I know it isn’t easy to admit this, but I have always been a semi-literate illiterate. Let me illustrate this term with an example. When Pushkin, my son, was born, Specky, my wife, gave me a glance that seemed to say: ‘Can you just hold him while I change his diaper?’ And I looked at her and simply said, ‘Sure. Tell me how.’ For almost everything I relied on these three words: Tell me how. Well, I sometimes did allow a variation and said: Tell me now. Even at bedtime, I was the one who listened more attentively to the stories that Specky read out to Pushkin… and I soon realised that though I thought I knew who Cinderella was, I was probably confusing her with some other princess with long hair that tumbled out of a window of some castle on the edge of some jungle somewhere.
Yes, let me just admit that though I started off as an apprentice, I did dream of giving Pushkin a great time with my kind of stories. And so, one night when Specky wasn’t well and wanted to sleep early, I was entrusted the task of telling a story to a toddler who looked at me with smirking eyes that seemed to say, ‘Ha! Ha! I know you cannot make me go to sleep.’
So I stared back and gave Pushkin a glance that said, ‘You don’t know me yet, buddy, I’m going to make you pant for more.’
And I remember that night very well… the story went on for almost an hour and all this time Pushkin was listening with his eyes wide open and far away from sleep. As I reached a stage where I thought I would now end the story, I twisted the narrative a bit and made the protagonist, a Princess of course, to say: ‘Gimme more! Gimme more!!’ Pushkin was at a stage when he had just uttered his first two or three words rather indistinctly, and I saw him throw a smile at me and say: Gimme more!
I know he didn’t know what the two words meant but they simply fascinated him and from that night, all he said after every story, was ‘Gimme more!’ To those who are curious to know what that story was… well, I mixed all the fairy tales that Specky had read so far, added pirates and beaches and fights with shot guns from a story about adventures on a Coral Island that I had read in school, garnished it all with filmi terminology and infused a lot of tonal variations. I was actually great at making a word live through pronunciation and was a fan of people like Amin Sayani, Shatrughan Sinha, Rajesh Khanna, Dev Anand because of the way they spoke and made every word count.
I do not know if it was the story that fascinated Pushkin or if it was the way I told that mish-mash… but after that day, ‘gimme more’ became his favourite phrase and a nightmare for me. I mean, even at that age Pushkin was smart enough to first listen to a sensible story read out by Specky in her sensible voice… and then look towards me, giggle and shout: ‘Gimme more! Gimme more!’
I have no idea if my ‘gimme more’ series of stories that went on for months, actually gave Pushkin a good night’s rest or not because all I know is that they did make my mind work overtime to ensure that keep churning a mish-mash with the past, future, and the present incidents woven in seamlessly to concoct stories that kids simply love.
Those sessions have tended to make me rather comfortable when I now weave in technology with a myth or a news report or a story… infuse a bit of drama in it and make it all much more palatable than what sensible tech blogger do all the time. I only hope my readers are like Pushkin who will pamper me and say: Gimme more!
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A post written on Bedtime Rituals… prompt on Indiblogger
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Arvind Passey
19 February 2015
2 comments
sonia kundra singh says:
Feb 19, 2015
Time with kids are so precious. and you sound like a great father. I remember the stories when my dad used to tell me…and my kid enjoys those stories now. You are passing on a legacy.
Great blog…cheers!
Arvind Passey says:
Feb 23, 2015
Thanks a lot for your words, Sonia… yes, i did love reciting poetry and telling stories.