abu & rabad

Rabad dislikes reading. More accurately, I think she would love to be able to read a lot, but is currently not able to, and hence finds reading frustrating. She loves me reading to her, but does not want to read herself. Mainly because she hasn’t yet mastered the basics of sight reading, and hence reading […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…]

As I walked into our apartment complex yesterday evening, Rabad was playing in the parking lot with a bunch of her friends. Upon seeing me she gave a whoop of joy, and came hugged me. Then, she got serious. “You know, Pappa, the earth is going to finish.” My first instinct was to say What […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…]

it is a morning ritual between father and kids. he reads them the newspaper, explains what’s on and off in the world, and answers their questions. 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 […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…]