Letters To Koko

  Dear Koko,  It is 9 PM and you are asleep. Snowy is also bringing the house down with his snores. But you slept so effortlessly, reading your book for a while, then putting the bookmark in, placing it on the bedside table and switching off the light. Like a grown up.  I remember when putting you down for the day used be the greatest achievement of my day. You were little, I could cup you in my hands and just scoop you about. You would lie on me, your head on my shoulder as I would walk around the room. No one could put you to sleep but me. Because I had the magic spell with me. Your lullaby - ay re ay logon boye jay. The tempo much slower than what Hemanta Mukhopadhyay sang it. Perhaps that was the very reason no one can recreate it.. I believe if I play the original song for you, you won't catch it to be the every so familiar song.  Anyway, in those long nights, when everyone in the house would be asleep except you and me, when you would tug me to sing the same lines again and a

 Dear Koko,  The phone has become such a constant in  your life now - the Roblox, the FIFA, the hundred other games which sit on my paid memory for no good reason. What i did not realize is that you are also a connoisseur of all things absurd that the internet has to offer.  Just the other day you start a story, "Ma this is a regular Madagascar story, ok?" Now Madagascar is easily one of my favorite animation movies. I mean who doesn't love Marty? I know, you're more of an Alex fan. So i was quite pleasantly surprised when you wanted to share this story. I thought maybe this is something you heard in school, in between your Pokémon card trading.  So what I gathered is that there is a an own called Flaco who was the resident of the zoo in New York. You said that his face reminded you of Hedwig. I mean sure, how many owls do we know? So our Flaco was an eagle-owl who was born in captivity. He lived ten long years in the zoo. While he was there, he was not really a popul

 Hi Koko,  Do you know what I love more than anything else in the world - freebies! If I suddenly get a free shampoo in my grocery order, or an extra serving in my KFC order I am the happiest happy person on the planet. So let me tell you the story of a chance that i got to see an exclusive art exhibit, with wine and cheese and all! So we were on the last leg of our Italy trip and we had a lazy day where our plan was to just walk around and explore Rome. As we were walking through the ruins of the Pantheon we heard the word which can strike terror into the heart of any parent who se child has recently graduated to a diaper free life - potty! Yes, there in the middle of ruins (literally!) you needed to get on with your business! What's with you, wonders of the world and potty. But more on that later.  So while we asked you to pose or some such other irrelevant trick to divert your mind, you had only one thing on your mind and we had no choice but to hunt for a toilet there. Now here

 Dear Koko,  Today is the day when you returned home early because of a bomb scare! I mean, what world are we living in? I remember when we were in school and we would get an early off or a day off due to heavy rains and we would have the time of our lives. The most "man-made" of these day offs would be a bandh, which was quite a frequent affair since we grew up in a Communist state. Communism meant something back then, seems eons ago though.  But this is new, this is something I have never experienced and hope never to. It was morning and i was on an office call at 11 AM, when my colleague, who also lives in Bangalore pinged me, enquiring of I had been following the news. Of course I had not. Who has the time to look at what's going on in the world when there are beautiful Excels to admire? When I did look at the phone, it was filled with new of several schools in Bangalore getting bomb threats. The news was just developing so much information was not available o the cha

 Dear Koko,  A few days ago, you had a field trip. This is an annual ritual which you quite enjoy. When you were in kindergarten, you went to a car showroom and I believe that day Maruti had zero sales on Sarjapur Road. The ocean of questions they had to manage! Last year you went to a farm and did pottery and whatnot.  This year was a similar experience - there was ridding of horses and feeding of rabbits. Your takeaway was that horses shit a lot and rabbit stink. All valid life lessons. There were some other activities too, like rock climbing and zip lining.  When you returned from the trip, we went to pick you up from school. It rained so much that day that our big black umbrella tore and I was completely drenched when Baba picked me up from across the road. As with the strange Bangalore rains it was apparently quite dry on the other side of town so when he saw me he was quite surprised! Anyway, we had to cross quite an amount of traffic to finally reach your school.  As we finally

 Dear Koko,  The lifelong struggle of mother and son has begun - homework, homework and more homework! It seems like a never ending saga, where you try to get out of work and I try to best you at your game. We have all done it, disclosing only as much is needed, artfully hiding facts, giving out half truths as per your own convenience. For generations children have duped their mothers so.  So I will tell you what happened a couple of days back. You had to complete your Kannada homework and there were a number of questions to be done - around four or five. Now while I make an impression that I am checking your work, to be honest I cannot tell one letter from the other in Kannada. the script is just pictures to me and I am quite illiterate when it comes to this language. So mostly I have to go by what you tell me. So I tell you "Koko you have this homework and you gotta complete it".  You begrudgingly sit down. You make five trips to the bathroom, sharpen your pencil twice, dri