Sonny Days

©Copyright Wiskyd, 12 May 2008

I am having a lot of good times with my laptop these days. Much as I love cricket and am enjoying the IPL, it is the laptop that entertains me unfailingly. Especially after it started to walk and talk. Of course, I pamper it no end. Before you conclude that I am a geek in love with my computer, the laptop I am referring to is my almost 3-year old son.

A few months ago I had refurbished and cushioned my grandfather’s ease chair for my mom to “sit back and relax” when she watches her favorite TV programs or reads a book. I hijacked it and brought it upstairs when the IPL started so that I could do the same while watching the matches. My son saw how comfortable I was and decided he needed to take over. After much persuasion, he let me continue on the condition that he sits on top of me in the same relaxed position. So I was back again in the 2-headed animal situation (refer my previous blog ‘Saif and I’) but this time with my son. The only difference here was that I had to explain to him everything that was happening in the match. His favorite player is Dhoni. If he’s in a playful mood, the question ‘What’s your name?’ will receive ‘Captain Dhoni’ as the answer. So everybody who plays cricket is Dhoni for him.

‘Who is that ‘Anna’ with the bat? Dhoni aa?” he would ask.

I have now taught him to recognize Sachin, Rahul, Ganguly, Adam Gilchrist (who had initially been christened as “white Anna”), Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan (they come in the ads between overs). His favorite advertisement these days happens to be the vodafone ‘akka’ and her pug.

Apart from watching IPL, we also play cricket in our compound. He’s the batsman always and I am the bowler. When we started playing, I used to throw underarm and straight to him so that he would whack it and when it went off the bat, I would applaud him. He got used to the applause and so when he missed it he started to blame me for not ‘bowling’ properly.

He would throw his bat in anguish “Appa, nee seriyave podamatengare. Naa Dhoni madri adikano” (‘Dad, you aren’t bowling properly. I want to hit like Dhoni.’)

Coming from the land of Rahul Dravid, he has to be more gentlemanly than that and as a responsible father, I decided to take the right steps to prevent my son from becoming another Sreesanth/Bhaji. 

So I told him “Kanna, Keep your eyes on the ball” and gestured to him with my fingers - first pointing to my eyes and then to the ball so that he could associate my words to my actions. I bowled another straight one and he promptly whacked it. He now insisted that I say ‘Keep your eyes on the ball’ before bowling each time, making me wonder if all cricket superstitions were created like this.  We continued to play and after sometime he probably got tired of all that concentration and missed a few. So when I said ‘Keep your eyes on the ball’, he hit the ball, looked at me and said ‘Keep your eyes. Keep your ball’.

I said “ What??”

He replayed the gesture I had shown him first and repeated ‘Keep your eyes. Keep your ball’ and only then I realized that he was trying to repeat what I had said but the extra ‘keep’ made a difference. He still doesn’t let anybody else bowl because they don’t know ‘how to bowl’ to him. I have to coach them first.

The little fellow can understand and speak both Tamil and Kannada. The only English he knew a month ago were the rhymes he learnt at play school and to say ‘My name is S.’ So my wife and I would speak in English to discuss things that we didn’t want our man to ask questions about later or when it was about him. I realized a few days later that he had started to pick up words and their meanings when he said

‘Appa, I want to Thayir sadam. Rasam, No” (“Dad, I want to eat curd rice not Rasam”)

I was smiling at his attempt and succumbed to the cute broken English that time.  We started talking to him in English because we enjoyed his broken English responses.

‘I don’t want to suda thanni’ (I don’t want hot water)

‘He want to seriya podu’ (This is when he is telling me to adjust his trousers. He says it by pointing to me and then to his trousers)

Our English lessons continue. I am still trying to teach him not to use ‘to’ after ‘I want’ all the time. I am amazed at how quickly he has started picking up on the words and their meanings and uses them. The result has been that my wife and I have to now resort to spelling games when he is around.

Like all kids, he fusses to eat. It’s a major project requiring loads of patience and story telling. My mother watches the new Ramayana series on NDTV Imagine and tells him stories from it to put him to bed/feed him. Till the IPL began, he sat with her and watched the Ramayana. One such evening, I was given the responsibility to feed and he troubled me quite a bit, despite all my pleading, running all over the house refusing to eat. So I picked him up, took him out, sat him on the compound wall and began to feed him. Since he couldn’t run, he cooperated albeit grudgingly. My neighbour’s daughter was impressed that he was eating so obediently and said.

“Wow. S is such a good boy. How quietly he is eating!” she exclaimed to my wife who was standing by.

I looked at her and said “You should have seen what I went through to get him here. I am now contemplating to hold a ‘swayamvara’ and marry him off to the girl who can make him open his mouth to eat.”  After that, I enacted a little swayamvar scene for them that amused my boy no end. The food went in without any trouble. Now the feeding ritual has been renamed as the ‘S swayamavara’ time.

We have bonded so much that he now refuses to be bathed, fed or put to sleep by anybody but me when I am at home. We have ‘one-by-two’ baths. I have to stand at the door when he’s on the potty and wait with folded hands while he does his thing, which is fine with me. The problem is that he insists that he should do the same when I go in. I refused the offer and he promptly bolted the door from outside when I was in and ran away. I was set free after agreeing to meet a few demands. There are several more instances that I can relate but the post is already too long.  Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoy my time with him and am looking forward to many more ‘sonny days’ as he grows up.

©Copyright Wiskyd, 12 May 2008