“What on earth is going on ?”
You exclaimed, trying to narrate a story from a book in your own words.It was an interesting little tale where a tiger intimidates a rabbit into giving up his fair share of fish and the rabbit gets back by tricking the tiger. Made me remind I need to tell you what’s been going on in the world.
In your world, these days we are practicing maths, trying to understand subtraction and tens and units and hundreds. We played a little game of a shopkeeper and a customer, haggling over prices and using poker chips for money of various denominations.
You enjoy it, taking turns selling and buying stuff and at times returning things. With your age of just 5 and a half, I feel a bit guilty, introducing a little dose of exploitation to your pure self when we negotiate over an item to be returned and its condition. But then one person’s exploitation is another man’s finesse, a sought after soft skill in any walk of life.
Daadi is doing fine for now and has responded very well to the treatment. I believe at some level you are aware of the seriousness of the situation. It might be just me being sensitive but I think you are a lot more mellowed towards her, not as confrontational or taking her for granted. A few days back, we were singing ‘Meri pyaari ammi’ in my car when you suddenly said ‘ Dad, your mumma is older than my mumma. I want my mumma to be older’.
While I understood this was coming from your toddler world view of bigger-older is better, I had to point it out to you that in terms of age, it might not be a good thing to be older. You got my drift and said – ‘Oh yeah, if you get older you will have to go to God. I don’t want anyone in my family to go to God.’
And then just a few days back, while playing with Sky (by the way, you think Kasiaana in Sky’s language means bachcha – an affectionate word for kiddo in hindi !), you said we’ll be sad when Sky goes to God! All I could do was just nod as that indeed was a sombre thought, not just on account of my love for Sky but also for my concern for you and your sense of that impending loss, howsoever much in future it be.
Until now, the concept of going away to god’s house has probably been just a far fetched thought for you. Now, I believe you are just beginning to comprehend the impact of it all, although still far from the scale of impact.
Another unfortunate little thing that happened was you missing out on your school’s nativity performance. Yours wasn’t a big role (the play was Big Bad Ben of Bethlehem) but nevertheless you were excited. You had a flu jab couple of days before your performance and apparently that made you sick in school the day before your performance. A call from school during school hours is a dreadful thing but thankfully it wasn’t that worrisome that day as you had been sick just once. Also, thankfully, Mala Aunty and Aarvi picked you up while I made my way to see you at home. Mumma had a very important work thing to be at and wanted to get back as well but I advised her she didn’t need to.
Because of the school’s policy of not letting an unwell child to come in contact with other children for at least 48 hours from the incident you had to stay home the next day. It meant we were together at home watching your friends perform live on stage. In the grand scheme of things, it was just another quirk of fate that got us there. You had to get the flu jab in the first place and not nasal drops because of Daadi’s neutropenic condition at the time, given her ongoing chemotherapy. But all is well that ends well. We have a gem of a video here of you performing in front of the TV with your friends performing on it.
Dear Daughter,
“What on Earth is going on” is the oft repeated expression all over the earth nowadays. Hunger, political manipulation, social upheaval, disinformation and myths must have always been around. Somehow it all seems to have peaked to a new level of alarming juggernaut this time around. Primarily because for a species seemingfly intelligent and self conscious, we are a society of fools to see it coming and yet fail to rise up against it. To name just a few challenges, Global warming and climate change caused by us humans seems all set to make irreversible damages to our life. Population and diseases just need a spark and we’ll all be on our way to doom. We’ve abused the use of antibiotics and some form of an unassailable super bug with the potential to wipe out human civilisation might already be in our midst. Fake news is more of a mocking middle finger to our education system than just a trending term. We read, watch, believe and promote all the insanely outlandish words that any fool can string together and conforms to our world view. Sadly, all of our technological advances are of no use in dealing with these. In fact it’s the technical advances of past century or so that has undone the good work of prior generations.
Politically, the world is a more divided place than what I grew up to believe. It’s the time of Trump, Brexit (Britain’s exit from Europe), Putin and China’s rise. I’m secretly hoping some of these negatives might combine to make one positive in the interest of human kind. But then again, in the grandest of schemes we might prove to be just another species to have roamed and ravaged the earth.
By the time you get to this, a course laid by the men and women in 2018 would already be part of history and you might wonder what were we doing, living, looking at all these many strange things around us? Frankly, nothing. As of December 2018 we are just living our lives, blissfully acting ignorant on the chaos around us.
So yeah, not a very good report on world affairs from 2018. But on the positive side, its almost Xmas and you still believe in Santa to get you great gifts. Who knows, there might be a real holy spirit who still might take care of the world if we are all good boys and girls !
You exclaimed, trying to narrate a story from a book in your own words.It was an interesting little tale where a tiger intimidates a rabbit into giving up his fair share of fish and the rabbit gets back by tricking the tiger. Made me remind I need to tell you what’s been going on in the world.
In your world, these days we are practicing maths, trying to understand subtraction and tens and units and hundreds. We played a little game of a shopkeeper and a customer, haggling over prices and using poker chips for money of various denominations.
You enjoy it, taking turns selling and buying stuff and at times returning things. With your age of just 5 and a half, I feel a bit guilty, introducing a little dose of exploitation to your pure self when we negotiate over an item to be returned and its condition. But then one person’s exploitation is another man’s finesse, a sought after soft skill in any walk of life.
Daadi is doing fine for now and has responded very well to the treatment. I believe at some level you are aware of the seriousness of the situation. It might be just me being sensitive but I think you are a lot more mellowed towards her, not as confrontational or taking her for granted. A few days back, we were singing ‘Meri pyaari ammi’ in my car when you suddenly said ‘ Dad, your mumma is older than my mumma. I want my mumma to be older’.
While I understood this was coming from your toddler world view of bigger-older is better, I had to point it out to you that in terms of age, it might not be a good thing to be older. You got my drift and said – ‘Oh yeah, if you get older you will have to go to God. I don’t want anyone in my family to go to God.’
And then just a few days back, while playing with Sky (by the way, you think Kasiaana in Sky’s language means bachcha – an affectionate word for kiddo in hindi !), you said we’ll be sad when Sky goes to God! All I could do was just nod as that indeed was a sombre thought, not just on account of my love for Sky but also for my concern for you and your sense of that impending loss, howsoever much in future it be.
Until now, the concept of going away to god’s house has probably been just a far fetched thought for you. Now, I believe you are just beginning to comprehend the impact of it all, although still far from the scale of impact.
Another unfortunate little thing that happened was you missing out on your school’s nativity performance. Yours wasn’t a big role (the play was Big Bad Ben of Bethlehem) but nevertheless you were excited. You had a flu jab couple of days before your performance and apparently that made you sick in school the day before your performance. A call from school during school hours is a dreadful thing but thankfully it wasn’t that worrisome that day as you had been sick just once. Also, thankfully, Mala Aunty and Aarvi picked you up while I made my way to see you at home. Mumma had a very important work thing to be at and wanted to get back as well but I advised her she didn’t need to.
Because of the school’s policy of not letting an unwell child to come in contact with other children for at least 48 hours from the incident you had to stay home the next day. It meant we were together at home watching your friends perform live on stage. In the grand scheme of things, it was just another quirk of fate that got us there. You had to get the flu jab in the first place and not nasal drops because of Daadi’s neutropenic condition at the time, given her ongoing chemotherapy. But all is well that ends well. We have a gem of a video here of you performing in front of the TV with your friends performing on it.
Dear Daughter,
“What on Earth is going on” is the oft repeated expression all over the earth nowadays. Hunger, political manipulation, social upheaval, disinformation and myths must have always been around. Somehow it all seems to have peaked to a new level of alarming juggernaut this time around. Primarily because for a species seemingfly intelligent and self conscious, we are a society of fools to see it coming and yet fail to rise up against it. To name just a few challenges, Global warming and climate change caused by us humans seems all set to make irreversible damages to our life. Population and diseases just need a spark and we’ll all be on our way to doom. We’ve abused the use of antibiotics and some form of an unassailable super bug with the potential to wipe out human civilisation might already be in our midst. Fake news is more of a mocking middle finger to our education system than just a trending term. We read, watch, believe and promote all the insanely outlandish words that any fool can string together and conforms to our world view. Sadly, all of our technological advances are of no use in dealing with these. In fact it’s the technical advances of past century or so that has undone the good work of prior generations.
Politically, the world is a more divided place than what I grew up to believe. It’s the time of Trump, Brexit (Britain’s exit from Europe), Putin and China’s rise. I’m secretly hoping some of these negatives might combine to make one positive in the interest of human kind. But then again, in the grandest of schemes we might prove to be just another species to have roamed and ravaged the earth.
By the time you get to this, a course laid by the men and women in 2018 would already be part of history and you might wonder what were we doing, living, looking at all these many strange things around us? Frankly, nothing. As of December 2018 we are just living our lives, blissfully acting ignorant on the chaos around us.
So yeah, not a very good report on world affairs from 2018. But on the positive side, its almost Xmas and you still believe in Santa to get you great gifts. Who knows, there might be a real holy spirit who still might take care of the world if we are all good boys and girls !
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