the Sun is revolved around

Dear Darsh, 

You are 11 years old now. You are in class 5D of the Greenwood Intl School and you recently started going to school for real after a 2 year break. 

You are pretty nervous these days because it's your first time taking exams, that too written. 

So we are making you revise and the subjects are divided between your dad and me. Daadi ofcourse teaches you Hindi. 

Yesterday, you shocked your dad for the first time when doing the solar system revision. You told him that the Sun is revolved by the planets.  He was quiet for a minute but then he corrected you. and looked at me cos i was smiling. cos you both had decided that reading was of no use and so it gave me meany pleasure when you made this horrendous mistake. but i am not always so mean. and you are reading more books on your own these days. 

Soap dispenser and the fight of the newspapers

Dear Darsh, this week has been very entertaining.

On Wednesday, you broke another bottle. Did i tell you that you need a new bottle every months. It doesnt matter if its plastic, sturdy glass, thermos, aluminium, steel... you always break it.

I was so proud of yr father on monday. he had filled in the soap in the soap dispenser. So thoughtful of him to do sch things quietly without asking me where the big packet of liquid soap is kept, or without asking me when will i fill it. It was a bit too thin for my liking so i am asked him which soap was this but he said he didn't do it. We looked at you then. Did you fill water again in the soap dispenser? I asked you. yes it was getting empty again, you told me sweetly. I was so torn between giving  you a lecture and thanking you. So i settled with a wide stary smile. I think that scared you a little :)

Yesterday was the funniest. You wrote such a creative story about glassy frogs and what made them transparent! I never thought aloe vera gel could do the trick. I wish you have finished writing it in class though.

Today morning you told me a classmate got kids chronicle.So you told her that JI is bigger, better and more entertaining. You also told her that JI is written by your mom and when she asked u about ads, you told her that she can see JI ads within 5 years!!! And that's when you started convincing me about the ads. i mean yeah but i am still not earning any money dear. then you had a vision that you shared with me. how we should do merchandise products with JI and specially with your photo... but sadly you still dont want to carry a copy of the paper to school. I think you were a bit embarrassed and maybe think i wnat you to take orders for the paper. Actually i thought you would feel proud of your mom but anyways.

Last week i came late one day and you hugged me and cried. you missed me, you told me. i love spending time with you but its been 9 months since i met Sonal aunty so i had to go meet her.

tomo we are going for the 1st handwriting class. hope it works out for you baby.    

back after a long break...

Dear Darsh,

i became an entrepreneur again last year. Dont know if that got covered in the last letter i sent to you last year but anyways that's the only and only reason behind it. that and the fact that last yr you read some of these letters and got bored and ran away!

so anyways, i started a newspaper for children with Sonal aunty. it was a blog first and it was so good that people wanted to read it so we went into the publishing business. the two of us have been doing everything - writing, editing, marketing, packing, dispatching and collecting the monies so ya life has been hectic but yr bari mosi told me to start blogging again and i love instagram but you need a writing pad with endless limit on words sometimes and so here we are. now enough about me.

last thursday (i.e. on 25th July) you said the 3 golden words that i had given up on. not i love you. i know you do. it was "i am starving" and followed by "what's for dinner?" trust me i was teary eyed at i am starving and the somehow controlled it but when you asked me what's for dinner, i think i did shed a tera or two. i man not being melodramatic. this is how all Indian moms are. dads dont bother so much but lets not go there today. 

the other day i showed you this email id i created for you. i thought maybe you could write letters to you family in usa and miss them less but you didnt want to use an email id created by me. so its back to its stagnant stuff - catching dust and random clicks of your childhood until you decide to use it one day. btw its 24darsh@gmail.com

we went to usa this year for summer vacation because you wanted to meet all your brothers and sisters there. we had a blast. so much so that you didnt want to come back. you wanted to go back even after a month of coming back.

you have finally become a little independent. remember the first time i asked you to beome independent and you told me - "no, i want to be a mexican!"

  

7th bday party

Dear Darsh

I am writing after so long because we have been busy. Let me tell you about your 7th birthday party. Until January you did not want to host a party. By mid january some excitement creeped in and you started making lists: friends to invite, theme, menu, games but you also insisted that we host at home. No amount of bribing, cajoling, begging worked. Infact we told you that at home we won't be able to invite all your friends. So you said you will have a boys' party. After that you sat on all the chairs and couches one by one and guess-estimated that around 25 kids can be invited. We negotiated and the list came down to 20. That's another story that you ended up inviting around 30 kids.
Now for the party. It was the most riotous, noisy, out-of-control party i had ever hosted or even attended. Everytime one of your friends came, the other children chanted his name and hugged as if meeting after so long. The games guy was late and when he came he made children partner up which led to a few disagreements. And then ofcourse wven after telling him several times in advance he made only a few kids win again and again. A few pouts there too. So had to dig out some prizes for them and hand it over to them. You had very nicely handed over your money bank and the password to all your friends so at one point my room was filled with children fighting over real money and who would 'deposit' it in the box. Halfway through the party you sneaked out a few return gifts and handed it over to your friends. Some opened it too and complained about the quality. Some tried to dismantle and assemble it again. A few came to me and asked why this and why not that. And now let's talk about the cake. You know your neha mausi gets the cake since she has started working with chocolat. So this year too she organized it. And a good thing too because no one else could have accomplished it. You wanted a cake with 2 kinds if topping - lego and pokemon. Ofcourse you wanted a third element too - boboiboy but thankfully sanity prevailed. Ofcourse there were tears for the cake topper edible toys too. Too much. So much so that we had to tell your friends that the toppers have to be returned. No really we said that.

SKF, unsuspension of disbelief and other strange happenings

Dear Darsh

Initially, when you were little-r and i didn't know you well (due to your young age of course) i used to wonder if i would have any thing to write about for the next letter. you see, i assumed we would have a very normal life with uneventful days and no surprises. how wrong i was.

You are 6 months shy of your 7th birthday. You can easily spell hibernation, add up numbers with carry over and have been pleading for a video camera to shoot a few lego movie trailers. you have drawn and colored 4 posters to be exact. 

Today at 7 am, you had a craving to watch Bajrangi Bhaijan. We are very used to these early morning variety of carvings so we sorted through some 40 un-marked CDs and founds your favorites movie of all time. You settled down to watch it post breakfast. Wikipedia says (i don't always believe them though) that the term suspension of disbelief or willing suspension of disbelief has been defined as a willingness to suspend one's critical faculties and believe the unbelievable; sacrifice of realism and logic for the sake of enjoyment. Most people adopt suspension of disbelief when reading a science fiction or a historical drame or any movie. The first time ofcourse because after that you know what's going to happen next so nu psurprises there. why am i talking about it? because i think its been an year and a half since you started watching and rewatching "bajrangi bhaijaan" but every time you see it, you gasp at the most critical scenes. But the most amazing think is the genuine look of surprise on your face and the perfect O you make every time Salman does somthing amazing. 

Also today you told me you are SKF i.e. Salman Khan Fan, An acronym you developed on your own.

Last week at 6:30 am (yes we do get a lot of early morning requests) you told me you heard some senior children practicing the song Zombie. and that you wanted to hear it on gaana.com. To humour you, i looked as i was sure such a song must be the byproduct of your over-imaginative grey cells. Sadly the song does exist and you listened to it in a loop for half hour. This was slightly worrisome for me as i found the sound slightly unhealthy for the ears of a 6 year old. and specially because the blue whale is doing the rounds these days and i am already wondering how much enigma music i listened to when i was pregnant, for you to want to listen to such a song... after several consultation with my peer group i decided to delete the song. i am happy to inform you are not obsessed with it.  

The other day you and me had a small argument about a certain notebook and whtehr it had to go back to school o not. i checked with your mam and after reading her response you realized your mistake and quietened down. not us. we got chatting on mail (yes we were still doing that as the phone nos of class teachers is like a top-level secret). anyways your teacher revealed on mail that you told her you chew your food 21 times as prescribed and that's why you are unable to finish your food on time. (on the family watsapp group, there was a subsequent debate on fact after i shared this little piece of information.)

we are sending you for basket ball and table tennis classes before school hours for this quarter. your dribbling has really become good and we do not have any idea about your swing yet. it seems during a basketball class, some senior girls told you to go play with the children so you told them, "i am not a kid, i am studying in class 1. Kids study in kg and nursery so i am big boy now." You have really grown a bit recently. You somehow successfully managed to use the sports bathroom on your own, all alone, doing the sports session and managed to not mess up at all. 

your father is travelling to USA these days. and while you miss him a lot, you are equally shocked and jealous when you realized Eira and your father are getting along so well. 

your have been coming to the gym randomly and a few days you played football with our coaches. the last time you were there you asked for the poster placed there as you want to become a solder when you grow up and have the same expression the man in the poster has - frowning with his strongness is what i would call it... 

did i tell you that i love you? 

Summer of 2017

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…

April 2017 - nature lover with a twist and other stories

Dear Darsh,

You are 6 years, 2 months and 3 days old today. April 2017 is still not over but it has been an overwhelming time for us as your parents. Because your questions have become stranger. 

Our alone-time was cut short drastically this month due to work but you spend some quality time with your father. You are pretty impressed with your father these days. Especially with the citation and award etc. You did tell your teacher about your father. How he is teaching you to wrestle. You also told her about your new underwear and the designs on it. Maybe you share a bit too much with your teachers.

Request for name change

You asked me why I didn’t name you karush. And why is your name Darsh. Obviously this happened in the morning before we went off to our respective places of fun and mental peace. Then you told me you would like to change your name to karush but how worried about how to inform the teacher about it. But by evening you had probably decided that Darsh was good enough for now. Btw I looked up Karush as nobody I knew was aware of the word. It means dry and hard. We still don’t know how you got this name…

The multiple voice syndrome

I don’t know if it is a thing common to all kids obsessed with Lego but you are always playing with lego and talking in multiple voices. I once listened in and heard a damsel in distress, a police man, a super hero, several villains... lately you have started making background music scores too. Is it normal?

The nature lover with a twist

In the last one hear I have bought and borrowed so many books on a singular theme that I have lost the count. They all are about nature’s most horrible creations – cyclones, storms, typhoons… We read these books but only the parts that interest you i.e. Infact the other day you compared the books and Dr Binocs video explaining the natural disasters and told me Dr Binocs is wrong. Last week I asked you to make me a beach scene. You drew a pretty scene and then drew in a tsunami. I asked you to draw a snowy day with your friends and you did that but with a blizzard as the central theme. Even a sunny day became a cyclonic sunny day. Even our lego people have to suffer a lof of weather issues. I don’t know if that is your take of the global warming scene but I have taken the number of a child psychologist and maybe one day I will ask her how to make you slightly less morbid in your imagination. In other news the matchstick characters you draw have become slightly fatter. They look squarish now.

When a boy does not love a girl

We went to a birthday party and I asked you to draw a card. You drew a beautiful card with cakes and decorations etc but you signed it ‘Like Darsh’. Because you said I don’t love her and she is not my friend so I am writing like. And that’s how it went to her. Did I tell you her mom is a good friend?

Drooly Icky Larva and what's your street name

Again I don’t know if its boys in general who like creatures who fart gases, play with the mucus and swim in their saliva but you do love these larva cartoons where the protagonists love to do just that. You have downloaded all kinds of “free” larva games and videos on my phone and your father’s but I guess your hunt continued because today in the morning my phone showed me a half-filled form for payment details through Vodafone for a new larva game download. The place where you got stuck was street name. Maybe next time I won’t be so lucky.

You and Nana

You guys have a stormy relationship. Mostly because you both are so similar - you both like to tease, dominate, watch tv, play in the park and talk the loudest. Obviously sparks will fly.

Last summer Advay accidently crushed his fingers in the car window but you blamed my father for it and publicly denounced him several times. He does feel guilty about it you know. Anyways you reminded him again about it last week and kicked him too. Did I say the incident happened almost a year back?

A few days back we asked you who is favourite nana and you placed my father at the end. Ofcourse he was sad and slightly shocked about it even though you said “I was joking” several times.

You told my father that you would never be his son. You are too young to understand that he lost his baby boy long time back and saying such a thing could be quite hurtful to him but what can I say. I guess one day you will understand how words, even spoken by a young person like you can sometimes hurt.

Now your nana with the travelling pants is out of station and even though you said all these vicious things to him, now you are missing him and want him back. But I guess a little space will really help you both bond better. Or not.

Your “loving” mother

    

scientific experiment goes very very boink

Dear D

when you were inside my tummy, i used to read a lot of calvin & hobbes. maybe i shouldn't have. i think while reading about his pranks and his devious acts, i passed on a little of his wickedness to you. why else would you, a 20kg puny, not-yet-six would draw an elaborate step-by-step chart of how you would kill us. that too on the very auspicious day of Ganesh Chauth, the only day of the year when i fast for you my dear. a water-less food-less migraine-inducing fast no less. i think the migraine was a bit early that day because of your drawing.

here's how the plot goes (as explained by you)- you, the evil scientist, will mix a potion of orange color and tell us it is fanta and make us drink it. we will gulp the fanta-look-alike-drink as we would be very thirsty and then we will fall down and die. you will then live happily ever after with your father.

when i told your father about it, he marveled at your ingenuity and was so happy about your creative juices.. no really he was all gaga! so i had to point out the basic idea behind the plot - our sad demise and your happily ever after with your grandmother. it sobered him then i think.

to console myself i blamed it on the flintobox experiment kit which gave you the test tubes to mix your potion in, and then i blamed myself for explaining the word scientist to you. and then your kaaka and kaaki scolded us for scolding you and making you angry enough to draw such plans. yes, again our fault it seems.

this freaked me out a little. maybe that's why it took me almost 15 days to actually make up my mind to write about this. i wish my 1st post of the year was on somthing positive and cheery. i wish you would stop thinking so negative. i wish i knew how to undo this anger or hurt in you.

i know you would never really want to hurt us but just so you know, this is when we seriously started thinking about booking an old-age home for us.

love you my dear ;*
your slightly scared mama

skype tutorials and questions

Dear Darsh

When you were younger you used to ask me questions about the planets and the solar system. So I got us a book and we spend many a pleasant afternoons poring over the pages.

Then you got obsessed with flags and maps and an atlas it was for us. And so on… until yesterday. Now I don’t know what books to buy for us. You are 3 months shy of your 6th bday but your questions have become slightly difficult for me to answer. 

After a very long time we had read a Krishna book cover to cover last evening so I was waiting for the questions about people in Vrindavan  but I wasn’t prepared for what was to follow… You asked me some peculiar questions regarding the digestive system. I will be honest. I never thought about such things. Some of your questions: if the water we drink gets converted to pee, then who colors it yellow? If the food that we consume make our poo then who shapes them? And why do they float? Also what makes us fart and burp…

And it didn’t end there. You wanted to know what makes up a storm and what is the difference between a hurricane and a tornado? I am still looking for books which will give me these answers. We did try to tell you that god makes the wind blow in different directions thus making hurricane and tornado but you just stared at us in a very strange manner. Like you knew we didn’t know the answers.

So I reached out to people at higher levels today and tonight you will skype with your elder brother who will try to unravel all these mysteries for you. His mom assures me that he knows all the answers and then some... Let’s see how that goes. In the meantime I am looking up the books online again. 

Did i tell i i love you? I do :*

20th Nov - The Sunday we went to India Gate

Dear D

After much planning and postponing and cancelling, we finally decided to go to India Gate last Sunday. Your parents were too pleased to have one Sunday free finally after so many weeks. So we didn’t do any research. Had we done any research, we would have found out that India Gate was already a booked venue that day by the Half Delhi Airtel marathon. The website had claimed 34,000 participants.

                                      

We actually found about it half-way on our route when we opened the trusty old Google Maps and it popped up the marathon details. We still went ahead because you were beginning to pout. But we found to our dismay (mostly your dismay and shock and horror...) that the entry roads to India Gate were blocked. To kill time and also because we were hungry we went and had a lavish brunch buffet at Haldiram's and also for some sought after imarti. After which we bullied and cajoled your father to venture again to visit your favorite monument.

This time, we got through. just took us 3 hours to reach it instead of the usual 50 minutes but never mind that. your expression was priceless. it was like watching a spaceship movie. You kept staring with open mouth and kept mumbling wow after few seconds. yes i am talking about india gate not taj mahal. You then proceeded to check it out from all the angles and even gazed into its eyes for quite a bit. you even insisted on touching it but thankfully there were too many jawans around for you to be too daring. You then insisted on staying back for the laser show in the night but we clarified with a Jawan on duty that it wasn’t to happen that Sunday.... After saluting an NCC Cadet from a distance you then went to catch a few soapy bubbles and you kept at it for quite some time because the vendor, enthused by your bubble catching talent, kept blowing bubbles at your way and for a minute i thought there was a competition going on. We finally bought one bubble blow set from him and after that you both relaxed.

The next destination was the children’s park. obviously. Here too, you went slightly crazy with the holed-out slides and tunnels. All in all you had a fun day. We came back home exhausted. err not you. You wanted a strawberry cake. Let me backtrack a little. you have been asking for a strawberry cake for so long but i have the lazy-mom syndrome going on these days. but you know the way around it so well. so instead of asking me to bake a strawberry cake you asked me to teach you how to bake one. i don't how you know that teaching baking to little kids has become one of my favorite things to do these days. So you baked it and I helped. And after you ate it we decided to invite your friends for a baking class where you can teach them the baking moves. Andon that note i'll say our day ended. 

Btw You sang Sia’s Cheap Thrills all the way to the monument and when we requested you for a change in song you sang kanha makhan chor. you have been trying to teach me the kanha song so that i may successfully sing it during bed time, lulling you to sleep. sadly i am not even half-way there. you know it by heart already. you also know 3 slokas. that is 2 more than i know ;) Your choice of songs and singers is pretty eccentric as of now – Boyzone – words, Christina Ricci – 1000 years, Jungle book theme song, Shankhar ji ka damru baje, Lego movie song etc. I think as long as you don’t sing hips don’t lie I will be okay.

You ae pretty helpful around home and kind to the less learned. you have started translating for family and friends even when we have told you that everyone knows passable English. So one of your grandmothers had to hear gussa chiriya – angry birds and the other one had to hear makri man. your twitter-star mosi whose poetry is followed by close to 5000 people daily had to hear kitaab chor – the book thief  recently.

Your dance moves are also quite funky and your bari mosi feels you can have a successful career in bollywood. I am not so sure. I think you can be a baker / a robotic engineer / scientist or a maths champ. Or you can be a lawyer. i think.... 

You – I want to be a scientist

Me – so please study. All scientists have to study a lot

You – can you show me the image of a scientist doing homework

Me – yes of course I will do that!

Me – Okay Google…look for little einstein doing home work 

Autumn fun - Nov 8

it was the autumn of 2016

the famous delhi chill was yet to come

girls were still roaming in tank tops and little pants

and babies were out without their caps

but one day after diwali people woke up to severe smog

they were mystified because it didn’t feel cold at all

they first blamed the Chinese firecrackers

and then they blamed Hindus for lighting those

and then they come to know that the real culprits 

were the fire-happy farmers and no one can really blame them now

so schools were closed after much deliberation

And a few people were encouraged to work from home

But the great pollution lasted for more than a week

and while the government decided on shields & sprays

one little boy had a brainwave

he asked his mom to make him a tent

She first looked at him a bit strangely 

but then saw the mischief in his eyes and said okay

So she got those old crutches saved for an emergency and tied them to the big round chair

And she draped it with a flowery bed sheet and they pretended it was in the jungle

And the little boy went inside the tent

with captain America & the new pillow & scratchy the blanket and a little USB lamp

But he still created some space for his grandmother and for a new fairy tale

And at bedtime he was still in the tent, tossing & heaving and pretended to snore

but after a while he climbed on the bed & slept peacefully then

In the morning he went back to his tent and picnic-ed with popcorns & books & his toys and remianed there until his next break

So next time when you think of the summers & winters 

think of the boy in the tent having fun in the autumn of 2016

When the Gods were invited for dinner

Darsh, this is how our diwali morning conversation went:

You-why are we cleaning the house, is someone coming?
Me-Gods - ganeshji and lakshmiji
Him
You-can i cook for them?
Me-1st we pray to them to come. We have to do puja in evening
You - why not now.
Me-they have to gwt ready. They take time. Why don't you start praying
You -they already told me they r coming in a dream. What should i cook?
Me- they come in the middle of the night. Might not be very hungry. Plus they have super powers which makes them invisible
You-then why are they getting ready? And why are they coming if they don't want to be seen?
And the conversation continues all day...

The Oct pages - Suhana's Diamond ring, yr 2nd alld trip and lesson in evacuation & yr lil bro

Dear Son,

The seating arrangement in your class is slightly different from most schools. boys and girls are seated around tables, alternatively i.e. boy sitting next to a girl sitting next to a boy... so you know more girls then boys. in a good way - i thought as in your previous school it was always girls vs boys. so every week you come home and talk about a new girl. trust me i was a happy mom till this point. then you drew a diamond ring and asked me to get this for Suhana as was wearing a very pretty frock!!! you initially insisted we go to her house and give it to her. you have changed your plans since last week and now you insist we buy one on amazon and deliver it to her house. because she wore a pretty dress once. We were still reeling when you manned up and confessed your love for Sia but to change the love of your life every week and taking it to the next step forward by locking it with a ring is a chat i had kept aside for maybe 20 years from now.

Snacks - Oh and in other news i shared my choc cupcake recipe with Sia's mom. and we both sent cupcakes. and you came home and said Sia's cupcakes were better. and now you want to take cookies for your class even though its not your turn. Just because you want to...

Yesterday i took you for a hair cut after a very long time. the last time i had taken you for probably 2 years back and you had cried, thrown up and ended up getting a messy haircut. this time i bribed you with a "slim & small" airplane and you were an angel. You were quite keen on looking like Salman and not Shah rukh though. Amir Khan was not in the running this time thankfully.

Recently you have gained a slightly obsessive quality about hoarding things. I got your grandma a wardrobe organizer. You took it away to your kitchen saying you needed it. we saw it being used as an organizer for all things that could be hanged in a kitchen. I was discarding some not so useful kitchen gadgets the other day and you took those too to your kitchen. did i tell you your pink and mauve kitchen has expanded to your study table and chair. we are things of giving you a few side tables too to store your ever-expanding utensils and other kitchen tools.

The second Allahabad trip was historically funny. Let me start with the train journey. You were more aware of the difference in the crowd. You chatted quite freely with quite a few strangers and also made friends with some children in the train. Thankfully in the train bathroom you did not ask me what is this for? You did not run away too. You loved climbing up and down and were not scared at all. But you were still spooked by the bugs and you think Allahabad is a city inside a zoo as there are too many animals here. i liked your perspective, albeit a bit wild.

Oh and did i tell you you tend to chnage your allegiance to different Gods every few months.
Last year you made us buy a statue of Hanuman as you wanted to do puja of a red hanumanji. This time also you started your demans for a hanuman costume and gada but halfway through Allahabad dusshera you became a huge fan of Lord Shiva. we were corrected everytime we said shivji. So then you wnated to get the wig to look like him. and tiger -skin look-alike clothes and a trishul. because you wnated to do the tandav dance. you also showed me how. but you still wnated to do it in full glory - read costume. we didnt find any of these things because you know na allahabd dusshera is slightly busy with ramleela every few kms. anyways i suggested we can grow your hair amd make it dirty to make it similar to lord shiva hairstyle but you were not satisfied. everytime you googled lord shiv hair on my phone you would push the phone under my nose and say i want this hair! thankfully you forgot all about the fake hair in delhi.

On our flight back, you got frantic to understand and touch and feel the emergency landing manual and the gear which inluces the vest and and oxygen mask etc. again. so we badgered a cute airhostess at Vistara to give you a tutorial on the same. you did manage to rattle a few travellers by your persistent what-if in case of emergency handling questions - what of the plane lands on water? what if it lands in the forest and the best - i want the plane to land on water because then i will be on the boat!
btw this is how the con started after all the passengers had de-boarded:
air-hostess - why do you wnat to know about the emergency landing? do you wnat to be a pilot?
you: no
air-hostess - do you want to be a crew then?
you - no
air-hostess - what do you want to be then?
you - i want to be a scientist and do a lot of experiments
air-hostess to me: Ma'am your son ahs high IQ levels thats why he wnats to know these things in detail
me: haha hmmmm can we start the instructions please!

oh and somthing happened recently that made you go awwww so cute. no seriously this is what you say everytime you see your little brother who you refused to call anything but Jack Jack before he was born but now you call him Arjun :) 

Waiting for customers...

Dear Darsh,

Today you received your 1st new kitchen set of the year.  But you have grown up a little now. You didn't want me to be your customer today. All geared-up in a chef hat and an apron, you were waiting for nana-nani (no 6) to serve them. All your kitchen equipments were lined up neatly with 4 mini plates ready to serve dal, roti & sabzi. You were also excited as you knew they will get you a lego set again. They did.
Today, you also cried as you wanted to go to USA with them. Sadly you were told that no one got your tickets. Actually that happened almost 6 hrs back but you are still upset about it. You refused to speak to kaka kaki today.
We have decided that in your restaurant jack jack will be the head waiter and you will be the restaurant manager. The menu, however will be the same.
Today, during lunch time, you showed me how you roll your roti everyday in school. That was the best moment of the day for me. Did i tell you i love you? I do so much more than you know 😚
In August we started you on two new things - table tennis and music. Let's see how long we can do it this time...

June 3, 2016

Dear Darsh,

Brace yourself because this is a long one…

Your nani was pretty mystified when she saw you crying today. After much cajoling you told me on the phone that the reason you were crying was because you broke a fridge magnet and because you do not want to go to Angad’s birthday.

Till date your attitude towards broken thing is that ‘it’s okay, we would get another one!’ Broken things do not cause a calamity in our house as much as a lost hand or the missing toilet roll of your lego people. So I guess you were majorly upset because of Angad. I am quite sure you will not be friends with Angad ever and here’s why: You both have hated each other at first sight and even though the moms get along pretty okay, there has always been a lot of friction tempered with jealousy between you two. You pretended to be excited about going to the party last evening and even today morning when I said bye to you but I guess you must have reflected over it during the day and you must have decided that you hate him after all. I am sure you will make lots of friends and enemies along your way but I am happy that you have finally decided to be honest about your feelings to me and to yourself.

Summer holidays are becoming unbearable for you I guess because you have been watsapping like crazy to your aunts, uncles, multiples grand parents and your dadi. You are luring the oldies with food and movies and you tempted your Simmi mosi with a pair of red stilettos. She came of course.

She has been mollycoddling you like a baby and you are thoroughly enjoying every bit of it. She litereally does everything for you and everytime she asks you who is your favorite mosi you tell her it is neha mosi!

The superhero drawing have gone beyond me as now you draw all of them together and then ask me to identify them. Most of the time they look like ants crawling on a paper so then you patiently point out each by his and her name and then expect me to remember it for next time. And if that is not enough to torture,  you are also planning to recite a superhero story in school as part of your summer assignment even though it clearly says it has to be story from a “book” and not an imagined war scene!

Btw did i tell you that you drew/inserted an ironman in the 3 bears and Goldilocks story?

We went to Hon Kong in May for a week again this year. You bought more than a sozen lego superheros and villains and I really thought we were done for now but you have already started your new shopping list on amazon.

You have started reading on your own these days but we always end up arguing when I try to correct you. You still hold the pencil awkwardly but atleast now I know you prefer to use your right hand.

We spoke on phone yesterday and because I was in office I did not say those 3 words so you kept waiting for me to say it and when I didn’t you started it this time. You said mama I love you and then waited for my I love you too my baby. Really, I think I can do with some raised eyebrows in my office these days J  

4 elephants on my wrist: 16 may 2016

4 elephants on my wrist: 16 may 2016: Dear Darsh, Your new best friend’s name is scratchy. When you come home from school, that’s the first thing you grab on to. It literal...

16 may 2016

Dear Darsh,

Your new best friend’s name is scratchy. When you come home from school, that’s the first thing you grab on to. It literally hangs around your body all the time, especially when you are sleeping. Yesterday I had gone to pick up my parents and you insisted on coming along. With Scratchy ofcourse. That’s what you call it. I don’t know why since it does not scratch at all. The journey down those 12 floors to the basement has never been this embarrassing. People in the lift would look at you and then at me. I simply shrugged. Scratchy in this lemon green flower printed summery blanket that I cover you with when the summer bedroom temp goes south of 20 degrees (yes the a.c., my age old nemesis). For some unknown reason you have adopted the blanket it as your pet, but since you have not started feeding it yet , i should probably just call it your friend or your inseparable companion. Your father likens you to Linus - the younger brother of Lucy. He made sucking thumb and holding a security blanket normal for kids his age. He also gave rise to the dictum – “happiness is a warm blanket, Charlie brown”. You are way past his age. But yet you remain happy with the oversized blanket.

You broke my favorite pie dish yesterday and when you saw me distraught over the loss you simply said we would buy another one mama. I could have never gotten away with such a statement at your age. Someone would have disciplined me then and there and there were so many disciplinarians in my house as it was a joint family… Anyways you also locked me while I was taking a bath. Thankfully there were people around.

The weekend school project was to aesthetically create a“self portrait” with dead leaves from the garden. Basically the school wanted you to re-explore the natural surroundings of the park in our society, at ground-level to be exact. You are ofcourse a cleanliness freak and found gazing up at the sky more interesting so I had to get down and point out the leaves/ grass etc for you to pick up. This went on for a few minutes until I pointed out something that wasn’t really decayed leaves and flowers …. yup dog poop. And then you spotted a very scary frog. After that you ran home and I had to follow you. I told you to draw yourself on a paper as we had to then stick dry leaves on it. The self portrait was more like “Wilson”, the friend that Tom Hanks had drawn in Cast Away. and if the self portrait was not scary enough already, it looked even creepier after it got adorned with the park fauna. I wonder what your teacher has to say about it.

You really enjoyed the zumba class on Saturday even though it was for women and you were the only kid around. You also enjoyed the skating class last week and we were amazed to see you move around so effortlessly in skates. I have plans for you now :D

Keep smiling my baby, my superstar my little Linus

hulk vs ultron lego

LEGO Super Heroes Mighty Micros Hulk vs. Ultron 76066 https://www.amazon.in/dp/B01AW1RAVI/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_qY.jxbG28Q9E0

LEGO Super Heroes Mighty Micros Hulk vs. Ultron 76066 https://www.amazon.in/dp/B01AW1RAVI/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_qY.jxbG28Q9E0

Earthquake and get-together at nani house

Dear Darsh,
Last wk was yr first real earthquake expwrience time because it wwnt on for sone time. And you saw a lot of people out of their apartments. You saw a lot of people taking stairs for the first time. Therefore you found it exciting. That day became more memorable for your advay dada as he got his fingers crushed in the car window. You of course found that incident also very memorable.
The next day you discussed the eaethquake with your other cousins. The ones who have just started speaking. It was obviously one-sided conversation where you tried to explain the earthquake and the mayhem it caused.

We went for the annual nani house stay over last week. You were one of the 4 kids but naughtiest of the lot. I was actually embarrassed. And three people told me you have become such a brat. You tried to confiscate advay's ben ten shoes. You tried to wear his spiderman wickets as your shoes and you fought with two of your cousins for the bat. And you hit onw of your little sisters. But you were a cool cook. You also wereterrified of the brown lizard and the dead cockroach.

When you became too impish for anyone to handle your nana decided to do an in-house poll to find out who is the cutest brother in the house. Since you must have known by that time you would lose any such popularity contest you revolted in style. You got up and told the audience that advay dada'a fingers got crushed in the car window. And then you literally pointed a finger at your nana and told everyone that he did it. Advay obviously stormed off after being reminded of his pain so eloquently. The favorite boy poll was not taken eventually and everyone was amazed at your incredible polticalness. I am ofcourse beyond any embarrassment now. Your ability to turn around a situation like this has left me slightly petrified of your talents now.

Stay sweet my child. Don't grow up so fast 😚