A little boy's romance with life

 Nevaan: ‘When I was small, I used to do like this.’ Me: ‘Oh, as if you are old now. You are still small.’ Nevaan: ‘Mama, don’t call me small!’ Me: ‘OK, you are old then.’ He brandishes his watergun and aims a squirt at me. It’s still cold enough to get scared of a watergun as if it’s a bulleted one. Me: ‘OK, you are still small.’ He is angry: ‘Don’t call me small!’ Me: ‘What do I call you then?’ Nevaan: ‘Call me young.’ Well youth has many takers. Even five-year-olds are its suitor now.

Nevaan: ‘Ma, please give me a gold coin! Just one!’ His mother is speechless under the weight of the demand. How I wish that gold was as light in our heads as it’s in the heart of a child—a mere plaything. There are infinitesimal shadows in the grown-up minds; mountains of the little molehills of substance. The physical faculties grow and they blindfold the innocent in us, splintering us from being ‘within’ and fall prey to the call of the faraway mirages. 

Little Nevaan’s truth: ‘Ma I’ve started telling lies.’ A child’s lies are better than grown-ups’ truth. Their incertitude far more sure-footed than any iron-hard logic of the elders tethered to the certitudes cemented as wisdom and experience. Their imprudence livelier than any discretion of the older bones.

Thanks to the extended two-year Covid-enforced sabbatical, he has developed a cute little paunch and chubby cheeks. The world came to a halt and tiny children got far more addicted to cartoon networks and mobile phones. So his mother, my younger sister, is worried about his chubbiness. He has come to his Mamaji’s place, yours truly, and we force him to play football with a very soft ball, just a bit heavier than an inflated balloon. He kicks unwillingly and walks off with a limp. The next day he remembers the sports injury. He takes a stick and gives a nice demonstration of limping walk. ‘It’s a big sprain I think,’ he declares complete rest. After half an hour I find him limping with the other leg. I pass on my observation to him. He is caught unawares about the information but then recovers well. ‘The problem Mamaji is that the pain keeps shifting from this leg to the other. It’s a strange game injury,’ he clarifies.

The other day we were trying to fit him into the school dress knickers at a shop at the town. Laziness puts you out of league with standard sizes. We try to convince him about the benefits of running and skipping. He isn’t much interested. He isn’t much bothered about the shower of advices poured by all including his wards, the shopkeeper and other parents at the shop. He is interested in a digital slate that catches his fancy on account of its red frame and electronic built. We buy it for him. But then it creates problems for him. His laziness has seeped into his writing as well. He writes very slowly. So his new toy is a headache for him as we ask him to practice writing on it. He but is more interested in making weird demon faces with my name under them. When the order to write is passed more sternly he sits over it very seriously. From a distance I can see that he is writing very cautiously. I go there to check his progress and this is what I see written very firmly: ‘I don’t want to write.’