abu & rabad

I like to think of myself as a liberal person. But, some things just don’t feel right. Like, having your 6-8 year old girls choreograph a dance to ‘sheila ki jawani’ and the adults will later watch the performance. Even if it is a private party for a few close families. Even if everyone’s daughter [...Read More...]

The following is a real conversation I had yesterday with Mr. X (who will remain nameless to save him public embarrassment ) over Facebook chat and SMS. I was sitting at my computer, and suddenly, without any warning or context, the following facebook chat message from Mr. X to me popped up: why dont u [...Read More...]

A couple of days, I saw a random email forward with humorous answers from kids to a bunch of questions. I decided to find out what kinds of answers would Abu and Rabad give to the same questions. So here goes. Why did God make mothers? [Abu]: Because if mother didn’t exist, you didn’t exist [...Read More...]

So I was explaining the whole Anna Hazare situation to Abu & Rabad, and realized that there was a lot of explaining to do. “You know, sometimes, our leaders take money from bad people and do bad things for them. That is called corruption. Is that a good thing?” “No” “What should happen to leaders [...Read More...]

Recently I received a “email forward” which listed the various ways in which the world has changed since I was a kid. Stuff like when I was a kid we didn’t have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the [...Read More...]

Abu and Rabad’s cousin Pr___ (who is 18) was with us this weekend. She is starting college this week, and she will be staying in a hostel. Abu/Rabad’s friend Sw___ (who is 9 years old) was also with us on Sunday morning, and when we were all together, I asked the kids this question: “Pr___ [...Read More...]

One morning, I was reading a Hardy Boys’ adventure to Abu. There’s a part where the Hardy boys visit the mansion of a rich man. When they’re about to leave, the rich man asks them to stay for some more time – he wants company; he gets very lonely in the mansion alone. “What’s ‘lonely’, [...Read More...]

navin, abu, rabad and i went out for dinner a couple of days ago. i’m the only vegetarian in the foursome. abu confirms – mamma, are you vegetarian? me (confused, he already knows that!) – yeah abu – you know what? if everyone on this table was a vegetarian, this would be a vegetable! HA [...Read More...]

it has now become customary for abu to ask me “what’s it about?” every time i watch a film. turns out, dil bole hadippa, is playing on one of the tv channels soon. so, abu – mamma, what’s dil bole hadippa about? me – well rani mukherjee plays a girl who absolutely loves cricket and [...Read More...]

abu – accent speaking people * * * this statement of abu’s reminded us of an observation he had made some 2 years ago. a friend of ours was visiting us from the US. she had come with her kids. now her older son is as old as abu. And abu and he were good [...Read More...]