Dear D
A lot happened in the last few months. So I am writing a longish letter. You ofcourse are the hero of the story though sometimes you want to be a villain. Okay I lied. Most times you want to be the villain.
We shifted out of our home a day after your school closed for vacations. There were lots of renovation projects waiting to happen at our flat so we shifted to your nana naani’s house in kaushambhi.
We made you join a dance class and you learnt some amazing moves within a week. And then you quit because it became boring for you as you had already memorised all the steps. Impressed with your talent (or maybe the joker in you), your teacher kept calling for days requesting you to return but you refused. That could also be because your favorite ice cream vendor (Amul) stopped coming and I guess that was one major factor for your disinclination. We also tried to take you for football coaching but after a while it became embarrassing to see you dancing to silent music while the other children were playing ball. And therefore we quit football for you.
One of the weekends I had taken you to meet Jai Aditya in the Great India Mall in Noida. That was our one and only visit to the mall. Here’s why: Jai is an inherited-friend for you. He is your friend because I am friends with his mom. So this is one meet-up for which we were both super excited. The gaming arena where we were supposed to do the “playdate” was the biggest and the loudest I had been to. Or maybe it seemed to me so because I was visiting a gaming arena in a mall on a weekend after like years. Anyways in between the games and our catching-up, we lost Jai. What followed was ten minutes of mayhem when we looked for him at the consoles, then in the arms of a potential-kidnappers and we even scoured the areas between the gaming arenas. We asked people around and every time I would turn back to find you trailing after me I implored you to look for Jai, thinking that you will have the vantage point of your lowered height, something that we don’t have. I shouldn’t have done that because afterwards, you told me, you were scared to go look for him on your own. Ofcourse you would have been scared. I shouldn’t have asked you. We found him in the security room where they had safely put him as he was crying a lot. You called it the lost and found day but in the night the day’s stress finally got to you and finally you gave in to tears. The next day you memorised my phone number so that you know who to call now if you get lost. And then we lost the car in the parking because your nana forgot the color of the pillar. The thing is, nobody had asked him to remember it in the first instance. It took us an hour to locate the car. We came back home so tired only to be met with an excited bat flying inside our bedroom.
Your stay was quite memorable here as the house was often visited by the nearby wild-pet animals. There was a pigeon family in making when we moved there. Infat you saw the egg then were confused when you saw the new born and no egg and then were amazed by the empty nest, all within ten days. We got a bat baby once, which refused to leave but the guard finally managed to catch it. You called him the bat man whenever you met him. And he often teased you with the scary tale of a room full of pet bats in the basement, which you actually believed. Twice we were visited by squirrels. The first squirrel had made herself quite comfortable in your lego container and had to be literally chased out as you were scared of her. The second squirrel hasn’t left the house and we lost track eventually as she was pretty quiet in the daytime and active only after everyone had slept.
Visit to Qutab Minar and Akshardham temple were the highlights of the visit. And you did not go there because you were pious. You went there because of the architecture, I think. The thing is I am not sure I see the beauty in these monuments. It’s been a couple of years since you first went to India Gate but your obsession with the monument has just not diminished. On all our drives to and from Gurgaon, we have to take a detour for India Gate as you have to absolutely see it. Both ways. Even a glimpse is enough for you. It reminds me of me when I tell your father that I absolutely must / have to / need to do window shopping at h&m and zara whenever I visit a certain mall. I realize how puzzled he must be feeling then. And afterwards.
We also went to Kidzania as you absolutely had to visit the place due to the various commercials and hoardings you have been exposed to. It was a different experience for both of us. It taught be to give you responsibility and to watch you from afar. And it taught you how to best use your resources and time and balance it with the fun quotient.
We are back home now and you are amazed at the transformation of our house. You still refuse to move your lego tableaus from the centre table so that is a problem. You still practise summersaulting on the new couches so I don’t know how long are they going to stay new…
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