The Most Powerful Chessman- Day 18 of #100happy days

“Sir asked us which of these chess pieces is the most powerful”, my son began, arranging the rook, the bishop and the knight in a straight line.

“What did you say?”, I asked knowing that with my younger one, anything was possible.

“I told him, Rook”, he replied, flipping the chessman over. “Because the rook can do a handstand.”

“And why did you say that”, I asked after I finished laughing.

“Because Sir is too serious, and I wanted to make him laugh!”

Can’t fault his logic. Can’t but admire his intentions. The world definitely needs more people like him!

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He was right

“My Maths book has a mistake”, my older one informed me. “There is a question, ‘which are the only two months that are next to each other and have 31 days?’. The question is wrong, isn’t it?”

“Of course not. There are two months that are together that have 31 days”, I snapped; irritated that at nearly nine, he still didn’t know the calendar.

“You are talking about July and August, aren’t you?”, he asked. “But what about December and January. They have 31 days too, and they are next to each other.”

And you know what, he was right!

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
― Mark Twain

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This is the fourth year that I am going to be a part of NaBloWriM. The Plan is to elaborate on a quote that touched my heart- let's see how far this takes me. If I can tie it in with the writing prompt, so much the better!

Put kids in charge

Decades back, the Indian government came up with “Project Tiger”- a way to protect the environment by putting the national animal at the apex of the ecosystem. Unfortunately, today, even the big cat faces extinction.

"If tigers are so important, why don’t we just keep them in zoos”, a kid asked.

Before the teacher could reply, my kid piped up, "but Project Tiger is not about the tiger. It is about all the animals. The tiger is the symbol, because big people don't think rabbits and butterflies are important."

Right he was. Why can’t we just put kids in charge?

“If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.”
― Albert Einstein

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This is the fourth year that I am going to be a part of NaBloWriM. The Plan is to elaborate on a quote that touched my heart- let's see how far this takes me. If I can tie it in with the writing prompt, so much the better!

I don't care

“Sera* called me ‘Tiny’”, I overheard my younger one telling his brother.

“Did you hit her?”, his brother asked.

“Why should I?”, he replied. “I told her I didn’t need her to tell me something I already knew.”

I worried about it for awhile, and at dinnertime, broached the topic again. “Do you mind being the shortest in your classs?”, I asked. “I am sure you will grow taller soon.”

“Why should I want to be tall?”, he asked. “I’m okay as I am.”

“But don’t people tease you?”

“So what? I don’t care.”

Wish more people were like him.

“What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.”
― Martha Graham

* Name changed

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This is the fourth year that I am going to be a part of NaBloWriM. The Plan is to elaborate (in 100 words) on a quote that touched my heart- let's see how far this takes me. If I can tie it in with the writing prompt, so much the better!

Can I be proud?

“You know what”, my older one said triumphantly. “The shopkeeper tried to cheat me, but I told him he was giving me the wrong change. I am really smart, aren’t I?”

At first, I found it hard to believe his story- would the shop-keeper I was patronizing for many months do that to me- but when I asked for details, I found that my son was indeed right. The shop-keeper had given him less change than he should have.

“How did you calculate so fast?”, I asked.

“We learnt it in school!”, he replied.

Can I be proud of him?

Education must have an end in view, for it is not an end in itself.
~ Sybil Marshall

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This is the fourth year that I am going to be a part of NaBloWriM. The Plan is to elaborate (in 100 words) on a quote that touched my heart- let's see how far this takes me. If I can tie it in with the writing prompt, so much the better!

A woman's work

I had been feeling ill all day, and by evening I was so ill I could barely stand straight. I tried eating something, but ended up throwing it all up. My head was aching so much I thought it might just burst.

And yet, there were chores I could not put off. Bathe the kids, pack their school lunches, fill the water, hang out the laundry. I was suffering, but had to do it.

“You lie down, Mamma, I’ll finish all your jobs”,

A woman’s work is never done. But after hearing those words, those chores got so much easier.

This is very normal

“I cannot eat this”, said my son pushing his aubergine curry away. “It is too hot.”

“Wait for it to get cold”, I told him.

“Not that hot”, he corrected. “The other hot. Chilli hot.”

“But I didn’t even put any chillies.”

He was not buying that, and finally let himself be partially placated after I sprinkled sugar on the offending curry. Minutes after finishing dinner, he wolfed down an entire packet of fiery hot jalapeño flavoured wafers.

“And you don’t think this is hot?”, I asked him.

“Not at all”, he replied with a smile. “This is very normal.”

The Man on the Moon

On Sunday, I took my kids to the terrace, made them hold up their tiny thumbs, shut one eye, and blot the crescent moon out. “But if the moon is so small, how did Neil Armstrong walk on the moon?”, they asked.

“Don’t things look smaller when they are far away? The moon is actually very big- it seems so small because it is so very far away.” When they had digested that, we spoke about the stars, and of how very big the Universe was.

“So big?” they asked in wonder. Yes, and we are a part of it.

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"Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year 
and yet far too little for the next 10."

Neil Armstrong

(August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012 )

Requiescat in pace

Because we want them to be so?

“But what makes a flower beautiful?”, my younger one asked.

‘What’, he had said, not ‘why’, and that got me thinking. Everybody agrees that flowers are beautiful but what makes them so? It can’t be the colour- because I think many orange flowers are beautiful, though I can’t stand the colour. The shape of the petals are attractive, but aren’t many petals shaped no different from leaves? It could be the placement of the whorls, but isn’t it the economy of lines that gives an anthurium its unique beauty?

Maybe flowers are beautiful because we want them to be so?

Orders of magnitude

“It’s so easy. I can easily lift that”, boasted my son while watching weightlifting on TV.

While I loved his optimism, I wanted him to appreciate the magnitude of what the athletes were actually doing. “Do you know how heavy 150 kilograms is?”, I asked him. “Your little brother weights a little over 16 kilograms. Nine of him will just about make up 150 kilograms.”

“But I can easily lift my brother.”

“One of him, yes. But can you lift nine of him at the same time?”

He agreed that he couldn’t. But his imagination could capture it for posterity.

"My Pretty Peacock"

“You are my Pretty Peacock”, my six-year old told me.

“That’s so sweet of you to say that”, I said, hugging him back. “But you know, a peacock is a boy, not a girl. I can’t be a peacock.”

“But peacocks are so pretty”, he insisted. “They have to be girls.”

“Yes, peacocks are pretty. But peacocks are boys. A girl peacock is called a peahen.”

“How do you know?”

“Because peacocks do not lay eggs, only peahens do.”

“Maybe peacocks hide somewhere and lay eggs?”

I had no answer to that. Sometimes, it is best to let things be.

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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

What is the Olympics?

I was talking about the Olympics the other day, when the eight-year old piped up, “What is the Olympics?”

“It’s something like your Sports Day in school, but instead of houses taking part, it is countries.”

“They run races? I can do that but I am not very fast.”

“Yes, there is running, but there are also many other sports.”

 “You mean like ‘cops and robbers’, and ‘hide and seek’?”, he asked. “I am sure I could play them well. Let me make my team.”

I really didn’t have the heart to tell him how off the mark he was.

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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

It's a Peach

“Look, Mamma, this tree has a peach”, my son told me excitedly.

“That’s not a peach, Sweetheart, that’s a miniature orange”, I explained.

“But it looks just like the peach in James and the Giant Peach”, he insisted. “Are you sure it is not a peach?”

“Positive! A peach has one seed, and this one has several.”

“But this fruit is whole- how can you be sure it has many seeds?”

“I just know!”

“Okay. But I am going to call it a peach. May I?”

If you really think about it, why not? So peach the fruit shall remain!

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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

Cats are a kind of alien...

“Have  you finished your homework yet?”, I asked the (nearly) six-year old.

“I am thinking.”

“How long does it take you to think of ten interesting facts about a cat?”

“I can think of only three facts”, he insisted.  

“Okay, tell me. And I will help you with the rest.”

“Cats are a kind of alien, because when they are angry, their nails come out”, he began.

I struggled to keep the smile off his face, but realized why he had been struggling.

Shouldn’t a teacher be happy with a couple of such facts than a dozen more inane ones?
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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

Is beauty absolute?

“Aren’t those flowers beautiful?”, asked the son.

I looked around, but couldn’t find anything that even faintly resembled a flower. “Where? I don’t see any flowers here.”

“Look, there.”

“Where, Sweetheart? There aren’t any flowers here.”

“Are you blind or what”, he said, before taking me by the hand and dragging me to a clump of wild grass. “Now can you see the flowers?”

Yes, when you looked at it through my son’s eyes, the grass was beautiful. More beautiful than most flowers.

Can there be an absolute standard for beauty? Who decides what qualifies as beautiful, and what doesn’t?

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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

Shadow-ghosts

“… and then you know what, the shadow-ghost came up behind me, and said…”. Seeing my attention stray, my son broke off hurriedly, before accusing me, “Mamma, you are not listening to what I am saying.”

“Yes, I am listening”, I lied. “Get on with your story.”

He stamped his feet in annoyance. “It is not a story. It actually happened.”

“Yes, of course it did. I am listening. Tell me what happened next.”

“And then,……”

I wonder what kind of precedent I am setting by accepting shadow-ghosts knocking over lunch-boxes as an acceptable excuse for an uneaten school lunch?

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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

Are you getting old?

“Mamma, why do you have so many white hairs?”
“Because I am getting old.”
“But you are not old.”
“I am not yet old, but I am starting to get old. Which is I am getting so many white hairs.”

My younger one fell silent, and spent a couple of minutes digesting what I said.
“Mamma, is Patti old?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Older than you?”
“Yes, of course. Patti is my mother, so she has to be older than me.”
“If Patti is older than you, why doesn’t she have white hair like you?”

Time to teach him about hair-dye?
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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

Happy Birthday, Google

“Mamma, just google it, will you”, said my older one in exasperation, when I insisted I didn’t know how many volcanoes there were in the world.

Google!!! Till a few years back, the word didn’t even exist in my lexicon, and now Google’s become so much a part of my life, I sometimes feel I should set a place for Google at the dinner table.

When I was a kid, I depended on often out-dated encyclopaedias for information; my kids need only to “google it” out using my phone.

But now that’s Google’s a teen, will he continue to behave?

Happy 13th Birthday, Google

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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

Get it????

The older one was reading a book where the villain dislikes his “silly name” and retaliates by forcing everyone to change their names to silly ones. On the cover, the author’s name had been scratched out and replaced by the ‘silly name’ arrived at by the villain’s formula.
“You know what the author should have done”, my son asked. “He should have said, “Hey you, don’t forget you are just a character I made from my imagination. If you try to change my name, I will write you out of my book. Get it?””


At eight, he’s already got it!
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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

Ghosts!!!

"Look, a ghost", trilled my five-year old.
"Ghosts don't exist", declared his grandmother.
"Of course they do. I can see them. Look", said my son pointing at the wall.
"What nonsense. I don't believe in ghosts."
"Of course there are ghosts. My ghost goes with me everywhere. He's a friendly ghost."
They argued back and forth, till my son declared, "But Mamma told me ghosts exist."

My mother's eyes turned towards me for confirmation- how could me the skeptic have told my son about ghosts?
"He calls Shadows, ghosts", I finally admitted. After all, what difference does the nomenclature make?
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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.