Can one story change a Child's outlook to life drastically?

Sajeev, who was in the BNHS education center at Asola was a huge influence on Lakshmi. We had spent many afternoons there. So Asola which was on the left side of shooting range which we drove through everyday to get to Navakriti was Sajeev uncle's jungle.

The right side was her jungle. There was even a particular tree in which she slept. She hung by her tail and slept with her mom and dad there everynight. The mammoth which thinks it is a oppossum hangs by the tail and sleeps in a tree in ICE Age and that is where I think the inspiration came from.

A friend started telling her stories on Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks...stories which make jungles seems scary...

These stories originated in medieval northern Europe where they have chopped off all their primary jungles in any case. I mean to find out the history of these stories. But Oliver an environmentalist who was interning at The lodge that we holidayed in Corbett told me this and I have a hint to begin looking for the history now.
After these stories, jungles became scary places for Lakshmi. In school she would begin a story about a little girl who went into the jungle and got lost and the story would get stuck there.

I have always been very careful about the books I buy her. It is not a coincidence that countries that have dense jungles do not have stories where a girl walks into a jungle to find that the wolf gobbled her grandma and is sleeping on her bed...

I have checked all the Indian, African, Red Indian, South American or Far Eastern stories...and this does not happen...

A Gangetic dolphins saves a girl in one book "Putul and the Dolphins", a firefly shows light and bring a boy back home from the jungle...he stays back there helping other animals and soon it is after sunset and dark in "Basava and the Dots of Fire"...

There was a beautiful Red Indian book that was part of a collection of books that I had. It had the most beautiful countryside and they worshipped the birds and animals...I'm trying to find the book again for Lakshmi...

Will you build me a tomb?

We often go for weekend Heritage walks. We have fallen in love with Delhi and Lakshmi loves the broad open spaces too. She by now knows a what a tomb is too.

We have to drive past the Tughlakabad Fort and Ghiyasuddin Tughlak's tomb everyday. One sunday we went to the fort with a friend. We made friends with another family with two girls who also happened to live in our colony. We crossed the Mehrauli-Badarpur Road and went across to the tomb. The tomb is absolutely stunning inside. The grass in the courtyard is very well kept. You can run on the walls. We had a whale of time.

Earlier she used to notice only the fort. Now everyday she looked for tomb and exclaimed as we drove past.
"Will I too die one day?" she asked.
"Yes"
"Will you build me a tomb?" was the next question.
"If I am alive, yes. Otherwise you ask your daughter to build you one"
"Where is my daughter?"
"She is not born yet"
"So, where is she now?"

Will I live forever?

Lakshmi has a three-year-old friend from the park called Nitin. He reads and watches only mythological stories. He has bows and arrows, crowns and face masks. Both his parents are non-believers and so his taste for stories of gods is entirely his. He will even buy a painting kit because it has some of these stories painted over it.

Gentle Avni is Lakshmi's friend from school. Avni is always talking something very thoughtfully. One day she told Lakshmi that God inside her and Lakshmi.
"God is inside everyone" she said.
"Even me?" Lakshmi asked her.

Whatever Avni says is right. So Lakshmi was convinced that she was carrying God.
One day in Nitin's house while they were playing with bows and arrows, Lakshmi told him that everybody had to die one day.

"I will not die. I am God" he replied to her. He was always Krishna, or Rama or Hanuman or ...
Now Lakshmi was confused. She only had God in her.
One the way back she was asking me "Mama, Nitin says he is God and he will not die. But I have God inside me. Will I die?"

Everybody has to die and become mud and new things will grow on that -- "It is a Circle of Life" is a lesson from Lion King.

She is connecting the dots...

One visit to an art gallery makes a difference!

Pratibha, little Yashua's (from Navakriti's) mother was having an exhibition of her work at the artI gallery. She works with acryllic and pen and makes very fine drawings. Lakshmi when she paints takes a thick brush and slaps paint on to the paper. Soon the paper is full. It is usually an interesting mix of two colours.

Lakshmi went to the show with other children in daycare and she heard Pratibha explaining to the adults. One of them was called "The Rising Son". That work had been inspired by how her husband Shailesh had grown from being a son to having a son. It had a large round graphic to the left and there were two arms one rising above and another reaching below. Each of them had some intricate forms. The gallery is a huge large open place and it had sheer curtains and a balcony to which wooden steps went up. So she mostly ran around.

The next day a bunch of kids were painting at Navakriti. There were two very interesting colours in the pallete and most of them were dipping a brush and putting a dripping brush on to paper and were revelling in the feeling. Lakshmi took a blank paper and a red ketch pen and made fine lines and something gong and something below and she ket saying "The Son One...". I had never seen her draw fines lines or finish something with so much blank space before.

I also miss Lavlesh Bhaiyya's sessions

Lavlesh is a student from the first batch at Mirambika. He has been holding the orientation classes for parents for 20 days. What an endorsement! How many schools in Delhi can field a 30-year-old from their alumni and get him to spend 20 days voluntarily talking to parents many of whom are professors too and keep them stimulated throughout. He had them spellbound like children.

And what a range of pedagogy!

We practiced Zazen to increase concentration everyday.
We walked around the class avoiding other people's feet -- a technique practiced by Buddhist monks.
We played a dodgeball to say just be more conscious and you will win anyway.
We wrote and reflected.
We discussed.
We read poetry by Khalil Gibran on children.
We discussed his experience in the school.
We discussed what his classmates did now.
We were Silent.


We were learning Integral Yoga without any esoteric language.

Two things stayed with me.
In this method you take up a subject and "You heighten the senses, you widen and you deepen" he said. I could relate to that.

He related two incidents at school.

Once he and a bunch of boys were playing football in a classroom. The rooms in the school have large glass windows. The glass shattered.

Nelshe didi walked in with equanimity and she first enquired if any of the boys were hurt. "My thought had been what we would say" he said. After this incident he realised that he never had to lie.

Once after a racing event Sheela didi had asked him why he had been looking this way and that. "I wanted to see where everyone else was" he replied. She then pointed out that was a waste of time and that he should concentrate on his own running. "We were observed so keenly" was the message.

His classes were comforting.

I miss the yoga sessions

Our Yoga sessions at Mirambika have ended. I really miss them now. I am having withdrawal symptoms from something I though was an imposition and an ordeal when it began.

I loved Mandira didi's sessions. Especially the shava asan when it ended.

Go on to your side and "Deeply thank the earth for bearing your weight all your life" she would say. If my daughter is going to say this all her life at Mirambika something will go in.

Another thing she taught us. "Hold your hands together and make a wish. It will happen because all of us are collectively putting our energy together" she would say.

The wish had to be truely large. Touching many people. "If you want to be truely selfish ask for something big. I have realised this" she told us in the first class. "If I want food only for myself, it is a struggle. But if I ask for abundance it is easier".

I wished everyday. For ecological awareness for I wanted a house with trees like I have now in our new location and for my daughter all her life.

And many such wishes...

How we discovered colors

One day when I was on the computer, she wanted me to type. She wanted me to write words. She had figured out that these letters ould turn into words. I used to ask her what word to type.
"Type Blue" she instructed.
Black. Red. Green. White. I did this while exaggerating the syllables.
Then she pointed to my computer and said "type this colour".
"Grey" I typed and called out.
Then she brought a serving spoon from her kitchen set. It did not know if that was some shade of pink or purple -- muave, lilac...I googled...got into wikipedia for colours and compared with all shades of pink..."So many pinks?" she exclaimed.

Then we got into the purple page. This time she joined into the matching game. I forget what we zoned into now. Next she brought her glass which is very unusual shade of dark blue and we went to blue in wikipedia and looked at all the blues.

A week later I was on my computer. She had three or four objects -- a paper, some formica covered piece and something else. "They are all white. Funny no?" she said. They were different shades -- yellowish to bright white. Just a few weekends ago I had learnt white balancing on a video camera.

Alphabets in many fonts in just twenty days

I was determined not to teach Lakshmi ABCD...But I had stumbled upon this website http://www.bemboszoo.com/. It has all the alphabets in a very beautiful font and they are flashing. If you take the mouse over one and click. It uses the same letter, both capital and small in that font and creates an animal and also makes that animal noise. It is so beautifully designed and I had been determined that Lakshmi would not see garishly or childishly designed stuff. Lakshmi absolutely loved this. She has been playing with site since she was year-and-a-half.

So she was fairly familiar with a lot of the symbols. S was a Salmon and it made a noise of a fish breathing and bubbles surfacing up. A had an antelope leaping across the screen. L was a roaring lion. and so on...F was a flamingo and she would walk like that. But she would ask for a lion or a salmon...

Then she started wanting to write numbers and words because she figured that we wrote telephone numbers. She also realised that the story books we read were full of these characters.
But she scribbled.

Then we got a little chinese toy on her birthday. where the symbol made a noise. Now she learnt these alphabets herself in both capital and small in a couple of days aided by Manju aunty. They pressed keys till the toy broke during the Pooja holidays. She would make these letters with blocks, twigs...or anything else she found.

A couple of days later, she wanted to write. She wrote A about 30 times. She tried writing a few more letters. She would look for these patterns everywhere, newspaper, TV, Magazine, the signboard at Navakriti. Then she wanted to type in the computer because I spent a lot of time there. I would increase the font and let her type.

A few days later when we were reading the paper she pointed to a letter in teh headline and asked me what that was. It was a small A written differently. "Ah so you can write these things differently too?" she exclaimed. Then she would want me to write each letter differently and sometimes she herself tried to write differently -- sometimes it was correct, sometimes a flipped mirror image and sometimes just imagination. We never corrected it. But she wrote over and over again. Sometimes she made a letter and converted it to something else -- like an E became a door. Sometimes when she asked me write K many ways I wrote it in capital and small and many other fonts. She can pretty much read all letters capital and small and write many but she hasn't done it for a while now.

Clearly if the mind is consulted and you do what it is ready to do it all goes faster and effortlessly.

A Director, Script Writer, Actor and Art Director

A humbling experience for me in consciousness. My little tyke can do naturally what I paid Rs 25,000 for and spent all my weekends for five months on. She is aware of emotions, the props, the noises and goes by what she thinks is right.

We have been watching pieces of Masoom, the classic which was adapted from Man, Woman and Child and which has Shabana Azmi and Nazeeruddin Shah.

You are DK and I'm Indu she told me one day. You sleep here in the bed on your tummy and cry holding your head in your hands.

Indu: Problem Kya hai DK? Kya ho gaya?
Now DK will say "Hamara bacha jo Nainital me hai, uska maa mar gayi" she directs.
Indu: Koi Baath nayi mai uska maa ban jaoongi.
Now DK will say "Indu I love you"
Indu: Main Hamesha Tumhaara Dost Hoon

And this will go on many times sometimes with her correcting me. "Say like this. Look that way. Hold like this" comes naturally.

Wherever there is anger or discomfort she has changed the script to suit what she feels.
In another scene she goes
"You are Rahul and now hammer wood and make a bangle box and hurt your hand. There will be blood and you cry and shout 'mama mama' ".
Needless to say she has got all the props ready...a few pieces of wooden building blocks sometimes, a box made of lego sometimes and a make-beleive hammer and a tray which goes for a plank on which the model is being made.

In the movie Shabana screams at him asking him not to call her mama. But lakshmi carefully smiles and bandages my hand and assures me that it will soon be fine.

It goes on like this. In another scene I'm Chanda, Shabana's friend. She brings me a red clutch bag. And says "Walk like that" walking with a straight neck, nose in the air and chest out. Chanda in the movie is a self-proclaimed independent woman.

There is a box in that movie which has photographs on all sides. We have a glass box which we had almost forgotten but have never put photographs into. One day she insisted that we take it out and put photographs with her and me and put it by the bedside. In the movie it had pictures of the boy and his mom.

She even carries a sheaf of papers all the time. Because she is sometimes Rahul and he carries his papers out of his dad's office

No detail gets missed and they get changed and enacted the way she thinks is right.

Rahul Roy the documentary film-maker who had come for a few sessions had told us to de-construct a bergman movie scene by scene -- shot by shot -- if we wanted to learn and here she was doing it all by herself.

How they learn words?

We have been reading "A letter to Amy" by Ezra Jack Keats. A brilliant book of collages like all his books.

Each time we read the book, we go a level deeper. Just now, we read one page at a time. In fact, just one page many times. And then enact.

In that page Peter is carrying a letter for Amy. He is running on the road to mail it and he bumps into Amy and she falls. So I am Peter and I am carrying a letter and she is Amy and we Bump!

And she loves falling after that and the laughs heartily...She actually feels the word everytime...We do this atleast 5 to 6 times each time we pick up the book.

And then she wanted to know what is mail...many days after...

One day in school, she asked Nandita how to make a stamp.

She is now always writing "The party is at 2 on Saturday"... needless to say she is scribbling but that is what she means to write.

In another page, as Peter is walking it is raining. There are brilliant flashes of lightning in the collage.
"Isn't Peter afraid of lightning and thunder?" she asked one day. "Next time I hear thunder I will roar back at it".
By the time we have finished with this book we would have enacted page by page -- word by word...

Can we label children?

During the first few weeks at Navakriti, Lakshmi turned rebellious at home.
"I'm not a good girl" she told me once when I requested her to do something.

I was having a tough time. She usually understood if we reasoned with her unless she was very hungry or tired. But now she seemed to burst into tears if we mildly suggested that doing something may not be a good idea. I had been leaving her at day care too. I told the teachers at Navakriti and they assured me that she was fine at school.

One day I came early to day care. The children were around the table and were going to paint. Lakshmi was standing on the table and thumping. One or more children joined in.

"Kaun achhe bache neeche aayenge?" the facilitator chimed.
"Lakshmi Gandhi bachi hai" joined in Chinmoy because she had not got down.

I saw the now familiar rebelliousness on the face. The thumping increased and she was doing something vigourously. Because I was familiar with she reads I realised what was going on.

"What are you trying to do Lakshmi?" I asked gently.

"I'm trying to put the fire out. This is water" she piped in making hosing actions with some prop she had picked up.

"But when there is a fire, you have to put water from below up" I offered. She got down from the table.

After a while, when she wanted to get on to the table again I asked her if she wanted to dance and I took her out to the cement ledge in courtyard and I sat a level below. That was her stage.

"But see, it doesn't thump!" she complained.

We searched for all high places but none of them thumped but now the game had shifted to look for thumping.

The problem here was that she was dancing on the table because an African American girl called Tumpie learns to dance by observing people in jazz bars and listening to music and one day she dances on a table. This is the biography of Josephine Baker who went on to become a famous dancer.

The book has extremely moving paintings and the one where Tumpie dances on a table spontaneously in a crowd, where a jazz band is playing, and is discovered is particulary engaging and we have been looking at it for many weeks. Tumpie could not do anything wrong for Lakshmi.

When she tries to dance on our dining table I have been telling her that our round table has only one leg and it will become wobbly. It is not strong enough.

It has been nearly a year now and Lakshmi still remembers what had happened. We were watching "Taare Zameen Par" for the nth time and the song Bum Bum bole.
the children are dancing on the table and Aamir Khan, the teacher is around and urging the orderly kids to loosen up...
"See, they are dancing on the table..." she pointed out. "But they are not Gandhe bache..."
A huge lesson for me. I am never going to call something wrong or right but figure out what a child is trying to do.

When do they lose this clarity?

After the last day at Navakriti, Lakshmi and I were having lunch with Ramya and her parents Medha and Pankaj. Ramya went into usual sulk act where she would tip-toe away and look sideways to see the reaction. On careful observation from behind one could that her cheeks were moving upward suggesting that she was dying to break into a smile.

I was pointing that out and teasing her. Lakshmi immediately started doing the Ramya act complete with those sideways glances.
"Ramya doesn't only sulk. She also sings and tells us stories" I urged Lakshmi.
She immediately broke into a song that Ramya improvises:

"Hain na bolo bolo
Chips ko packet se, Packet ko chips se pyaar hai

Hain na bolo bolo
Ped ko pathe se pathe ko ped se pyaar hai"

Ramya immediately wanted to do the Lakshmi act. She called Pankaj and told him that she wanted to sit high up in the tree.
They were so clear. Ramya likes to make up and sing songs which I can sing for you was what Lakshmi was saying. She had noticed the song that Ramya had sung on the stage that day.
Lakshmi loves sitting up on trees and is good at it is what Ramya was saying and they were so comfortable with that. Ramya had never sat on a tree before and neither had she wanted to.

How many grown-ups do we meet who are that comfortable?
They are usually telling us how they cannot do what someone else can or sometimes how they too can. Where does the clarity and comfort get lost? When does the competition set in?

un-schooling

I was at the Aurobindo Ashram at Raiwala last summer. We met a little French girl named Jayalakshmi and her mother. Seven-year-old Jaya, was one of the most free souls I have met. She wears only pajama bottoms. Her skin looks like it has been tightened on to the bones. When she runs, she is running at an angle, cutting into the wind. A young leopard, I thought.

She had Lakshmi and me entranced within minutes of us meeting her. She was showing Lakshmi how to do the frog, crab and rabbit. The frog could leap really high. She had learnt all this yoga by herself, just hanging around, looking at others.

Her mother mentioned that she had been studying at the Auroville International school in Pondicherry and then she had pulled her out of school to home-school her. And now she was being un-schooled. “I did not want to chew the food half-way and shove it into her mouth with a spoon” she said. She would now only answer questions that the little girl came up with herself and only as much as she wanted. At first she said she wondered if she would ever reach mathematics or physics but now she is less concerned.

Jaya took Lakshmi to the library and started showing her books on optical illusions. Just look into this picture, keep looking at your nose – and the three-year-old actually did. Then she played us two musical instruments all on her own.

Ever since I got back, I have been pointing out things less and waiting for Lakshmi to ask. (This is hard…I have to really curb myself from showing her things…).

The results:

On the potty…

Q. Where does my potty go?
A. Down into the drain…

A day later

The same route…then…

Q. What is the drain? Draw and show me…(we have been doing this draw this and that thing for a while now…)
A. I draw three potties for the three floors and join them all up and then draw the drain into a tank where the clean water comes out and the potty is dried and goes to plants.

Another picture to show some people send the drain into a nala which goes directly into the Yamuna…(we had been boating down the Yamuna a month and ago and had seen how dirty it was…)

She drew a bigger rectangle which took up the whole page and showed Vish – she had drawn a very big tank to clean all the potty…

Another day – we repeat the whole thing…

Q. Show me the dried potty that is put into the plants…

A. wait till we buy fertiliser next time…(we do buy the Okhla one sometimes…)

A few days later…We go to a classmate’s house and they have a fancy round wash basin…

Q. Does this have a drain?
A. Yes it does…

A couple of days later …we are standing at the corner …at the Adchini Red light waiting for someone…

Q. What is that one?

A. (I keep looking and finally realize that she is talking about the ditch…) That is a ditch – drain for the rain water to flow…

Q. But there is no water there…only dried leaves…

A. It will be there when it rains…

Q. Where does that go?

A. I don’t know…I could find out…

I haven’t heard the last of this potty and drain thing – she looks into the potty every time to see if it has gone and we repeat the same story and take it a little further…I kind of understand where this rote learning thing came from…But the difference is that she is figuring out what she wants to and repeating it to make sure she gets it…


Next thing…

Q. Can u draw me a guitar?

Q. Now can u draw me a violin?

I draw a guitar looking thing with a bow…This actually led me to asking a couple of girls how to depict a violin…it led to a 15-minute discussion…How many strings? Is the stem shorter? What are the differences in shape that can be exaggerated in two dimensions? I still haven’t looked up the drawings but soon will.

(she has asked that of three people)


This weekend…

We found two feathers outside the Meghdoot theatre…

Q. Which bird is it?

A. I don’t know…we could ask Sajeev Uncle…

Q. How did the feather fall down? Did the bird get hurt? How will it fly?

A. I don’t know…we could ask Sajeev Uncle…but it has not lost all its feathers…


There was a picture of two openbills in Bharatpur in the newspaper…

Q. What is that?

A. It says two openbills…

Q. Mama and Daddy…

A. Yeah…

Q. They want to build a nest…I’m the daddy…I’m bringing twigs…she brought some iron rods from a broken chime and put them one upon another in a circle. Then put a cushion on top. “Shhhhhhhh…Mama, we have to hide the nest…you lay the eggs…”

Come here’s the water…lets go down and eat fish…and bring some back…This goes on over and over again…

After a little while…

We bring lots of neem twigs (from some earlier trip) to build nests – all three of us are building nests…

Then it becomes wood to build a home…with a door and a chimney…

Q. If I’m the daddy woodpecker and you are the mama woodpecker…will we live in this nest?

A. No we would live in a hole in the tree…

Q. Here’s a hole in the tree…a hole is made between two cushions…

I get a doubt – do woodpeckers too live in tree holes? We look up the net…

Reflection

The Orientation program at Mirambika is having a effect on eme. Today When I was getting Lakshmi to sleep I decided to get her to think about her day.

"Did you have a good day today?" I began.
"Yes."
"What did you like most?" followed.
"Running to catch Aditi".
"What did you not like?" came next.
"Saher fighting with me for the leaves I was holding."
"Did you do any Galat that you wished you had not done?" I asked.
"No."
"I too had a good day. I loved playing holi with neem leaves. But I did two galats that I wished I had not done". I offered. "I saw the medicine bottle that Lakshmi pulled out in school and was aghast. I assumed that she was faking illness and she had brought the bottle herself. Actually Manju aunty had sent it and Lakshmi pulled it out at exactly at the right time. I won't assume Lakshmi is faking next time." I continued. "Then I got annoyed with Lakshmi for tugging hard and noisily at her car which was stuck behind the easel. i had told Lakshmi many times that I would never get annoyed with her but did not remember yet another time." I finished.

"Actually I too cried in school. Maybe I should not have" she started. "But the tears kept coming. But sometimes they are also tears of happiness" she finished.

Clearly, I have to do what I want her to do.

Lesson on Death

Lakshmi watches Lion King at least four times a week in small parts. She takes on different roles at different times and asks one of us to take on other parts and we have a conversation.

Today she was Mufassa, the dad and I was Simba.
"One day I will die and you will become king" she began.
"Why will you die daddy? I can't live without you" I say.
"Everybody has to die one day. You will be king. You have to be brave" she says.
"What is brave? what is king?" I ask.
"Strronnng!" comes the answer. "You have to look after the jungle".
"Does that mean I cannot scare anyone?" I ask.
"You can scare the hyenas. But not the Raffikis and Nalas".
"But what will do when I miss you?" I ask.
"You will have Timone. Friends will be around. I will be in the sky to remind you when you do galat" came promptly.

Can I keep her thinking as crystal clear as she grows up and never teach her fear...I wonder...

Can a four-year-old stitch?

A year ago I had been to Aurovalley an ashram near Dehradun. I met Jaya a eight-year-old French girl who was being unschooled. "I only tell her or do what she asks me" her mother had told me. I have been trying to follow that as much as possible and it has been leading into very interesting directions. Into exploring topics and activities that I would never have thought a four-year-old could pursue.
Today she picked up a small tranparent needle and thread kit from my husband's travel kit. She wanted to know what that was. I said needle and thread.
"What do you do with that?"
"You stitch"
"I want to stitch". She pulled out the edges of her pyjama top where some thread was sticking out. "See it is coming off" she pointed out. I did not know that she knew what stitch meant. I don't stock pieces of fresh cloth like my mothers used to and neither do i have a sewing machine. i pulled out an old short of my husbands and I did one or two running stitches. Then she did four with some help.

"But why do we need to do this?"

I showed her the hem and said if we do it fine we can make clothes.

Role Play

This is how my daughter understands and teaches me too sometimes. After a session in her new school we went to a restaurant. Soon Ishaan another four-year-old from her pre-school and his parents Satyajit and Padma arrived. I asked Ishaan how his hand was. Lakshmi immediately asked Satyajit what had happened to Ishaan's hand.

"He was trying to change cabins in a toy train while it was moving. He fell down and the cabin came down on him. His fingers were scratched and blood streamed down his palm. He cried. I asked him to stop but he cried and cried all the same" explained Satyajit. Soon Lakshmi was saying that her hand was hurting. She repeated the story. The train fell on her and hurt her hand and she had blood streaming down. Her father asked her to stop crying. But it was ok for her to cry and so she continued. That was her way of understanding, empathising and also telling Satyajit that it was ok to cry.

All our role play games are around what she wants to get comfortable with or what she wants to teach me. In one game she will be the mom. I'm the baby strapped to the car seat. "How are you going to say bye to me when we reach school?" she will say. "You will go to your group and I will work with small children" she finishes. It is really hard for her to take that i work with other small children. And this game is played many times for her to come to terms with. Now I have figured that whenever a new game is cooked up i have to pay rapt attention for she is trying to tell me something.

There is another role game which is meant to teach me. She is the driver. I'm the vendor who comes to the car and sells toys, magazines or flowers. She will always want just what I'm selling and smile and pay for it. Even if the light has changed and the cars behind are honking. Needless to say i don't buy these things except magazines sometimes and that too only when the light has turned red just when i arrive. She is always asking "So why don't you want flowers?" She is fully empathetic with the child vendors.

I remember friends of ours and Archit their two-year-old from long ago (he is now in class 12). He always had an imaginary companion called Prashanti. One day when we met him he told us a story. He was walking in the market with Prashanti. She wanted gems. "So what did you do?" we asked. "I bought it. She only asked because she wanted. I don't ever make her cry" he replied.
Then his parents told us that he had just stopped at a shop and had wanted Gems and had kicked up a fuss. They said whatever happened to him would happen to Prashanti and he always responded to Prashanti in the way that he thought right and many times not what had happened to him.