Caulibappa!!!

This is a post in honor of the kids who have touched my life and who with their cute antics make my mundane life bearable. 

The first story relates to my friend S's son, all of two but with enough charisma, chutzpah and energy to put a ten year old to shame. He goes to kindergarten learns to sing and dance while learning the alphabets and has enough energy left in him after school to keep his mother on her toes. I say this from experience, as when I visited them recently I spent a fair amount of time following him around and when it was time for bed, I was dead beat and died the minute my head hit the pillow, but he was still up and could have tarred and feathered me and I wouldn't know of it till I saw the videos up on YouTube. 

He is a very clever little boy and can identify a number of colours, vegetables, fruits and can also carry on a great conversation with you, if you have the capabilities of understanding the language of his people (Baby Talk). Take for instance the time he came to me with minor scrapes on both knees and did a bit of a stiff-kneed war dance, while muttering something complete with 'googoos' and 'gaagaas' and pointed in the direction of the park. His mom followed him into the room and told me that he is informing me of the fact that while I was out shopping, he fell off his bike in the park.  He is also quite an actor as all of the next day, he walked around the house like an 80 year old with stiff knees!!!

So one day his mom was getting him acquainted with vegetables from his 'Vegetable Book' and she points out to a picture Cauliflower and asks him to repeat "Cauliflower" after her and he goes "Caulibappa". The reason for this being, they have a small temple at their place and every morning she and her husband perform a small pooja and offer flowers to the idols of the Gods (which her son calls 'Bappa'). So in his mind, flowers are for 'Bappa' so a 'Cauliflower' is also "Caulibappa".

The next story relates to my friend S's nephew who is close to three years old and since his father is a Major in the Army, a lot of discipline is drilled into him at a young age itself. She tells me the boy speaks with such respect it is a joy to hear him. Now like his cousin he too is a bundle of energy and quite often does things that make his mom want to tell him off. Whenever he has been a naughty boy his mother will look him in the eye, point to his room and say "Andar Jaao", thereby grounding him to spend some quality time pondering over what he did wrong. For my international audience I will clarify that "Andar Jaao" mean "Go inside". In his mind, "Andar Jaao" means punishment and so these days, whenever anyone does anything that displeases him, he looks them in the eye and says "Andar Jaao"!!!

The third story relates to my friend SM's daughter, she is four years old and is one clever Miss. She can not only speak Chinese and English fluently she can read English words!!!. Once they went out for dinner and stopped at a juice centre. My friend asked her what she would like to drink and she goes, 'I would like to have a Strawberry Milk" and her mother goes "You are very posh, want Strawberry Milk, eh ??". Everyone laughed and then they just happened to look around and found that Strawberry Milk was mentioned on the Menu up on the wall, she had read the item off the Menu!!!

Another time her teacher pointed to the picture of a 'Cheetah' asked her what it was in English and then asked her in Chinese who was faster Lion or Cheetah and she replied with the Chinese word for "Cheetah"!!!.