My Two Sons - A Millennium Apart

My two sons were born in 1999 and 2005, so this is a tale of two centuries. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. Wait, wait…..I think that was a tale of two cities, not two centuries. Let us come back to the topic.  Actually, before I start talking about my sons, let me first introduce my immediate family to those of you who do not know me. And there is a good reason for this introduction. When my lovely sis-in-law Kanya Bahwa inspired me to write a blog, I thought that it would be read only by my close friends and family (because I would beg, plead, coax, threaten, emotionally black mail, yell, or do whatever it takes to make them read it) and they all know my immediate family. Little did I know that suddenly my blog would be immensely popular all over the world. I have been receiving fan e-mails from many parts of the world. In fact, just yesterday, I received an e-mail from some Mrs. Choubatou in Nigeria, whose husband apparently died and left a sizeable amount of money for her. This very attractive widow (nothing wrong in assuming that she is very attractive….makes the story much more interesting) seems to have some issues with her bank account so she would like to transfer all that money to my bank account. I have already sent her my Bank of America account details. Money should be transferred in a week or so. I am positive that this all happened because she read my blog and realized that if she gave me her money, I would always make her laugh…so who would be a better candidate for this large inheritance than me?

If you still have any doubts about the popularity of my blog, let us look at some hard core data, which I crunched last week using the skills I learned in consulting. I also created several professional-looking, client-ready charts but I do not think that we need them for today’s discussion. All this data was made available to me by Kanya who, in addition to being my full-time lovely sis-in-law is also my part-time VP of Marketing, Director of IT, and Director of Panic Control. In fact, pretty soon when I figure out a way to monetize this blog, Kanya will also take on additional responsibilities as my CFO, COO, SVP of Sales, VP of customer service, VP of morning coffee-making operations, VP of business development, and Director of pricing and contract administration. Before you ask the question, let me make this pre-emptive strike – yes, it is a 2 people operation now but never forget that this is how Google also started as a company. And as they say, the rest is history.

Coming back to the data, it shows that my first blog had 1142 page views. Now, no one needs to know that I myself looked at my page 1129 times. Some techno-wizards may raise a worthless point that there were not 1142 so-called “unique” page views but as I just said, there point is….worthless. No need to pay attention to these aesthetically-challenged, athletically-challenged, geek losers who may want to show off their superior intellectual capabilities to overcome some mental scars from their childhood when they used to be the last one to be picked in a sports team…..even after the handicapped guy.

Therefore, given the international audience I have now for the blog, it is better that everyone knows a bit about my family, which consists of my soul mate, Anshu (whose American name is “Ann”), our 13-year old son, Nyle (Whose Indian name is “Navansh”), and our 7-year old son, Kush (no other name for him…trust me just “Kush” is enough….do you think “Bono” or “Madonna” or “Seal” or, more importantly “Stalin” needed a second name?).

My older one was born in the last year of the last century and Kush is a product of 2005 – setting them a millennium apart. Many of my friends already had kids before Nyle was born so we received a lot of tips on how to raise a kid because we were told that it would be the most challenging endeavor we could ever undertake in our lives. Nyle turned out to be the most well-behaved, calm, easy-going kid you could ever imagine. The experience was so good that we started doubting our friends and their advice. Right from the time he started talking, he was always polite. In fact, I remember an incident when he was around 3 years old; I took him to his doctor to get him the flu shot.  He obviously hated shots.  As soon as the doctor said to him, “OK, Nyle, we need to give you a shot so that you do not fall sick”, Nyle started screaming, “NO NO NO NO.”  I said to him, “Nyle, That is not polite.  Aren’t you going to be polite to the doctor?”  Next thing I know, he starts screaming even louder, “NO THANK YOU, NO THANK YOU, NO THANK YOU”.

Fast forward to 2005. It was now a different world compared to 1999 (when Nyle was born). Y2K had proven to be a non-event, cameras had moved from old film-style models to completely digital, everyone I knew had purchased an iPod with distinctively white earphones, I had been diagnosed with the crackberry addiction, and Nemo had been found.  This is when Kush comes into this world. Right from his birth, we started having “slightly” different experiences with him than what we had with Nyle.  For example, with Nyle, Anshu had a normal delivery and everything went fine. With Kush, she was in labor for 14 straight hours and THEN she had a c-section.  When he was born I found him to be so white that I immediately demanded a DNA test. However, looking at him now, he does look a lot like me so those of you conspiracy theorists with a dirty mind can retire your theories now.

With Nyle, we got so used to a kid behaving almost perfectly that we took it as granted…only to have some rude awakenings when Kush started growing up. While Nyle used to “earn” everything he wanted (which was not much anyway), Kush was born with a huge sense of entitlement. On Nyle’s birthdays, we used to plead him to let us buy him whatever he wanted. With Kush, that is never a problem because even on a regular day he always has a list of stuff he really “needs”. The other day, he told Anshu that he really needed a new video game. Anshu said, “Kush, every time you are with me at any store, you ask for all kind of stuff. If you stop whining at every shopping trip and do not buy unnecessary stuff, you will be able to save enough money for your video game”. He apparently thought through these new regulations and figured out his strategy. Next time he was in a toy store, he went, “Mamma, I was going to buy this Amazing Spiderman action figure but I am not going to buy it so can you count this $19.99 towards my money for the game?” – a rather brilliant strategy to game the system. Obviously, he has Indian genes.

On Kush’s 6^th birthday, his uncle Rahul called from India and asked, “So Kush, what do you want for your birthday?” Kush did not waste any breath and said, “Rahu Mahu, I “need” a BMW X-5, an i-Phone, and….” Kush heard a “click” sound – and the phone was dead. Turned out that Rahul hung up the phone and dashed out of the house to catch the next Shatabadi Express to Hardwar to meet a Guru in an Ashram to understand the true meaning of life. Ahh! The triumph of irrationality in this hyper-rational world – a 5-year old driving his highly-mature uncle to such insanity that he is still oscillating between visiting Gurus and drinking alcohol. Thank God he did not take up women.

Coming to think of it, there are so many amusing differences between my 2 boys that one blog is not enough so rest assured that they will be back in another episode soon!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends and Happy Something Something to my Indian friends (I am sure some part of India is celebrating some festival at any given day)!!!

Remember that I am here to provide a positive laughing experience.  Therefore, all questions, comments, concerns, complaints, frustrations, irritations, aggravations, insinuations, allegations, accusations, contemplations, consternations, or any other kind of feedback should be directed to Kanya Bahwa  at Iamsopretty@pink-cerelac.in.