There's a lesson here..

I was driving Avaneesh back from his tennis classes. On account of the previous night's downpour,  the court was too wet for tennis. So, they just had exercises and played soccer.
He was playing 'Temple Run' while I was driving. On the Galaxy S III, the game is a little faster than on the iPad or the Galaxy S. So, he was having some trouble playing it.

Saturday morning traffic was reasonably light and I was also driving at a good clip.
In came his first request(?) - "Papa, can you drive in first gear & second gear only? You're messing up my game"
"Sorry man, I can't do that" I replied.
And hence continued the oohs, 'oww's and grumbles as he missed a swipe at each roadbump or turn.

Apart from that, I was now behind a bike that could do just fine with a couple of lesser cylinders - for Bangalore roads. The rider was a studious looking, tortoise shell glasses wearing guy puttering on slowly, taking up the center of the road, and not noticing the empty road ahead of him. It took some skilful driving before I maneuvered my 800 cc Maruti around him, and gave him a maybe-you-should-get-a-tricycle look. The man either didn't notice, or didn't care.
Avaneesh's grumbling meanwhile - having lost more games - had gotten real loud.
So, with his latest 'look what you did!!' coupled with him showing the phone to my face, I just took away the phone.
There was a 30 second silence observed to honor the explorer that he'd let die for the umpteenth time - courtesy his dad.

It also gave me some time to think about what moral I could impart to this sullen monkey.
So I came out with my first jewel.
"You can't do a dance rehearsal on an iceberg"
No response. Maybe it just ricocheted off.
" I said,  'you can't dance on an iceberg'  "   I said.
"What ?" he said and looked around quickly  "where is the iceberg?"
I took a deep breath, and asked him to listen for more than a microsecond. And repeated my line.
"Yea..   so ? "  was the response.
I held back repeating it - it was time to retire that jewel back to the Nile. I fished out a new one.
"You can't play soccer in a battlefield"  I said. I was really getting into this whole pull-out-a-new-proverb-every-second thing. Give me an accent, and I could be a Nat ya nanda.
"You can, if there's nobody there", he said.
"Um..er.. obviously I mean when a battle is going on" I stumbled.
As he started a search in his head about what other battlefield conditions you could play soccer, I decided to try a more direct approach.
"What I was trying to say was, there's a time & place for everything. There's no point you playing this game on the phone while the car is bumping around like this"
And I noticed in the rear view mirror - the puttering mega-biker was almost behind me. I suppose in this traffic .. a few meters gained are also very quickly lost at the next mini-jam you get stuck in.
As I marveled at the tortoise that almost won the race, Avaneesh asked "So, I guess I could play angry birds instead"
As I was about to set forth on the 'there is a time & place for everything' moral, an old man jumped into the road from the median on the right. Apparently he'd decided that lawsuit returns were more important than his remaining days. Or maybe he'd somehow heard my aforementioned proverbs. Sadly for him - I noticed just in time, swerved and  honked.
That did not discourage the brave man even a little bit. He did a small jump back (almost after I'd passed him) and again jumped forward ... into tortoise shell's way. The buddha on the large bike was naturally slow enough to comfortably stop. Two wheelers/rickshaws on his trail also screeched to a halt. The buddha waved the old man across with a comfortable smile. I could see a youtube video titled 'how to scare the heck out of drivers' in the grinning old man's eyes.
There was one extra angry bird in our car as I accelerated onward.

Atleast.. the tortoise hadn't won the race. Or had he?

To Bose or not to Bose

Avaneesh had to write an essay & talk about a hero of his.

So he came home saying he'll write about Gandhiji.
"There will be a 100 'Gandhiji is my hero' essays out there", said his mom.  Subhas Chandra Bose became the hero candidate. Then started the lecturing about Subhas Chandra Bose - after a quick study on Wikipedia by the parents.

The parents soon discovered that a 5 min overview that didn't include a lot of bombs/guns was pretty insufficient to make a person a 'hero' in a kid's eyes.

• "because he got admission into a good college?"
• "because he got 2nd rank in the good college?"
• "Is Cambridge a good college? " 
• "Where is Cambridge?" 
  
• "because he was the Mayor of Kolkata?" 
• "So.. he fought against the British?" 

That ended the 'let him figure out why Bose was a hero' plan, and started the 'here are 10 things to say- write them down' plan.
Finally, on D-Day arrived (er.. next morning, actually). Mom fired off some questions early morning - both waking him up from his morning stupor, and warming him up. And off went the little guy to the battlefield.


Evening, he's busy trying to make Mario catch the rabbits on the Wii.. and mom finds it the right moment to ask about it. Dad - who'd just demoed his son on how to catch the rabbits - also was a little miffed at the interruption. But he did put on his ' I'm interested' look.
"Did anybody else talk about Subhas Chandra Bose? "


"Oh yes.. four of them"


"So.. did the teacher like what you said? "


"Yes.. she said 'good' when I spoke about Subhash Chandra Bose"


"That's nice!"


"But she said 'very good' for somebody else that talked about him. So, maybe mine wasn't the best"


Two weeks later:

Now its time for the dreaded PTM ( Parent-Teachers Meeting). And we sit in front of the English teacher after having spent half an hour in line. Time well spent by the dad playing 'Temple Run' .
Dad hesitatingly opens "I'm the father of Avaneesh .. 4 D .."
"Oh yes!" the teacher smiles " Avaneesh .. he's a smart boy.. "
Dad relaxes a little
"I'm guessing he's a big fan of Subhas Chandra Bose? "
Now Dad has a confused look
"He knew so much about him.. and the poor kids that had chosen to speak about Bose: He kept correcting them whenever they made the slightest mistake about Bose!"