Once when I ended a theological argument with the sweeping statement, “God can do everything,” my son mischievously said, “God can’t do one thing, which man can do.”
“What’s that wise guy,” I asked.
“Pray to God,” he answered smugly.
When I gave him a blank look, he continued, “We can pray to God can’t we? But I don’t think God can pray to himself!”
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My son has a priceless concept of Action Replays in real life. Anything you missed him doing or he did in school is enacted out in a painstakingly slow action replay from different angles.
Once when he was playing cricket with his friends and batting, an argument broke out on whether the ball had hit the stumps or not. “Wait,” he told his friends, “let me show you the action replay.” He did such a convincing action replay of the ball just missing the stumps by a whisker, that his friends actually believed him and he was declared not out unanimously.
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He made me find out on the Net the name of the largest dinosaur that ever walked on this planet. When I told him, he ran to his mother and said, “Jaldi khana do, mere pet main sauroposeidons daud rahe hain!” (Give me food fast, there are sauroposeidons running in my stomach!)
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I was watching a song of Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore, when my son asked, “Who are these people?” I told him that one was Akshay Kumar’s father-in-law and the other was Saif Ali Khan’s mother. He looked at me and said incredulously, “No way!” He doesn’t understand how that can be possible. But after that day, every old movie is starring Kareena Kapoor’s grandfather or Sunny Deol’s father or Ranbir Kapoor’s mother… If a yesteryear’s star is not related to one in today’s Bollywood world, he finds that pretty odd.
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After I explained him all about cloning, the only thing he said was, “When I was born, why didn’t you make a clone of me? He could have done my homework while I could play all the time!”
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© Sunil Rajguru
