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 die
we dont want you here
nobody
just go

Now Mr. X is a pretty sober, and mature, Pune entrepreneur, so I instantly realized something was wrong. Assuming that his Facebook account had gotten hacked, I sent him SMS, and the following exchange ensued:

Navin to Mr. X: Did your facebook account get hacked?

Mr. X to Navin: No why?

Navin to Mr. X: Chat message you are sending me right now: why dont u die. we dont want you here. nobody. just go.

Mr. X to Navin: Jeez that was for my friend sorry haha

And on Facebook he typed:

Arre sorry
Wrong window

Abu walked past my computer when all of this was happening, and he saw the first facebook chat message from Mr. X to me.

Abu: Did somebody write that to you on Facebook?

Navin: Yes, Abu

Abu (with frown lines on his forehead): But why would somebody tell you “why dont u die.”? You are the best dad in the world.

Thank you, Mr. X, for creating this opportunity!

• Why did God make mothers?
  • [Abu]: Because if mother didn’t exist, you didn’t exist
  • [Rabad]: Because there has to be one person who scolds us every time, otherwise we will not learn
• How did God make mother?
  • [Abu]: Because he is God
  • [Rabad]: There was one more mother who made the other mother
• What kind of a little girl was your Mom?
  • [Abu]: I don’t know. But I guess she was normal. She liked books.
  • [Rabad]: Very sad girl, because if she did one mistake her mother used to hit her.
• What did Mom need to know about dad before she married him?
  • [Abu]: His last name, so that she knows whether her new name sounds alright.
  • [Rabad]: Did he go to college, because some people stop after 10^th and they don’t have any knowledge
• Who is the boss at your house?
  • [Abu]: Dad. Because Mamma calls him ‘Suno,’ and no one calls him by his name in the house
  • [Rabad]: No one. Because no one acts like a boss.
• What’s the difference between moms and dads?
  • [Abu]: Moms are usually kind, and Dads are usually strict.
  • [Rabad]: Mom is really strict, and Dad is really kind.
• What does mom usually do in her spare time?
  • [Abu]: Talks with me
  • [Rabad]: Sits with me
• What would it take to make your mom perfect?
  • [Abu]: Nothing. She’s already perfect
  • [Rabad]: If she gives me a lovely gift

Rabad saw this and insisted that she also wanted to learn how to use the online stopwatch. So I taught her how to go to Online-Stopwatch.com, how to start the countdown timer and so on. That made her happy and she started exploring the features of the website.

Just as I had finished explaining to her, meetu came in the room, and we started discussing some work stuff (related to wogma). Rabad continued playing with the stopwatch while we had our discussion.

After the discussion, I left the room, and Rabad followed me out.

“Daddy,” she asked, “Do you know what I was doing with the stopwatch?”

“No.”

“I was counting how much time you and Mamma talk,” she announced, with what did look like an evil grin.

“Huh?”

“I was counting how much time you get to talk to each other and how much time you spend with each other. So now whenever you or Mamma complain that children don’t allow you to spend time with each other, I will bring the computer and show you how much time you spend with each other.”

So now there are high-tech weapons deployed against us. It’s a losing battle.

We were trying various ways to get her to read, and not getting anywhere. One approach that we thought might help was gamification. It’s easy to find “educational game CDs” in bookstores, but I’ve found that most of them are kind of boring, and I don’t really want to encourage my kid to spend even more time alone with the computer.

Searching on the internet, we found http://www.printablereadinggames.com/ a place with lots of interesting games that can be printed onto cards and papers and played.

So, we created a game based on the 4-in-a-row phonics game described here, and she has been loving it. She can play the game with her friends, or with Abu. The fact that they’re older and much better readers is not a problem, because there’s enough of a luck factor in the game. Even we can play the game with her. Yesterday, I had to drag her away from the game because it was late for dinner. She kept begging, “Daddy… just one more game…”

And no, we’re not trying to trick her. She knows that this game is to help her read better. But that hasn’t negatively affected the perception of the game. A fun game is, apparently, a fun game. (At least at this age.)

“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 who are corrupt?”

“They should get punishment.”

“Correct! They should be put in jail. Who can put them in jail?”

“The police.”

“Exactly… except that they pay the police to not put them in jail. What is that called?”

“Corruption.”

That wasn’t so difficult. With the basics done, I continued with the sordid tale.

“So, many of our leaders are corrupt. And the police who are supposed to punish them are also corrupt.”

“No,” wailed Rabad, the 6-year old, “Why are you telling me these things? I get scared!”

Ouch! I did not tell her that it scares me too.

                 * * *                 

“Well, there is a guy called Anna Hazare who is telling our leaders that we should create a new group of good people, called the Lokpal, which will punish corrupt leaders and police. Do you think our leaders will listen to him?”

“Nooooo” said Abu.

“You know, our leaders did a tricky thing. They said that they will create a Lokpal. And they said that the Lokpal will have leaders in it.”

“Whoa!” said Abu, clearly seeing the conflict of interest. (He’s learnt words like “Whoa” from reading American comics and seeing TV shows.)

“What’s the problem?” asked Rabad.

“Well, suppose I create a group of people who will keep a watch on whether Abu and Rabad are eating chocolates without permission, and will punish them. And this group of people will be Abu and Rabad. Will that be a good idea?”

“Ha ha ha ha ha,” laughed Rabad, “That is such a dumb idea.”

Maybe Sonia Gandhi should spend more time with 6-year-olds. (Or maybe our voters are dumber than 6-year-olds.)

                 * * *                 

“So,” I continued, “Anna Hazare is telling our leaders that at least half the people in the Lokpal should be non-leaders and non-police.” I simplified things considerably, but accuracy is not always worth the effort. This simplification captures the spirit, I think.

“So, Pappa, is this Lokpal thing Anna Hazare’s idea?” inquired Abu.

“No. Actually, various people have been trying to create a Lokpal for a long time. 8 times they have tried, and 8 times our leaders said no. This has been going on for the last 42 years,” I said.

“And, for 28 of those last 42 years, we’ve been waiting for the Cricket World Cup!” said Abu, the 8-year-old.

Sometimes, it is rather difficult to figure out whether a statement is a non sequitur or a profound truth…

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 card catalogue!!

Normally, I delete such ‘forwards’ without reading them, but for this one, it occurred to me that this could actually be good education for Abu and Rabad. The history of how some things evolved is so clear to us, that we somehow assume it would be clear to the kids too. But it often is not.

For example, just yesterday someone mentioned this story from some TED talk – basically a kid folded a piece of paper into half, drew a screen on one half and a keyboard on another half, and said that this was a laptop. The kid’s father pointed out that when he was a kid, these things did not exist. The kid, after pondering over this for a while, asked, “Paper did not exist when you were a kid?”

Right. So, I thought that this would be a good opportunity to give Abu/Rabad an idea of what did not exist when I was a kid. And I started reading the email to them. (I’ve reproduced the whole email at the end of this post for your reading pleasure.)

This went well. They were sufficiently interested and amazed by all the factoids. Then they started asking their own questions about the world back then:

“Did you have to wear uniforms to go to school?” wondered Abu.

“Yes,” I said, realizing that schools have changed very little in the last 30 years.

We had a long discussion about the aforementioned ‘card catalogue’ in the library, how books were arranged in the library. “Were the books all arranged alphabetically?” …

“You had cameras,” pointed out Abu, “I’ve seen photos from those days.”

“That’s correct, but our cameras did not immediately show you what the picture had come out like. We had to continue taking photos until 36 photos were done, and send it to a shop for getting the actual photos, and get the photos back 3 days later. And only then we would find out whether the photos came out alright, or out of focus or if there was any other problem.”

“Oh,” said Abu, clearly impressed by how hard the world was back then.

Then he asked this brilliant question:

“Was the world really black-and-white in those days?”

I should point out he is 8 years old.

I was nonplussed for a moment, before I burst out laughing.

“No, only our cameras were black-and-white,” I clarified. But really, when you think about it, if all the photos and all the movies from those days are black and white, would you really blame a kid for thinking that the world was black-and-white?

“Oh,” said Abu, “I thought everything was black-and-white.”

“Except the trees,” chimed in Rabad. “How can the trees have been black-and-white?”

And so it continued for a while. No DVDs. No MP3 players. Had to wait until Sunday morning for cartoons.

Rabad give me a look that brought out all shock and pity that her 6 years could muster, and said:

“The world was so unfair.”

You bet! Kids today have got it too easy…

If you are 40 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking Twenty-five miles to school every morning….Uphill….barefoot… BOTH ways Yadda, yadda, yadda And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it!

But now that I’m over the ripe old age of forty , I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today.

You’ve got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn
Utopia!

And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don’t know how good you’ve got it!

I mean, 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 card catalogue!!

There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter – with a pen!

Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take, like, a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!

Child Protective Services didn’t care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! Nowhere was safe!

There were no MP3′ s or Napsters! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself!

Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We’d play our favorite tape and “eject” it when finished and the tape would come undone.. Cause – that’s how we rolled, dig?

We didn’t have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that’s it!

And we didn’t have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn’t know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn’t have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Asteroids’. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen…. forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel! NO REMOTES!!!

There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I’m saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-bastards!

And we didn’t have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove! Imagine that!

That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You’re spoiled. You guys wouldn’t have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or before!

Regards,
The Over 40 Crowd
*Send this to someone you’d like to make smile, Whether they are under 40 or not.)

“Pr___ is 18 years now and going to stay in a hostel. Do you think she feels like an adult?”

“Yes…,” they said tentatively, not really understanding the question.

“Actually,” I clarified, “I think that Pr___ does not feel like an adult. I think she still feels like a kid. Can you guess why?”

This question made a lot of sense to them. Answers came in quick and fast:

“Because she still has school stuff to do” (I guess engineering college is “school stuff”)

“Because she still does not have her own money.”

“Because she still cannot stay in her own house.”

Pretty impressive, I thought, especially since I hadn’t though of these answers myself.

“Do you want to become adults fast?” I asked

“Yes,” said Sw___. “No,” said Abu. Rabad said “No,” first and then changed her answer to “Yes.”

“Why?”

Sw___ rattled off the answer, “Because I want to do whatever I want, and I want to go whereever I want, and I don’t want any parents bossing me around.”

“You don’t like parents bossing you around?” I asked.

“Of course not,” said Sw___, and then suddenly put two and two together, “Oooh. Pr___ doesn’t feel like an adult because her parents are still bossing her around?”

Pr___ nodded her head tragically in response.

“So, when do you think Pr___ will feel like an adult?”

“When she finishes her college and gets her own house and a job,” again Sw___ had an answer ready.

There was a pause while everybody digested this new thought. Then Abu countered:

“No, after that, you have to get married. And then your husband or wife bosses you around.”

At this point, I had to step away for a few minutes. When I came back, they had apparently had a conference, and Abu told me: “First your parents boss you around. Then you grow up and get married and your husband or wife bosses you around. Then you get children and they give you a headache. After that your grandchildren give you a headache.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah.”

I decided to neither draw any conclusions, nor to prod the children into any conclusions. So there was another pregnant pause.

Then Sw___ spoke: “If you are an adult, you cannot sit on swings, and you cannot jump on the trampoline.”

“You cannot make somersaults,” added Abu, “and you cannot jump around.”

I don’t know whether the kids drew any conclusions at this point; I’m just reporting the facts.

(This post has been read by Abu and verified for accuracy, after a few factual errors were corrected.)

“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…

“What’s ‘lonely’, Pappa,” wondered Abu.

“Lonely means he feels alone and bored. He lives alone in the mansion, that’s why he is lonely.”

“He lives alone? Where are his wife and children?” Abu wanted to know.

“I think he’s not married.”

“How can that be? He is a rich man!” Abu declared.

Where did that come from, I wondered. I decided to poke and prod a little bit more, on the theory that it is always good to know where your children are getting their knowledge from – always research the competition.

“You think all rich men are married?”

“Yes, it is very easy for them to find girls.”

O…K… I wonder who’s teaching him this stuff. This needs to be stopped.

“Really? Who said that?” I inquired.

“On TV,” he said, with an air of obviousness around him.

I’m fairly certain that I know what TV programs my kids watch, and I couldn’t think of anything that would be teaching kids something like this. Certainly, they’re not watching any dating game shows, any variation of “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire,” or The Millionaire Matchmaker.

“On, TV?” I asked dubiously, “Which show?”

“Tom and Jerry,” said Abu, and went on to describe some episode where Tom and Jerry and some dog and some other cat are all interested in dating some girl, and for that reason they’re trying to get some money, or gold, or something. I don’t remember the exact details. I wasn’t really paying attention to the story, partly because he rambles when he’s telling a Tom and Jerry story, and partly because I was already composing this blog post in my head.

“Why?”

“Because then I’ll vomit.”

Kids learn random things like these from their friends, and we have to fight very hard to reverse the thought process once they get it stuck in their head. Telling them that am a more reliable source of information than their 7-year old friends is no use. It takes a lot of hard work and constant repetition to convince them otherwise.

“Who told you that?”

“My teacher said that.”

My heart sank. If it is difficult to counter the statements of their friends, it is almost impossible to counter something that the teacher said. Teachers are God. This could mean the end of milk drinking – an absolute necessity in a largely vegetarian household. I knew I had to fight this, but I felt like David taking on Goliath.

Looking for a loophole, I asked for details: “Which teacher? When did she say this? Why?”

“Xxx ma’am said it. Ishita vomited in the bus yesterday. Teacher said it’s because of the milk. It churns and churns and churns in the bus and then we vomit. Even Yyy ma’am said the same thing last year.”

Two of them saying it is even worse.

“Abu, but you don’t vomit when you drink milk, so I think you can continue drinking. Let Ishita stop.”

“I felt like vomiting yesterday. And I had vomited once in Senior KG.”

Senior KG was 2 years ago, and he had vomited because he had an upset stomach. He probably did not even have milk that day.

I was clearly losing. I was thinking of whether it would help to write a letter to the teacher. Or maybe to the principal. Then I decided to try a long shot. I’ve always had good success by quoting “results of research studies” to adults. So I wondered whether an appeal to science and statistics would work in this case.

“Abu, how many times have you had milk in your life?”

“I don’t know”

“See there are 365 days in a year, so there are more than 1000 days in 3 years. So you’ve probably had milk more than a 1000 times. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“So out of 1000 times that you drank milk, you did not vomit 998 times, vomited 1 time, and felt like vomiting 1 time. Right?”

“Yes.”

“So if you drink milk now, which do you think is more likely?”

“What is the meaning of ‘likely’?”

I wasn’t sure how to explain what ‘likely’ means. So I decided to simply rephrase the questions.

“Out of 1000 times that you drank milk, you did not vomit 998 times, vomited 1 time, and felt like vomiting 1 time. So if you drink milk now, which one do you think is more possible.”

This time he understood.

“The first thing is more possible.”

“Right. So I think if you drink milk, you will not vomit.”

“Yes.”

Victory!

“So will you drink milk now?”

“No.”

Damn!

Remember, when you are in a position to crush an opponent, the best thing to do is to concede some small point, something that they can take solace in, something that they can hold on to as a consolation prize. The winners of World War I ignored this important point, totally humiliated Germany, and then paid the price in the form of World War II.

“Ok,” I conceded, “You don’t have to drink milk today. But you will drink from tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

Yes!! I had taken on the invisible “foreign hand” of the teacher and defeated it. Victory never tasted so sweet.

You have to be a parent to understand why this is such a big deal.