On evening I was discussing something with Mira and were not sure about some detail and Mira mentioned what Manu said. I told her what Manu is saying must be true because the kids are lot more likely to catch fine details than adults. I told her how I had an almost photographic memory as a kid whether it was the conversation one had or the visual from a video or a movie (funny how that photographic memory never worked for text books). Mira said “Yes I know and it was really frustration when older people never believed us.”

The other thing about kids is their ability to find something amusing about almost anything in this world. This is the case with Manu as well. Last Sunday I took him for polio drops in the A block of our housing society. The distance from our home to the camp was about 250 mtrs but it took us about 2 hours to make that trip. By the end of it too I had to carry him while he was howling to stay out even longer.

Here are some of the pics of what he observed and did during those two hours.

Gourmet food?

The cat and the dog eating from the same garbage bin. Since these pics are taken with a phone camera, please bear with me for the low quality.

The swing and “atkeraam”

There was a small play area with a swing and another thing that had ladders on both ends and in the middle was a bridge made of another ladder. Latakna is Hindi for hanging and atakna is for getting stuck. Manu uses the same word for both. He wanted to climb the ladder and then wanted to do an “atkeram” - to hang on one of the bar (He uses the same word when we go over a sped bump or a generally bumpy drive)

Bricks and stones

When he goes out to the playground, he carries a stone from there. On Sunday he wanted to carry a brick. When I told him it was too big and we need something small, he picked up a smaller piece of brick and asked me if it is okay.

Taxi ride

Most of the taxis in Bombay are Premier Padminis or Fiat as they are commonly known. Those cars are not made anymore and most of them are cabs with a very small number used as private vehicles. He spotted one Fiat and insisted it was a taxi. Here he is trying to get in for a ride.

Floaters

So this is why they are called floaters. They really float. He likes water and when he saw this puddle he wanted to step into it. Then he took off is slippers and put one in the water. Don't know what he was trying to do.

The drops

Finally we reached the camp and got the drops and the nail polish.

Even more distractions

From there instead of turning back we had to go further to the play area of A-block.

Water

As we passed the garden, he spotted the sprinkler and stood there to watch it. Then a few people came over there with buckets to fill water due to water cut and Manu saw something like this for the first time
“Papa why is uncle filling up water in the bucket”
“To take it to his home”
“Why”
“Because there is no water today”
“Why”
“Because the pipe burst”
“Kisne phutaya (Who burst it)”
The man filling the bucket was watching us and said "When I was a kid I used to ask questions like this"

This slide is different than the other one

After the slide of A-block, Manu wanted to spend some time playing here too. The slide, the swing and the see-saw ad the works

Naarial pani

He saw the guy who sells narial paani pass by and wanted to have narial paani. I took him there and this is where the camera betrayed me. Since there was not enough memory, it kept reducing the resolution of the images till it was taking thumbnails and then asked me if it should start saving pics on the memory card. Even on the memory card it kept saving really small pics.

Ek playground banaaonga...

He generally carry one or two pebbles but this time he stuffed his and my pocked with small pebbles from the playground and when I asked him what he'd do with them he said “I'll make a playground”

If I had gone there alone I would have come back not even noticing 10% of what Manu saw. If I had a camera, I would have observed a little more carefully but still not as carefully as a child.