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

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!”

One regular feature is, the castle construction takes a backseat if while building he gets hold of a good book! Then the soldiers (toys) seem to be aimlessly loitering around the unfinished castle forgetting their differences while Rig reads the nice book!

Another small thing that happens is while playing a board game called Life. In this game if you are handed a ’share the wealth’ card by the opponent when you earn some money, you can give the opponent an ‘exemption card’ to evade sharing the wealth. For some reason Rig kept on calling it the ‘exTemption’ card instead.

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

List 1:

• Sort the toys
• Find the copass (he meant compass probably)
• Study ants
• Write story
• Read all Harry Potters

List 2

• Battery
• Metal junk
• Cardboard
• Spiral wire
• Rubberband

Later he came up with a new philosophy: Some people prefer to learn from the consequences rather than the warning!

Later in th flight we had 2 aisle seats & 1 window seat faraway so we requested the window seat guy next to th aisle seats to exchange his seat with us which he readily agreed to. Later the same guy learnt that the window seat we had given him was occupied by a firang couple who like us wanted to sit together & had one first class & a economy class… They offered him the first class seat and he happily took it. Rig saw all this and said, its true… One good deed deserves another

I was quite pleased with the display of presence of mind. On further thought I realized that when a number is divisible by a prime number, it means that the prime number is a factor of that number being tested. Taking this example further, I felt that Rig is divisible by all that is good, which in other words means, he is a prime factor of all that is good.

Later in the evening I asked him whether it was the national anthem that made him halt or was it some teacher who maybe beckoned him to stop till the anthem was over. Rig said he was on his way up when he noticed another kid who had stopped on the way coz the anthem was going on and that made him stop too.