let him go soon as he counts to 30. I don't bother correcting him when he goes over to 40 after 29, but fervently object whenever he tries to put 30 after 49, 59, 69..etc. I finally take pity and accept it after 109 and loosen my hold.

As he leaps on to the floor, he offers a scholarly nugget that he picked up at the sand pit. "Papa, did you know you were naked when you were born?" And finds it exceedingly funny.
As his laughter dies down, I ask mockingly "So, weren't you also naked when you were born ? "

He smiles, and says with an I-can't-believe-you-don't-know-this voice "No Papa. I was born with a T Shirt."  And saunters out without looking back.
 

The case of the white mud

"Papa"  he starts,  while still looking down at the toy in his hands.
"Yes" I reply, barely looking at him - I'm driving. But I do put the stereo on mute.
"On a sunny day, when I get a holiday, we should go on a ship "  he looks up at me, while his face breaks into a smile. I guess he's picturing it in his head.

Nischal still doesn't get the concept of days too well. But he gets time of day. So, events are described as on a 'dark day', a 'sunny day', etc. 'Yesterday' and 'Tomorrow' are used, but they are just like 'sunday' or 'monday' - their purpose is to count the days to the coming saturday (holiday).
Once, he found out in March (thanks to a YouTube trailer) about an Iron Man movie.He bugged me literally every day if 'May' was tomorrow, and if we could go see the movie. No thanks to the malls that put up posters well in advance, but I digress.

"Where do you want to go, on the ship?" I ask - wondering if this is one more plea for me to go to the US. I often get woken up from my saturday afternoon naps to go 'right now' to the US to buy some toy he saw on YouTube or Amazon.

"If you go on the ship, you will get to Penguins. I want to go there " he says. There's this disney website called 'Club Penguin' where he & his brother spend a good bit of time playing games. Yes, every player there is a penguin, with a custom set of accessories.

Seeing that 'penguins' doesn't get me jumping in glee, he adds " You also get white mud there".
It takes a couple of moments for me to realize what he's talking about, but I manage to hold back the corrections I have to offer.
I ask instead "White mud? Really ? That sounds interesting!"
His smile widens. "Yes, white mud. But you need to wear caps when you go there"
"Why is that ? "  I ask as I realize scenes on a monitor don't convey the weather.
He pauses a beat before coming up with " Because, the white mud will get into your hair"
"So what if it gets into your hair?", I counter.
He assumes a professorial pose, and takes a deep breath. " Papa, if you get white mud in your hair, you will fall sick. Ok? "
"Oh", I nod vigorously like a light bulb went on in my head. He's pleased with himself.

The next couple of weeks, I'd bored all my polite friends with the 'white mud' story. Then, I hear him point at the TV and say "Papa, that snow looks awesome, no ? "
I barely hide my anguish while I look at his older brother.

"Yes, I taught him. He was going around calling it 'white mud' with my friends too" he says, with a 'I saved the idiot' smile.
My little guy is growing up too fast.

Present Tense talks to Past Tense

Nischal's older brother used to only speak Kannada while he was a child. But that became a problem once he joined day care. The teachers there ended up learning some kannada words so they could understand him. To help him, we parents started speaking more in english. That made him pick up english, but he forgot kannada completely. Even now at the age of 10 he is not able to speak Kannada.
So, with Nischal - we decided we'd just stick to Kannada, and english would come to him on it's own once he joined school.
That was not to be.
He started speaking in english on his own - just listening to us - and now has us also automatically replying to him in english.  The english needs work, but we don't correct him. I enjoy listening to the mistakes too - knowing that they are short lived. I know some of my present & old colleagues will find that hard to believe about me, but it's true. :)
Coming from a more streamlined language like kannada, he doesn't even consider the fact that present-past tense patterns vary for different words.
So, I broke from tradition one day when I corrected him after  "Papa, this Bhaagya (maid) is a bad guy! She waked me up so early in the morning today! "
"Nischal, she 'woke' you up this morning"  I said, "-not 'waked'  "
He looked at me, and smiled.

I couldn't help offering a couple more corrections over the next couple of days, and I was quite getting into the roll of things ( my friends are nodding their heads now).
Then one day, as I was taking off my shoes and putting them away, came another complaint  " Papa! This Anna (his elder brother)! In the birthday party, he drinked all the soda by himself! "
"Nischal, it's  'drank' - not 'drinked' "  I corrected automatically.

He then walked up to me,  and put his hand on my shoulder. I turned to looked at him. Since I was already bent down, we were eye to eye.
"Papa " he says, his face all seriousness, " It's not 'drank'.  'Carry - carried' , 'wait - waited' , 'wake - waked' and  'drink - drinked' ,  Ok ?"
As I scrambled for words; he broke into a slight smile,  turned and walked away with a slight spring in his step. 
Enough was Enough, I suppose.
And yes, those of you(my friends??) that are smiling ear to ear? You can stop now.