∙ 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

∙ 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

∙ 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

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

• 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

***

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

***

• 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

• My son says that it’s necessary for small kids to scream every now and then for no reason to reduce the stress in their life…

• “Son, whatever goes up, must come down”… “But Papa, that doesn’t hold true in space, right?” Sigh! Today’s kids: Try telling them anything at your own risk.

• My son calls me Tiger! Then he adds the National Geographic fact that tigers sleep about 20 hours a day and are irritable and angry during their waking hours.

© Sunil Rajguru

Then there’s the beanbag. He keeps it in front of the TV and uses it as a Drop Zone: Jumping and falling on it non-stop. (Even his small friends have perfected that art) The beanbag has been repaired endless times. If it had any legs and life, it would have run away long ago. The rectangle in front of the TV is an irresistible playground that gets activated once you put on the idiot box.

Now all this makes my poor wife quite dizzy, especially the Hopping Maneouvre. That’s when he does a hopping marathon all over the room, till my wife can take it no more. So it would be apt to say that my son loves playing and watching TV. I should do a YouTube commercial “Walk when you watch” (TV) much like the “Walk when you talk” campaign.

While all this is fine (at least he’s not a couch potato, but a Jumping Potato), I dreaded the thought of taking him to the movie hall. How would he sit in one place for hours on end? Wouldn’t he get quite fidgety? In his fifth year of existence on this Earth, I decided to brave it and take him, just father and son. I was pretty apprehensive, I must say. All my life when I watched movies in halls, I was the first person to glare at parents of noisy/crying children and even indicate that they leave the hall if they couldn’t shut them up. Here was my bad karma ready to do a rebound and come down on me like a ton of bricks.

I failed to convince my son how watching an animation movie on a big screen was better than TV, but he agreed to come along as the multiplex was housed in his favorite mall. At the entrance to the hall, he asked me, “Do we really have to go in?” I’ve never seen a kid that less interested. Once inside he looked around and said, “So this is it, eh? Why is this place so dark and gloomy?” He then proceeded to run and slide all over the place. I lost my breath as I tried to keep up with him. (I don’t know why I bother)

“People will protest. They’ll kick us out of this place.”

“You always say that, but no-one ever says anything.”

I grabbed hold of his hand and said, “Time to go in.”

“Do we really have to go in?” he repeated.

Once inside he said, “This place is even darker and gloomier.” He then proceeded to run up and down the giant steps. This time, I exercised my will power and ignored him. When the movie finally started, I grabbed hold him and made him sit next to me. It lasted for maybe a minute. He was off again. I whispered loudly at him and stopped as a few people glared angrily at me. I watched helplessly as he started arranging the fallen head cloths of all the empty seats (and there were many of them!). No one seemed to notice or mind as he went past them in his marathon arranging expedition all the while saying loudly, “What a cinema hall! Nothing is in its right place.” (His grandmother’s strict fussiness for cleanliness and order fully coming to the fore)

I decided to brave it again and dragged him next to me. This time I succeeded for almost 5 seconds. He saw that one of the exits had been chained and locked. He ran to it, grabbed hold of them and started screaming on the top of his voice, “Let me out! Let me out!” This would have been a very cute scene at home and a heart-rending scene in a tragedy movie, but here, I was sure that we would be thrown out. Funnily the guard didn’t bat an eyelid and everyone else continued watching the movie in ignorance bliss. I hadn’t been to a hall for a couple of years. Had things changed? Were people more tolerant nowadays?

Then Praise the Lord! He finally decided to sit next to me. And I soon regretted it. It was “A question a second time”. While I still manage to handle his questions, the problem is that they would begin with a shrill and loud “Papa!” (Reminded me of the time when he did the only solo act of his Montessori class on a stage. He tapped the mike and found it to be off and screamed “Papa! The mike isn’t working!” just as it was put on!) And this time people did start staring at us, but more out of amusement than anger. When I felt that my head was about to explode, I whispered threats in his ear. He kept quiet but had an amused look on his face.

I guess he went to his next plan and started laughing at the top of his voice at every dialogue. He laughed and laughed and laughed and soon I couldn’t hear a single dialogue. Imagine a large dark cinema hall with everyone sitting in pin drop silence and one solitary child in the centre erupting in shrill laughter during a serious scene. The cringing father sitting next to him is me… (And still no-one threw us out)

Luckily it was interval time. I told him firmly that we were going home thanks to his behaviour. He looked at me condescendingly and said, “I never wanted to come here in the first place. You dragged me!”

When later his grandmother asked him how the movie was he said, “The bathrooms were nice bright and airy.” (The only thing he liked about the whole (mis)adventure)

***

After that I stopped taking him to movie halls, but my wife took up the challenge. Thank God he’s not indifferent now: He gets totally immersed in the plot. He watched open-eyed and open-mouthed Hrithik Roshan’s antics in Dhoom 2, wailed like if he was attending a funeral at Shah Rukh Khan’s death in Om Shanti Om and his shrill laughter still pervades the atmosphere of the hall when there’s a comic scene. The questions come loudly and frequently. He still takes off unexpectedly every now and then in the middle of a scene: Once a Jumping Potato, always a Jumping Potato.

Things weren’t any different when I took him to the planetarium. This time the man sitting next to him kept staring at us. Every question got a stare and I finally whispered to my son, “Keep quiet. See, you are disturbing that poor man there.”

The man leaned towards me and said, “Let him ask questions no! They are very interesting! Even I am enjoying them!”

Another round went to my son and I felt as if I had just lost the right to ask him to Shut Up at any hall for life.

© Sunil Rajguru

“I know that, you don’t have to tell me.”

“You did this because of that.”

“I saw you doing that!”

…and so on.

On being told of the absurdity of it all, he tells us: Where do you think I was before I came here? I was in heaven with God. I could watch all of you whenever I wanted.

An example: Once when we were driving along Old Madras Road, a car trailer passed by. My son told my father-in-law, “Your car also came in such a trailer.” My father-in-law started laughing and parted with the crucial bit of information that the car he was sitting in was bought before he was born. So how did he know? My son folded his hands and gave a knowing glare.

“One day when I was playing in heaven, God called me and told me, “See that Hyundai trailer going down there? That’s carrying your grandfather’s silver-coloured Accent.” Touche!

I decided to end this game. So I caught hold of him once and asked him, “Describe this heaven of yours!”

“Ah it’s a primitive place in the heart of nature full of babies and gods….”

“Gods, I ask, “not God!”

“Well do you think even God can handle thousands of babies together?”

(Point)

“One god is assigned to 15 babies and…”

“Sound a bit like a school full of teachers to me,” I interrupted.

“No, the gods just watch over us, we spend all our time doing… nothing! We have a clear view of Earth and all the people who live there. We can watch every person when and how we want.”

“And what do you do there?”

“We don’t have to do anything at all and at the same time we can do everything we please. Every thing! Now doesn’t that sound like heaven?”

“OK, OK, then how do you come down to Earth?”

“Well we get to choose our parents. We look down and tell our god: Hey I want that woman to be my mother and that man to be my father and that’s how you two got together!”

(Kids always eventually get their way with their parents. But before birth too…???)

“So I don’t decide who I get to marry and the match isn’t even originally selected by god either. You matched us up?”

“Yes,” he replies smugly.

So there’s God’s Will. Then there’s Wife’s Will. And now there’s Son’s Will. I guess for a poor ole man like me, there really is no such thing as Free Will.

***

Another example: “Why are you so naughty and hyperactive, can’t you calm down and relax a bit.”

“I can’t,” he says…

(And I know another Heaven Story is coming)

“When god was throwing Naughtiness Dust on us…”

“What,” I ask, “is that?”

“Well the gods want us to be naughty. It’s a positive trait. We become naughty thanks to Naughtiness Dust which they keep throwing on us. Well, I went and raided the whole stock and that’s why I am the way I am.”

My wife looks shocked and asks, “What did god do when he found out?”

“He still doesn’t know,” sniggers my son.

My wife continues, “But won’t he get angry when he finds out?”

My son slaps his forehead and says wearily, “God is not like a teacher or a parent. He never gets angry at us. His job is only to guide, encourage and help us. He never gets angry. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

***

My son has a habit of shooting rapid fire questions in the night when me and my wife are about to fall asleep.

“What happens when you put a ton of ice in a pool of lava?”

“What if there’s a Black Hole outside our window right now? Can I check?”

“What if tomorrow doesn’t come when we get up tomorrow?”

“What if our whole life is actually a dream? What happens when we get up?”

“Can we go to Disneyland for our next vacation?”

“Can you buy me another Transformers action figure on your way back from work? I won’t ask for another toy for 10 years!”

They keep coming like an incessant waterfall.

Once he broached the topic of death.

“What happens after death? Where do we go? Why do some people go early? Why don’t you check the Internet for that? You check the Internet for everything anyway…”

I got really bugged and asked him, “OK, you’re the wise guy. You came from heaven. You once asked that god be requisitioned to start an email service between heaven and earth. You knew god. You tell me how we go back there after death.”

“But why would you want to go to heaven,” asks my son calmly.

“Don’t we all go to heaven when we die?” I ask exasperated.

“No!” he says firmly.

“Why?” I ask “sleepily.”

“You come from heaven to earth. So why would you want to go back to a place from where you came?”

(My reserve patience runs out at this stage)

OK, you tell me quick: What happens after death?

My son thinks for a second and says, “The soul splits into many pieces and every piece goes to a different world, a different universe and a different existence.”

That’s too deep for me. I can’t take it any more. I have to go to sleep.

Good Night!

© Sunil Rajguru