abu & rabad

Abu is a big fan of stories and story books. Harry Potter (he knows the names of all 7 books), Dinosaurs (he can recognize more dinosaurs from their photos than I can), Indian Mythology (Ram, Sita, Krishna, and now the dash-avatar). In fact, as part of bedtime reading over the last year or so, meetu and I have read the entire “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” (without skipping anything) to him, and now we are no Chapter 5 of “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”.

Recently he has gotten interested in writing his stories. He has a little four-line notebook in which he writes stories, one page at a time. The first story, is called “Hanuman’s story”, and spans seven pages. He has just finished his second story, “Sita’s story”, which I haven’t read yet. 

He sits by himself and writes the story. Whenever he gets stuck on the spelling of some word, he asks meetu or me, and we help out. But sometimes he thinks he knows the spelling and goes ahead without asking us. Those are left as they are in the text below, as an exercise for the motivated reader to figure out what Abu was trying to say.

Other than help with spellings, everything else is by Abu. All the sentence constructions and punctuation are his. He understands a little about periods (”full stop”) at the end of a sentence, but not entirely as you can see below. As you will see, he hasn’t yet heard of the comma.

Anyway, on to the story:

Ram and Sita both were married to each other. Then Ravan kidnapped Sita. Then Ram got his little brother Laxman to help him to find

Sita. They went looking for Sugreev to help find Sita. Instead they found Hanuman, he took Ram and Laxman on his shoulders and he took them to Sugreev.

Sugreev said will you help me kill Bali. Ram said I will if you help me find Sita yes I will help you find Sita so Ram killed Bali and they went to find

Sita. They went and went and they made a brij and they went across it they went and they killed Ravan and they came home. Then Ram too Saita home.

Then Sita gave Hanuman a pearl necklace to sea thank you. He broke the pearls. Sita asked why are you breaking the pearls because I have to see Ram and Sita’s photo in all the

gift I get. Sita said if there is no photo of Ram & Sita in your chest will you break your chest so he opened his chest and there was Ram & Sita’s photo in it so he laft his hand and. Holes

had vanished and every body was happy.

the end

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Rabad loves drawing and coloring. She goes to a drawing class three times a week, where they teach her how to copy drawings made by her teacher and then color them with crayons. Even otherwise, she spends a lot of time drawing or coloring - with crayons, sketch pens, or water colors. She can literally spend hours doing this. 

Sometimes she just colors inside an existing picture, like this one of Disney’s little mermaid. This was impressive because the picture is actually huge - maybe 3-1/2 feet by 2-1/2 feet. And she wasn’t satisfied until she had finished coloring the whole thing.

 

Then there’s this example of a picture that she drew herself and then colored.

But more often these days, she skips the drawing part and simply starts coloring - like the next two pictures.

and

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our cousin spent the day with us yesterday. she had an interesting conversation with abu-rabad, which i asked her to jot down for your reading pleasure. over to babli, abu-rabad’s 24 year old, buaji (paternal aunt)…

* * *

Abu was busy writing a story and Rabad was completing her drawing.

Suddenly Rabad asked me, “Babli buaji, how many days you are going to stay with us?” I said I’d be with them till Monday morning since I had to go to office then.

Both the kids were surprised to hear that I’m so much older to them. They were surprised to know that I’d completed my school, college, and now I was working in an office like papa.

Of course, Rabad had her next question ready - “Babli buaji are you someone’s mama?” Now, I was surprised and before I could answer Abu replied - “No she is not married!!!!!”

Now Rabad wanted to know how to get married, to which Abu replied –

“For a girl to get married we have to find a boy for her.

Once we have found a boy then the girl should love the boy and the boy should also love the girl.

Only then they get married.”

I cannot explain my reaction to this answer in words…. It was so true. I would have never been able to explain what marriage is to Rabad, in such an easy way.

The complexity of the word marriage was made so simple by Abu….

This incidence made me realize kids learn what we want them to learn. They are so innocent, they believe in what they see, listen and feel. They are so inquisitive about everything.

Hats off to bhaiya and bhabi (that’d be hubby dear and me ;)). Abu and Rabad are smart, intelligent and yet so innocent!

Cheers,

Babli

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