Rigved

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Rigved is down with chicken pox and he is thoroughly enjoying his little enforced vacation. He watches movies, plays games, builds castles and ships, silently orchestrates wars in the afternoons, spreads love in the house with his presence and of course reads like there was no tomorrow. We have to literally tell him sternly to stop reading now!

Day before yesterday we saw a fantastic movie called ‘The Majestic’ starring Jim Carey, one of Rig’s favorite actors. Towards the end of the movie, Rig asked, “Do these actors have to ‘actually’ kiss when they are shooting a kissing scene?”, I said, “Well, Yes…” He replied, “Ah, so an actor’s job also has its drawbacks!”

Rig’s exams are over and so are the days of writing with a pencil. Now he will write with a pen! He is very excited about it and yesterday he did a page of copy writing on his own, despite of an ongoing vacation, with a pen.

Yesterday was his birthday and the regular ordeal took place where friends were invited a day in advance using a flyer, kids turned up, exchanged gifts for a return gifts, games and prizes, music and as usual hardly any boys! Here is the flyer

Last week, on the day his exams got over, he left for his Dadi’s house in Belapur where he had a blast with his new friend Parth, an 11 year old very well behaved boy who gets along perfectly with Rig. I ve noticed that Rigved is easily friends with guys older than him and girls of any age. He just cannot stand stupid and bad mannered children and he will try and keep them at bay. The last two days at Dadi’s house were not so good for him as he was with one such child. But its over now and Rig is back home and very happy with his toys, movies, books and Shoobie(his pet turtle) who has grown up to a little over 2 inches now. We have decided not to enroll him any class the way probably every parent in this city is doing. We have decided that this is his holiday and that is exactly what its going to be…

On Saturday night Rigved came up to me and said if a sleepover was allowed. I did not know what that meant. So he told me that a friend comes over and spends the night at our home. I asked him who is this friend and he said it was Shirsha, a new friend from the neighboring building. She is a year younger to him but a couple of inches taller than him and loves reading just like Rigved. They ve been exchanging books recently and they get along pretty well. She is probably the only sensible girl in the area we live in, the rest is cattle.

I was a bit surprised that a girl is coming over to spend the night with Rigved, and wondered if her parents will actually allow her. Rigved personally cleaned up the house and was dressed neatly when she arrived which was much to our surprise. They watched a movie, read books and laughed out loud till about 1:00 am. They slept in the computer room and till 5 AM I kept coming to the room to make sure everything was alright. After about 3 AM both the kids were in deep sleep and they looked like 2 puppies sleeping innocently unaware of the proverbial big bad world outside.

Shirsha woke at 8 AM and woke Rigved. Her mum came to pick her soon after and Banda just had to tell her how well behaved and mature her daughter was.

All in all Rigved’s summer vacation is going great. The scholarship class that had begun was abandoned in mid May as the teacher, her home and the rest of the kids there didnt create a welcoming atmosphere for Rigved. Also we realized that this is his summer vacation and the feeling one gets in these days is unparalleled to any other feeling in one’s life so why ruin it under the name of constructive utilization of holidays. The objective of the vaction is to unwind, take a break and forget the school, teachers and studies by playing all day and sleeping peacefully at night. These days will never come again and neither will childhood.