Little Nevaan's world

 

Nevaan is reading a poem to his father from a WhatsApp message on the latter’s phone. His father is correcting every word the little son pronounces. Nevaan’s patience is pilfered away and he shuts him up, ‘How will I finish the poem Papa? You keep quiet and only say, “vaah, vaah!” when I read the poem!’

‘Oh, it’s Thursday tomorrow!’ little Nevaan is suddenly startled. Well, it’s the ‘thought of the day’ day during their online classes. And he thinks not so appropriately sometimes. His thoughts sometimes border on big insults for the teachers and the school. His free-spirited thoughts give him ruffled hair and angry shakings by his much-worried mother. ‘How I wish there was no Thursday and just Sunday in its place! There should be two Sundays!’ he sighs very sadly.

One day he is feeling very happy. He has had two successive nights of dreams. This elderly teacher is very strict with him during the online class, so much so that we use her as the scarecrow to deter him from his mischief. He says that in his dream he went to the teacher’s house and she allowed him to watch cartoons throughout the day. Not only that, she gave him big buckets of chocolates, cookies, noodles and pizzas also. So he ate throughout the night. Inspired by his dream, he isn’t taking her as scarecrow in real life anymore. ‘Ma’am is very sweet!’ he gushes.

In the second dream, a dolphin with a huge face becomes his friend. ‘We play and swim together. Her mouth so big!’ he says. ‘She opened it and I went in for playing. We played ludo, me and she in her mouth. We played football also. Then we ate hot-dogs, burgers and chips. Then I came out and we played outdoors. Then we both went to what is below Leh?’ he wants me to guess. ‘Srinagar?’ I propose. ‘Yes, we went to Srinagar to enjoy.’