Rigved

These days Rigved fires up his computer, gets on to YouTube and watches Dan Nelson’s tutorials on drawing the human figure. He has taken this drawing/learning to draw a human figure quite seriously. As soon as he wakes at 11:30 am, he walks across the house to our study/computer/work room and opens up a big drawing book and tries his hand at what he learnt from Dan Nelson!

In other news, Rig takes the job of a monitor very seriously and introduces innovative measures to make sure the children in his class behave themselves! His job is to write down names of the kids who are creating a racket or misbehaving when the teacher is not around. He has to write these names on the blackboard. Some kids still continue with the racket despite their name appearing once on the board. So Rig introduced a system where he puts a cross next to the kid’s name so that it may be pointed out easily that the number of crosses + 1 = the number of times the kid was misbehaving. Then to motivate the kids from not misbehaving further, he tells them that if they behave themselves, he ll take their name off the board. This seems to work the best. Yet some kids are as he put it, ‘incorrigible’. They not only continue to misbehave but also come and try to rub their own name off the board… Rigved came out with another strategy for them where he re-writes their name and puts an infinity sign (sleeping next to their names. The kids get confused with that sign not entirely sure of what that means. Rig just means to suggest that the kid with the infinity next to his name is talking repeatedly but the kid feels there is some trouble awaiting him coz he cannot entirely grasp what is infinite.

Lastly, Rig asked me if I d go to the gym when I get old? I told him its become quite a challenge even while I m young to be regular at the gym so I m not sure if I m going to be regular in my old age. He said, whatever I dccided to do, there is a good chance that there will be bigger treadmills by then so that I could use my walking stick

Here is a poem that Rig wrote today

Here is my Christmas list
I hope you will bring it all
You may have noticed it’s very small

First I want a golden unicorn
And to summon it I shall need a horn

Then I need a hundred goblin slaves
All living in small little caves

A magic castle will do me fine
Just make sure it will always shine

And a gleaming crown and a kingly cape
Made finely with a magnificent make

I didn’t want to bother you much
So I gave you a very common list!

-written by Rigved Deshpande

Rigved is home as he had cold yesterday. He is fine now but preferred to rest at home than go to school.

Much has happened in the last few weeks. The sports day and the annual day were of primary importance as he had to practice every day for his role in the events. In the sports day he was part of a group that engaged in some formations on the ground. The act lasted about 10 minutes but he was trained for it for a whole month. It was at Andheri Sports Complex. We could see him from a distance and it feels *very* different to see someone you love at a great distance. More than the act itself, it was a totally unknown feeling to see him sitting with his friends, running around the ground for fetching water or just staring somewhere.

The second event, his annual school day where he was part of a drama was not the same as compared to the sports day as we could see him only in the act. He played the role of God. He was a bit conscious of the costume he was wearing as it exposed some parts of his back and he was totally not OK with it.

These days he is getting noticed by his teacher and the principal for his command over the English language. He makes these brilliant sentences which are serious and have deeper implications. His principal has already asked for his worksheets to give a special remark to probably tell us that we must build on this. He has joined a new workshop called Springs – Break Creative Barriers in school and in that too, his teacher has taken notice of this.

All in all he is growing up. His approach to things is not childish anymore though it doesnt lack any childlike values either.

Today Rigved drew a comic strip comprised mainly of stick figures. OK before I go into it, Rigved hates getting a haircut. The barber comes home, yet Rigved detests it all. Since he had not been keeping well since the last few days (all the 3 of us actually) we had to tell the barber to go and come some other time.

Anyway, so back to the comic strip.

A barber is cutting a kids hair. These are stick figures yet, the kid’s stick figure seems annoyed at the whole thing. The barber asks for 5 cents and after getting it, leaves. Someone asks the kid why is he so grumpy. The kid replies, “The barber took away a million of my black ideas!”

Today Rigved asked me if I could help him out on something. He asked me to draw a heart shape in the corner of every page in his drawing book which is filled with drawings he has done from his fantasy art and mythological characters book. Next to the heart I was supposed to write, I LOVE YOU. He had already done it for some pages. The balance were to be done by me. He later presented that to Banda as a surprise. He has been cooking up a surprise every day for Banda. In most cases its a small plate with small sweets in it covered with another small plate.

I was going through the photos on my phone and found out that Rigved had been busy with it on the 18th of this month. He had assembled his jigsaw blocks to create fruit pictures and then later had clicked snaps of them.

Rigved is pretty comfortable with the phone and knows how to connect to the computer via blue tooth and transfer files!

Since yesterday, Rigved is making flags of various countries. UK, USA, Australia, Africa and of course India. He makes them on small note papers and then sticks them to ice scream sticks. Once the flag is done, he´ll come up to me and with great wonder in his eyes he will say, “Hey, how does the flag of Germany look like?”. Then I go to Google Images and show him the flag, he promptly goes there and resumes his work.

Today a month will get over since his fracture. There is great improvement in his arm and today we have to take an X Ray and visit Dr. Samir Pilankar who worked on his arm to take his opinion on whether or not we should change the plaster to a smaller one.

Today afternoon when i woke up, Rigved had kept a note on the floor that read, “Do you want a surprise? Ok, first ´cloo´ is on the fridge”. This had a picture of a fridge on it. On the fridge there was another note that read, “Look near the window”. This had a picture of the window. On the window sill was yet another note that read, “Look inside the AC duct”. All this while he was following me with his hands held behind, which is a very recent thing that he does is. He holds his hands behind like an old man and his cute little tummy butts out and he looks so cute that you want to pick him instantly and kiss him! Anyway, in the AC duct was a bunch of papers with drawings of a dinosaur skeleton (which he had seen yesterday on MAD(pogo channel) where they created dinosaur fossil), Mickey Mouse (which was drawn by an artist on his hand at a party), a pattern that was made of ´Om´ , an aero plane and a mean looking mammoth. All the drawings and clues were on colored post it sized note papers.

Later in the evening when Banda came over they both went down and played badminton. He counts the score in badminton like tennis which he recently started playing on his PS2.