Letters To Koko

 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 scho...

 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 t...

 Dear Koko,  Let this letter bear witness to how one hero fell and the other emerged in your life. Also, how you apparently hated Harry Kane at a time and now worship his every move.  Every generation has a hero figure. If the conversation is about cricket, our parents would talk about Gavaskar and Kapil Dev and how they are just a class apart. When we were young and we would go ga ga over Sachin, Ganguly and Dravid, they would reluctantly agree they are maybe half not bad. If we were discussing football, I remember my father saying Maradona or Pele are the best that the world has seen. They would smile in amusement when we were besotted with the Beckhams or Ronaldos of the world.  Well, history repeats itself and how! When you would talk about Virat Kohli and how amazing he is, I would eyeroll. How can anyone be better than Sachin? And then, Kohli equalled Sachin's One Day hundreds and I think to myself, move lazily in the couch and take notice, alright, he is not h...