A friend called a couple of days ago: Why no posts, man? Been busy, very busy. Death in the family and too much work that buys me my bread still pending. "So put some of your old ones, they were quite nice, on that old blog." Well, here is one... written a long time ago.

On Children
(Are not they the sunshine of our lives?)

Children, some one once said, are the face of God Himself. Wajullah. And I should have said Mashaallaah, mashaallah and kept quiet. But that is so wrong isn’t it?

And the great Tagore said: Every child comes with a message from God, that He is not yet disappointed with man. Yeah sure! He is waiting to see how many more it will take before this race He created gets wiser.

Children, in fact could sell you to the first bidder and come home with a new skateboard they bought with the money. And should some one ask them, what happened to your Mummy/ Daddy, pat comes the reply:

“I don’t know.”

If an alien were to visit earth, and listen to a conversation between a parent and child, he would go back thinking we don’t believe in teaching our children at all.

Father: “Son, what happened to your hair.”

Son: “I don’t know.”

Mother: “Where is your school book?”

Son: “I don’t know.”

Father: “Son, your hair was okay in the morning, and I remember very well, if my memory serves me right, you had a beautiful mane of hair, just like Daddy’s when he married your Mummy, that covered the whole of your head.”

Son: “I don’t know”

Mother: “Were you hungry? Did you eat the books?”

Son: “I don’t know.”

Father: “Was your head with the whole morning...”

Son: “I don’t know.”

And sometimes, it must be confusing to the children too, at how often the parents keep changing their names. “Whatsyourname, you - Jesus Christ - can’t you hear me.”

Or sometimes, “Oh Lordinheaven child, have you gone deaf or what?”

And can a parent ever win against the wiles and guile that is childhood?

Take heart, usually you can. If you start doing your things yourself.
Even the great Bill Cosby couldn’t do anything about it:

See, Daddy forgot his glasses in his bedroom. And since he worked hard to get himself an expensive coolie, he thinks why not once in a while enjoy the fruits of labor. So he calls his five year old, and gives explicit directions, child, go upstairs and go to the bedroom, and bring my glasses for me. He sits back, relaxing. After all his old dog could do such an easy job.

He is destined to wait. The little angel returns, but without the glasses.
“But Daddy I don’t know where the bedroom is.”

And this little angel finds it without fail, with the eyes closed, every morning. Right when Daddy wants to snuggle closer to Mummy. And finds it with the precision of a laser guided bomb when Daddy and Mummy have one of their funny moods.

But this time you don’t take chances, you give explicit directions. You take the angel’s left hand and make fist of it. Then you tell her:

“Okay, now you go up the stairs, and go to the first door on your clenched fist side. You enter that door, keep your fist closed still, and once you go in turn to the side of your clenched fist. Now there on the table is that toy you like to play with whenever Daddy wants to read something.

Remember the thing that Daddy puts on his face that you feel is so funny. Remember that toy, which Daddy is supposed to put on and you are supposed to take it off and smudge it? Right. Good Girl. Clever Angel. Go bring that thing.”

You are a parent. You are destined to wait, that is the exact reason you were in fact created for. And the little angel returns, empty handed, of course.

“Daddy it is not there.”

So this time you take the angel by the hand, you lead her up the stairs, and show her how follow the fist. You take her into the room, gently, and lead her to the table. And there in all splendor are the glasses. But of course, the drawer is now open, the books are not where you left them, your cigarettes are all out of their box, but IT is there. Right where you had the stroke of genius and predicted it would be.

You show it to her, in triumph. “But Daddy, it was not there just now!!!”
You can’t teach old dogs new tricks, hell, you can’t teach new dogs new tricks either.

There comes a time when you are not sure of your name either. They come home very often and address you : DadCanI..... or MummyIWant.... And you like the Pavlovian rat come with a age-old, ingrained response. “NO” And here you have to beware. The response comes out even before the stimuli. Da.... No!. Mu..... No!

There are times too, when you become expert in your family tree. You try to teach your precious one, that when you have three apples and you give away two of them, how many remain. And your precious one will gladden your heart, by having done that extremely difficult mathematical sum ten times. But the only trouble is he has come up with ten different answers. You will then make it simpler, after all the precious one is just a child. You get real apples out. And you show them with a demonstration. And that is when you begin to wonder to yourself. Okay, my father was...... my mother was.... and their parents were.... and then... nope, there were no idiots in your family as long you can count, but then your counting itself is now suspect. You then look at your spouse, and there is a crooked look in your eye. You go: “Honey, My Darling sugar-coated-flu-pill, you never told me about your family. Come tell me, and you know what I like to hear about in families? About any half wit uncles and grand uncles, silly!!” And you give a most vivacious smile.

But what you don’t know is that your sugarcoatedflupill has been doing the same algebra in her mind. My father...

You have not had the opportunity to know just how logical these little ones are. For that you have to have two of them, gender doesn’t matter.

Look at this scene from my friend’s home.

“Mummy, Lilly is making faces at me.” And since guests are around, Mummy is a paragon of patience, and tells Lilly with the best smile not to do such horrible things to her sister. When the offence gets repeated, mummy tells Lilly not to commit such heinous crimes before guests, wait until they are gone. The offence, of course is repeated. And mummy has given up trying to keep the younger one’s heart and tells Mary: “ Mary, don’t look at Lilly, pretend she is not there.”

And Little Mary replies: “But Mummy, if I don’t look at her I can’t see her making faces at me!”

And you thought they can’t deduct two apples from three.
Soon you will begin to really start to doubt your memory. Wasn’t it yesterday that you stocked up the refrigerator? And since when did you start to cook for a dozen construction workers? And then you can’t remember ever having bought so many clothes in your lifetime. Must be, since you seem to be washing all of them everyday. And you begin to wonder if you should start taking some memory enhancing pills. You THOUGHT you had switched on that light, you THOUGHT you had closed that door. And this about time you also begin to wonder what kind of specialist is it that deals with the part of the brain that controls what controls left and right and center. For you see that young devil can’t seem to understand that the knob that controls the volume on his music player can also turn left.

And there are times too, which will come a few years down the line for you. You will take the not so little anymore aside and leave explicit instructions. Listen, son, listen carefully, we love you very much, and there is nothing - nothing in the world that we wouldn’t do for you. But when I go out, don’t ever say which family you belong to. When people ask your parents’ name just make it up. Say some famous name, will you. Say P. Ramlee or even Shahrukh Khan, you would like that wouldn’t you? Good, and by chance you see us walking by, let us play a game shall we? Just pretend we are not there.

Soon you realize that the insurance policy you gave birth to thinking of your old is the one giving you old age. And you realize that all those familiar faces you see at the cardiologist that you have started to visit all have a son or daughter about the same age of yours. And you soon learn that those that have died young, had several of them at home.

Ever think why parents are always so keen on getting their offspring married? Well, here’s the secret. So that they can send them off packing, close the door and take deep breath. And maybe plan that second honeymoon. The first one rudely interrupted by morning sickness. And they can really plan it well. After all... they won’t be interrupted this time, even if they wanted to.

But then, you can dream on. For just about when you are about to kiss your beloved, there is a knock on the door.... “Mummy, Daddy, we want to go to a party, can you take care of our little bundle of joy for us?”