Saturday, October 18, 2008

Out of the Mouth of Babes - -

My little niece Amala was a super entertainer. As a child, she always ran. I think she didn’t know how to walk. And she ran like a big bouncing ball – never straight. And the little girl had a tongue right round her neck. She used to come up with such startlers that every time she opened her mouth in the presence of strangers, we used to get nervous. Like that day, when she stood leaning against her mother, looking with deadly calm at an elderly aunt whose one eye was permanently closed. Little Amala’s silence was like the calm before the storm, and I began to get nervous. And then, she raised her right arm slowly and deliberately, in a Heil Hitler fashion, folded her fingers except the index finger which she pointed in the aunt's direction, - and dropped the bombshell. “Looks like our chicken’s eye,”, she announced loud and clear. (One of our hens had died the previous day of some disease. It had gone around with one eye closed for a couple of days before it died). “What did she say”, asked my aunt, whose ears not quite tuned to the American twang. I don’t remember how my sister got out of the situation.

She was a little older when the family, sitting around the dining table, were discussing Morarji Desai’s urine drinking habit. Suddenly, I noticed that deadly calm settle on Amala’s face, and waited. No tension this time ‘cos only the family was there.

And then it came. “Ichayan”, said Amala, addressing my father in that typical musical tone reserved for him. “I have a doubt”. There was that full stop in her tone and expression at that juncture. She looked very serious. “ How did he drink his urine? Directly or indirectly?”

My father nearly choked over his food laughing.

10 comments:

  1. LOL! Whatay naive doubt.
    Hehe!

    -Nikhil

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  2. Yeowwww - that was for the ahem urine-talk. The niece is precious. I am waiting for my nephew to start talking, he can just about say tatey (tata) :-)

    A famous one-liner I said as a kid in front of family and friends on watching a movie - hero and heroine comes together and I announce knowledgeably "When a man hugs a woman, there comes a baby"

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  3. LOL! As a child i used to argue with people that i came out of my dad's stomach and not mom's.

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  4. hehhe..the urine comment was the best:D.
    its real fun to have such kida around.

    btw, your previous post about the rain(king's crowns) is too good

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  5. heheheh that was quite a superb question.

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  6. haha.. reminds me of the book 'the emperors new clothes'.. the naive yet so sensible question of a child.. that has probably given an idea for even a scientific theory or 2..

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  7. i can almost hear u narrating this story - lol!

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  8. Posted this somewhere else.

    When I was small I thought putting a garland used to make babies. So when we played "marriage" I would refrain from putting a garland lest my parents scold me for creating babies :D

    By the way commented again to
    DING DONG!!! (next post)

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  9. kids...!!!
    wonder wat wud hav the word innocence been without them..

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