Home alone!

...So my mom calls up my sister to tell her that she has traveled safely to Bangalore from my sister' s home. My sister's six-year-old son picks up the call and was audibly upset that his grandparents have left. He says "Paatti, why don't you come back? I am alone here!". My mom got a bit worried and asked, "Why are you alone? Where are the rest?". He says, "Me, Hari-anna, Amma, Appa and Chinthamani paatti are all alone here!"

Childhood notions

As the reality that I am a father sinks in, I find myself frequently in conversation about children, childhood and their notions. The fact that there is an army of children under four in my extended family only makes this even more frequent.

My niece is a non-stop talker! As she gets home from playschool she keeps rattling things apparently related her own experience at school that day. What she speaks about is anyone's guess. But one thing can be said for sure. What she speaks about is always unrelated to what she does while talking. Almost as if she has two brains that work independently. One for speaking and another of everything else!

She sometimes says "You always speaking, no eating that why I keeping standing!" and sometimes she says "woh nai chahye" (Hindi for "I don't want that). When I ask her what she talking about, she says "That is my friend at schools. She speaks in Tamil"

Come to think of it, my own childhood memory tells me that I was no different. There was a time I believed that there are only three languages in the whole world. Tamil, Hindi and English. And there are only three religions in the world. Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. Hindus speak Tamil, Muslims speak Hindi and Christians speak English. Real simple!

I have also believed that men are of two categories, the ones with mustache and the ones without. The ones with mustache smoke and the ones without it don't smoke. So, if anyone asked why my dad never had a mustache, I would have likely answered "Because he doesn't smoke! The day he started to have mustache, he would automatically start smoking!"

A piece of genius

You must have heard an anecdote from the life of Einstein told to justify the fact that brilliant people people make stupid mistakes when the eventually succumb to making one. Einstein had a pet cat which inevitably gave birth to kitten. So, Einstein decided to construct a small home for the cat and built a home with two entrances, a big one for the mother and a small one for the kitten, missing the obvious point that if the mom can enter through the bigger entrance, so can the kitten. But that's the oft told story, too boring to merit a repeat. So sticking to the ubiquitous rule "only change is constant" let us narrate another story from the life of another undisputed genius.

This happened one day in his childhood when he had an upcoming basic mathematics exam involving addition, subtraction, place value identification, division etc... Being a sincere student he had been preparing hard for the exam under the expert guidance of his mom. On the morning of the exam, while he was taking stab at a random bunch of problems his mom realized that there were too many problems to solve in such a short time before starting to prepare to go to school. So, she told him "Don't worry about attempting addition, subtraction and place values..you know it very well. Attack the multiplications and division and get them right. That should be enough". And the genius obliged. Feeling confident after the revision, he left for school to conquer the exam.

That evening his mom enquired,"How was the paper?"

As if he was just waiting for his mom the answer the enquiry, he beamed,"The paper was great! I solved all the division and multiplications right!"

Puzzled, the mom asked, "What about the addition, subtraction and place values..?"
"Oh, but why should I even attempt them mom, I know I do them very well. I just attempted the multiplications and divisions. Isn't that what you said?"

Now who is this genius? Well..who else? :)