Sequels are in fashion these days…at least that is what my lovely sis-in-law-cum-my-sequel-advisor, Kanya Bahwa, has been telling me for a long time, who herself can’t wait to watch Hangover 3 this summer. Apparently, she has had her own version of the Hangover movies…..most recently this past week when she was covering a fashion show in Delhi from the side of that stage thingy where models walk wearing apparently fashionable clothes (do not know what that thingy is called because I have never been to a fashion show…it will be like President Bush going to a book club meeting). It seems that after the show was over, she went to an after-show party but at this stage, all she remembers is waking up in her bedroom at 3 PM the next afternoon with lipstick marks on the dresser mirror, her favorite teddy bear hanging from the ceiling fan, and half of her hair straight and the other half curly. We will get to the bottom of that in the next blog so let us continue with the sequel thing.
So after the unprecedented success of my blog, “My Two Sons – A Millennium Apart”, which was published on Nov 19, 2012 (total page views = 548), it is time for a sequel. In any case, there are so many differences between my two sons that I may need another sequel to continue with the story. And, if I have the right script, I may publish a prequel also (obviously without the explicit details on how our boys came to this world).
When Nyle was born in the last century (in 1999), it was the height of the internet boom. We had our own party in the delivery room because in a small, friendly town like Charleston, WV, Anshu’s OB/GYN was pretty cool about who all can be present at the time of Nyle’s birth. Coming to think of it, I should have made it a ticketed event and should have earned some money for Nyle’s college fund…but I guess it is a little too late for that now….
So even though we did not plan it this way, there were 7 of us in the room when Nyle came to this world. And within 90 seconds of his birth there were 15 other nurses from all over the hospital in our room who came to check out his thick, long, black hair because with a 98% white population, almost all babies in WV are born bald or with very little hair (and Meenu, for the record, I did not make fun of West Virginians in the preceding sentence). When one of the nurses asked me if we had decided on the name, I said, “It is clear that these days you have no future, if you are not involved with any kind of dot com and so we are going to name him Nyle.com”. However, the birth certificate office refused our request on some stupid “legal” grounds so he ended up with just “Nyle”. I tried this strategy again when Kush was born in 2005 in the middle of the world going crazy with Steve Jobs’ toys, such as iMac, iPod etc. I wanted my second son to be named as iKush but they refused it again so we had to settle on Kush.
As I wrote last time, Nyle was always a polite and well-mannered kid. When he turned 4, we enrolled him in a soccer league. In his first soccer match, at one point, he had full control of the ball when another kid from the rival team approached him. Nyle immediately gave the ball to him. Since I was surprised, I asked him after the game why he had given the ball to the other kid. His answer was, “But mamma says you are supposed to share, right?” How could I counter that argument? I think it was still better than another kid who was running with the ball at full speed and was very close to the goal, when he suddenly stopped letting the rival team’s kid take the ball. The coach shouted, “Why did you stop?” He pointed towards the sky and said, “Look, airplane”.
Nyle also never needed any attention. He would keep himself busy most of the times and when he got bored of watching Barney or playing with his toys, he would play hide-and-seek alone for hours. Now, all of you chicks reading this article and going, “Awww, poor baby!!, I am just kidding…he never played hide-and-seek alone…he played it with his favorite toy Barney by hiding him under the bed, going out of the room and then coming back to seek him exactly from where he had hid him….kidding again. No, that is not true either. He did not have such a sad childhood.
And talking about hide-and-seek, I just remembered about a time when Kush was playing hide-and-seek in our basement with Nyle and their Sunil uncle (who both my kids treat as someone in their age group because he plays so well with them). After a few minutes, Kush came upstairs, turned on his Wii, and started playing some Mario game. I asked where Nyle and Sunil were and he said, “Downstairs”. Upon further investigation, I found out that while Nyle and Sunil were hiding downstairs waiting for him to find them, Kush decided to simply quit the game and play his video game. What can I say? With Nyle, the so-called “terrible two” phase came and went without any issues for us but with Kush it started more like “terrible one-and-a-half” and the phase is still going on. A few years ago, at our Christmas party, one of my European colleagues pointed at Nyle and Kush and asked, “So, these are your offspring?” I said, “Yes, Nyle is my offspring but Kush here is more like an “on-spring” than an offspring because I have never seen him still ever since he was born”.
The other day I thought that my kids should learn some more about the Indian history so we decided to watch “Gandhi” as a family. When the movie was over, I asked my kids how they liked it. Nyle, obviously liked it a lot because he is a history freak. On the other hand, Kush did not appear to be too impressed. When I asked why he did not like it, his response was, “If they knew that it was going to be such a boring movie, why didn’t they include an item song?” I said, “An item song in Gandhi? How is it even possible? Gandhi was fighting for India’s independence. How could you fit an item song with Katrina Kaif in such a issue-based movie?” Kush replied, “Well, maybe not when Gandhi was awake but how about when he was sleeping? Katrina could come in his dreams and sing a song like ‘Indira ki Jawani’ to make it a somewhat interesting movie.” This resulted in me lecturing him on his lack of “Indian” values and too much focus on materialism, girls and all. Later on, I overheard Kush talking to Nyle in another room:
Kush: I am not happy with my owners. Can I change my owners?
Nyle: What do you mean? Who are your owners?
Kush: Mamma and Dadda, who else?
Nyle: Hey, they are our parents, not owners.
Kush: Whatever. But I still want American owners. They are a lot of fun. These Indian owners always lecture me on all kinds of stuff whereas my American friends get a lot of freedom in doing whatever they want to do.
And it was not just with the Gandhi movie. Kush has his own ideas about all Hindi movies. For example, after watching “Krishna and Kans”, he said, “I do not understand why they killed Kans at the end. That does not make any sense”. I said, “Kans was a bad guy so he got killed.” “But now the problem is that they cannot make a sequel”, was his smarty-pants response. I guess at the end of the day it still comes down to sequels.
And, as always, my final thought:
Silence is the ultimate weapon of power – Charles De Gaulle
