∙ He says that his body clock is probably set according to a US time zone and not the Indian one.
That’s why he’s so hyperactive late in the night and lethargic in the classroom during the day!

∙ Nowadays when he’s done something bad, he demands that I shout at him in advance, so that he can tell me what wrong he’s done and why in peace without worrying about the consequences.

∙ Once he said, “Mujhe lobia ka gaana sun-na hai.”
(Lobia in Hindi=Black Eyed Peas in English)
(Or how Cool becomes Uncool)

∙ Once the menu for dinner was simple a dal-chawal.
He sighed and said, “Kya 1947 ka khaana khila rahe ho!”
When I asked him what he meant by that, he said, “I’m sure that when Mahatma Gandhi came home in that year, his wife must have fed him something like this.”

∙ Everything has to be said grandly.
Once he refused to do something because it was forbidden by his mother.
He declared, “It is against the Laws of Mamma!”

∙ “One of these days I’m going to hack into your website and go crazy there!”
Sigh, threats aren’t what they used to be!

© Sunil Rajguru

∙ Sick and tired of hearing about problems with Pakistan and China, my nine-year-old son asks if India can declare independence from Asia and become an island once again as it was millions of years ago.

∙ When he’s optimistic about tomorrow, he uses the term “Bright side of the future”. Pessimistic: “Dark side of the future”.

∙ He prepared an airport with his blocks, tracks, toy planes and cars. At the end of it, he said, “OK now to organize for sponsorship before the inauguration,” and promptly sat down sketching billboard ads on a sheet of paper.
Then he held a plane in his hand and asked “Can you check from the window which direction the wind is blowing?” When I asked why, I was told that the plane always had to land or take off against the wind, something I had only explained to him some time back.
Talk about simple kid games!

∙ Children nowadays seem to be aware of all developments relevant to them. I don’t believe in Credit Cards so I always get away from buying anything for him off the Internet. One day, when I came home he promptly informed me that from now on I had no excuses for Web purchases as Flipkart accepted cash on delivery!

Overheard…

∙ You have to agree.
I can’t. For then both of us would be wrong!

∙ How was school today?
Terrible!
Why?
The whole class was in a state of shock!
Why?
The class teacher changed today.

∙ Can I use your cap?
Yes.
Sure?
Yes.
You won’t be angry?
Yes.
Great! I used it last week! Thanks!

∙ How soon will a spaceship reach Proxima Centauri if it travels at 10,000 times the speed of light?
But you can’t travel faster than the speed of light.
Says who? Haven’t you heard? Einstein is no longer right.
(Funnily, he seems to forget most of the things he reads in his text books, but nothing from newspapers or news channels.)

© Sunil Rajguru

∙ After watching Novak Djokovic win in the 2011 Wimbledon men’s singles and Mahesh Bhupathi and partner lose in the mixed doubles, my 9-year-old son put forward a demand for a “Mixed Singles”.
“What’s that? It’s not even possible,” I dismissed him.
He replied, “Simple. One half of the draw will be male and the other half will be female. I want to see boys versus girls at the international level!”

∙ Once India needed 1 run off 60 balls to win.
“So India will win 100%?” he asked.
“100%!” I replied.
To which he said, “So can you say that the match is “fixed” at this stage?”

∙ Once when I was feeling really angry, he told me to watch the kid’s cartoon Shinchan.
“Why?”
“Watching Shinchan will give you such a headache that you will forget your anger!”

∙ While rolling down the glass of the car door he says, “I’m downloading the windows.” It’s uploading when they are being rolled up. The Internet generation I guess!

∙ My wife has caught on to him.
Once she was scrubbing his face real hard while cleaning it and he yelled, “God! Help me! Where are you?”
To that she replied, “Don’t worry he’s around somewhere and this time he’s on my side!”

© Sunil Rajguru

1. I was playing with my son non-stop.
I said I wanted a break and also needed to grab a bite.
He got flustered and angry and yelled, “Why? Whatever for?”
Then he calmed down and smiled saying, “Aakhir aap bhi to insaan ho na?”
(Thank you kids for recognizing that parents are human too!)

2. One day I was surprised to see him with his eyes closed and hands folded, praying in front of the computer.
He was invoking the gods to win his Internet game!

3. I cleaned his room thoroughly and put fresh bedsheets and all.
He walked in, looked around and asked, “Is this what they call progress?”

4. We were watching a programme on alien abductions and they showed a man who had a mysterious object embedded in his arm. The doctors took it out and looked foxed.
“I bet it’s made in China,” quipped my son!

5. Me and my wife were discussing a newspaper article where a man sold his kidney to buy a ticket for the world cup final.
After India beat Sri Lanka in the final, he asked me, “Us aadmi ka kidney vasool ho gaya hoga na!” Paisa vasool I’ve heard, but this was a new one.

6. My son says that the word “super” is so outdated in today’s age.
“It’s the age of hyper,” he says.
So it’s hyper cool! Hyper man! He even says hyperb instead of superb.

7. I explained him the concept of a salt and pepper beard. Now every black beard is a pepper beard and every white beard is a salt beard.

8. When I explained him the concept of week days and weekends, he asked, “Is there such a thing as week year, where you work for 5 years and get off for 2 years?”

9. Kids are very conscious in using banned words in front of elders.
I heard him singing the hit song in the following manner…
Sheela ki jawani,
You just can’t say the next line!
Main tere haath na aani…

10. He was heartbroken to find out that cricketers played for money. He always thought they played for free, just for the sheer pleasure of cricket!

11. He was sitting in front of the TV with an untouched lunch plate.
“Oh God! I’m so hungry and I can’t eat.”
When I asked him why, he said, “My serial has gone on a break. Food doesn’t taste the same during an ad break and hence I have no choice but to wait!”

12. Cartoons are repeated endlessly and kids watch an episode dozens of times. So a common question is, “Why is he going to do that in the next scene? Why will that happen in the next scene?”

13. He still can’t get over the fact that the Chak de India film world cup doesn’t count as a world cup in real life too. “They played so well, didn’t they!”

14. When I said, “May you live a 100 years,” he replied, “May you live 50 billion years!”

15. On the last day before the vacations, he suddenly yelled, “Thank God! My worst nightmare is over!” When I asked him what, he replied, “Studies!”

16. I was playing cricket with my son. I got his wicket, clean bowled.
He stood his ground and challenged me saying, “The ball pitched more that 2.5 metres from the stump!”
When I ridiculed him for that, in the very next match he said, “I’ll play as long as there are no umpire reviews! Every decision has to be final!”

© Sunil Rajguru

• One day when I dressed up really smartly, he said, “Wow! You’re looking as cool as an idiot!”
When I glared at him, he said, “What? Haven’t you seen 3 Idiots?”

• When I made him walk quite a distance once, he said, “God! I’m sure you made me walk at least a million millimeters today!”

• They say you need a good memory if you are a liar.
That applies to being a father too.
I often hear, “But last time you gave a different answer to the same question!”

• While watching the movie Kaminey on TV, after a couple of songs he said, “If one has a lisp and the other stutters, then how come they sing so well? This movie is illogical.”
And he stopped watching.

• When the cool Batmobile emerged in Batman Begins, all he could ask was, “Does he have a license for that thing?”

• He hates brushing his teeth.
One day he complained, “If all the children brush their teeth regularly, then what will all the poor dentists of the world do?”

• He has advice for my writing.
If ever you write a tragedy, then you should add at the end: “And they lived sadly ever after…”

• My wife got him a watch from New York.
He kept fiddling with it but couldn’t change the time to Indian time.
He tossed it aside and said, “Forget it, the watch is jetlagged.”

© Sunil Rajguru

Once when I ended a theological argument with the sweeping statement, “God can do everything,” my son mischievously said, “God can’t do one thing, which man can do.”
“What’s that wise guy,” I asked.
“Pray to God,” he answered smugly.
When I gave him a blank look, he continued, “We can pray to God can’t we? But I don’t think God can pray to himself!”

***

My son has a priceless concept of Action Replays in real life. Anything you missed him doing or he did in school is enacted out in a painstakingly slow action replay from different angles.
Once when he was playing cricket with his friends and batting, an argument broke out on whether the ball had hit the stumps or not. “Wait,” he told his friends, “let me show you the action replay.” He did such a convincing action replay of the ball just missing the stumps by a whisker, that his friends actually believed him and he was declared not out unanimously.

***

He made me find out on the Net the name of the largest dinosaur that ever walked on this planet. When I told him, he ran to his mother and said, “Jaldi khana do, mere pet main sauroposeidons daud rahe hain!” (Give me food fast, there are sauroposeidons running in my stomach!)

***
I was watching a song of Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore, when my son asked, “Who are these people?” I told him that one was Akshay Kumar’s father-in-law and the other was Saif Ali Khan’s mother. He looked at me and said incredulously, “No way!” He doesn’t understand how that can be possible. But after that day, every old movie is starring Kareena Kapoor’s grandfather or Sunny Deol’s father or Ranbir Kapoor’s mother… If a yesteryear’s star is not related to one in today’s Bollywood world, he finds that pretty odd.

***

After I explained him all about cloning, the only thing he said was, “When I was born, why didn’t you make a clone of me? He could have done my homework while I could play all the time!”

***

© Sunil Rajguru

• It was Children’s Day, so I decided to take care of my son’s every whim. Video Arcade Games. Pizza. Toy. The usual Pandering Stuff that any Suffering Parent will understand. But by evening, I was fed up as he and his friends were driving me up the wall.
On what felt like his thousandth request, I lost it and yelled, “I’ve had it with you rotten people.”
My son looked up, smiled and said with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, “Well father, today happens to be Rotten People’s Day so you’ll have to continue listening to us…” and promptly went on to his next demand.

***

• My son says that we have a Bigg Boss House. My Wife: Bigg Boss. My Son: Little Boss. Me: Contestant.

***

• On seeing a road sign that said No Free Left Turn:
“Do have to pay money if we turn left?”

***

• He first fought with us trying to convince us that there was such a thing as a tooth fairy. We relented and he kept his broken tooth under his pillow and as expected, we had to replace it with money.
In the evening when his friends came, he yelled at them:
“Hey dudes! I sold my broken tooth to my parents for two hundred Rupees!”

***

• When the train journey just seemed to be going on and on leaving him very tired and sleepy….
“Dad, we are not living right now, we are just surviving, right?”

***

© Sunil Rajguru