“You know, Pappa, the earth is going to finish.”

My first instinct was to say What Rubbish and follow it up with an admonition that she shouldn’t listen to any crap that any of her friends tell her, without clearing it with Pappa or Mamma first. Wiser sense prevailed, and I decided on a gentler approach.

“Really? When is it going to finish?” I asked, in the spirit of scientific enquiry.

“In some weeks,” said Rabad, as if delivering a diagnosis of terminal cancer to concerned relatives.

Now her friends joined in.

“You did not see that TV program, uncle?” accused one of them. This is the one who has apparently educated Rabad about this latest crisis afflicting us.

Apparently I don’t watch the right TV programs.

“No, I did not,” I said and asked, “How is the world going to end?”

“All the trees,” Rabad said, pointing towards the trees around our building, “are going to get cut.” She made a chopping motion with her hand, and had an angry frown on her face.

And the girl who was apparently the source of this knowledge pointed out, “Then all the leaves will be gone. Then there will be no oxygen. Then we’ll all die.”

You really can’t argue with that. It is true.

“I think what you should do is to plant some trees” I suggested.

“Yeah!” said all of them, almost a chorus, their eyes lighting up.

Encouraged, I continued, “Each of you should plant one tree. And you know what, you should go to Shaligram aunty on the 10th floor, and tell her that each of you wants to plant a tree. To save the earth.” Mrs. Shaligram is one of the residents who takes an interest in the gardening of the apartment complex, and is the kind of sweet person who would love to encourage the environment awareness amongst the kids.

So I finished with, “I just want to point out to you – the world is not going to end in a few weeks; it will take many, many, many, many years. But you’re right, it will end if all the trees get cut down. So go, and plant trees with Shaligram aunty’s help.”

So they did go to Shaligram aunty. And they’ve now scheduled a formal tree plantation session for Saturday afternoon. And I’m proud of myself for having handled the situation positively, rather than my usual cynicism. There will be enough time for them to get acquainted with the cynicism when they grow up…

today was bt brinjal’s turn. i tuned in towards the fag end of the conversation between navin and rabad. (i think it was because navin wanted to show rabad’s latest knowledge off and was asking her questions loudly, but that’s only a digression)

navin – so rabad, tell me why do you think bt brinjal is a good idea?

rabad – huu? (buying time to answer the toughie)

rabad (in all innocence) – because ‘b’ is for boy and ‘t’ is for one of good friend’s name…

i controlled then but i’m letting go now….

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA…

So now, apparently, they want more creative control. If you remember, the title of the last post was dictated by Abu. Now this whole post has gone up on the insistence of Abu.

“Pappa, this story is too funny. You have to put it up in Abu-Rabad site,” he told me a few days back. Partially because I was busy, and partially because I did not really think the story did belong on the site, I did nothing. So today, he asked me again, “Did you put up the story I told you on the Abu-Rabad site?”.

So, here is the story.

We had all gone to a hill station for a vacation with extended family. Abu and Rabad had gone with their cousins for a walk among the hills. n didi is one of the cousins. When they came back, Abu told me,

“Pappa, a funny thing happened. n didi went into the hills and found some shiny stones. After that, she saw a white thing. She thought that thing is a bag. When she picked it up, it was a diaper! Ha ha.” He is giggling even now as he repeats the story to me.

When Rabad found out about this, she insisted that she wanted to see the “white thing”. No amount of persuasion would dissuade her. She rested only after she had made her cousin go back into the hill, and find the diaper, and had said “Eeww.”

Now Abu wants me to print this so he can send it to his friend TQ. “Because he’ll laugh also.”

In our house, this is usually code for, “Can I watch TV, Pappa.” Of course, he knows that watching too much TV is frowned upon, so he will not directly ask the question. Rather, he asks “What shall I do now.” And if I suggest any thing other than TV, he will say, “No, I don’t want to do that.”

In turn, we keep suggesting more and more non-TV / non-computer things for him to do, in the hope that he will will say “Yes” to one of them.

Anyway, today we started this ritual again:

“What shall I do now, Pappa?” asked Abu.

I definitely did not want to allow him to watch TV, so I asked,

“Do you want to play Monopoly?”

Even he must have gotten bored of saying “No” over and over again, so he got creative this time.

“Pappa,” he said, “in my mind, there is a game, with a circle around it, and a slanting line.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked him to explain. So, he said,

“Pappa, see. In my mind, there is the game Monopoly” – at this point he gestured in the air with his hands, drawing a square, and continued, “and around that game, there is a circle.” And he drew a big circle around the imaginary Monopoly he had just drawn. “And then there is a slash,” and he slashed the air, pretty much smashing the imaginary monopoly.

I believe, what he had in his mind, was this:

“That means, no Monopoly,” he explained.

So instead of playing Monopoly, or watching TV, we sat together, photoshopped the above image, and composed this blog post. Problem solved!

(By the way, the title of this post has been suggested by Abu. Also, he corrected some of the dialogue, “That’s not what I said, Pappa. I said … etc.“)

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

Disney's Mermaid - Crayons on wipe-off white sheet

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.

House, Temple and Hills - Sketch pens on paper

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

Abstract Painting - Orange and Blue - sketch pens

and

Abstract Painting - Blue and Green - Water colors