Children and the art of timelessness.

I was catching up on my CD viewing during a recent public holiday. I decided to watch my collection of Hindi songs from the films of the great Hrishikesh Mukherjee for the millionth time. My son Sanjiv decided to skip his afternoon nap and join me for the viewing. Once he decided to do so it became a venture fraught with possibilities.

As we heard the songs, one by one it became that they were lost on my son. The beauties of the numbers form the 1966 film Anupama or the classic songs of the 1970 film Anand did not leave him dumbfounded. When I asked him for an opinion he gave it freely –Bad. On an instinct, I switched to the song “ Rail Gadi, Chugh Chugh” from the movie Aashirwaad of 1968 vintage where a none too young Ashok Kumar mimics the sounds of an train and announces the arrival of one station after another. Suddenly Sanjiv was rolling down the bed in laughter. What is more he kept asking for repeated encores.

Suddenly, this song from Aashirwad which I used to routinely fast forward had occupied the same place in life for Sanjiv that had earlier been reserved for songs from films like Taare Zaamin Par (Bam Bam Bole). A four year old child in 2010 liked a song from a 2009 film as well as a 1968 film. Children seem to love the same thing down the ages. Whether it is songs or stories. That is the reason that stories form the Ramayana And Mahabharata have been handed down the ages. Reflecting a certain timelessness. Like children themselves.

Tendulkar and the Art of Breaking Bulbs

“Daddy, you must bat like Sachin Tendulkar,” said my son Sanjiv just a few days before the great batsman cracked the historic double hundred in a one day international. We were playing cricket outside my brother’s house in a courtyard of sorts. Strangely maybe because he is a child, he showed a preference for bowling.

The suggestion I guess could have been made only by an adoring four year son when it comes to me. To reiterate a point made earlier by me during my college days, my friends recognized my passion and knowledge of the game but not my talent.

Coming back to the present, perhaps inspired by my son’s words I unleashed what by kids’ standards was a ferocious drive. The speeding ball found an unlikely mark—a tube light and of course there was a crash. Why anybody should keep a tube light with a blown fuse (as subsequent enquiries revealed), in a courtyard was of course a mystery. Anyway, any chance that the tube light would at least flicker during its dying embers was put to rest. as it split into numerous pieces. Also for sometime the game came to a halt as father and son retired to the safe precincts of my brother’s house and watched the remnants of the tube light being swept away. Later on when the game resumed, Sanjiv wisely did not let me bat and showed to the world that here was a batsman in the classic Sunil Gavaskar mould when it came displaying a tight defence.

This took me back to my college days when I managed to combine singing (again something at which I am no good at) with breaking bulbs. While humming a popular Shammi Kapoor number of the 1960S I threw the ball in the air in my kitchen only to hear a bang. Of course it was a bulb. I guess old habits die hard. As I have transited from being a college going adolescent to being a father, I continue to be bad cricketer, a bad singer but continue to display a talent for breaking bulbs. The canvas has only widened with the courtyard replacing the kitchen and of course the bulb giving way to a tube light.