Gabbu Singh Diaries 6 | That fun, frolic and little bit of embarrassment.

Your life changes when your toddler starts talking, not that the women in your life were anyways giving you a chance to speak a lot. But at least, in this state of speechlessness you can smile, rejoice and cherish it for a long time. So these days Avyaan behaves and talks as if he has just returned from an exile and he has to talk, talk and talk to make up for all the lost speech time of the last two years. So some of these anecdotes are really hilarious, some are embarrassing and some are way too awkward to be shared J.

Now he has this habit of calling anything that is not in place as ‘broken’. So if he is watching his rhymes on the iPad and something goes wrong with it, he would shout for help calling ‘ daddy its broken, fix it’, and similarly for everything that is not per his wish. So while the much awaited summer season arrived (so to say) and it was time to do away with the ankle kissing pajamas and adorn those comfy shorts. The boy was so shocked, that he literally cried looking at his bare legs (from knee to toe) and resorted to his usual broken chant, ‘daddy my pajama is broken, please fix it’. It took me a while to hold on to my laughter, empathize with his ‘broken’ emotions and ensure him that his shorts/pajamas are indeed not broken J.

One fine evening in Milan, while we were exploring the fashion capital on an open top bus, he was sitting beside me, pointing out and calling out names to whatever was passing by. Shortly, we passed by a billboard that had  2-3 bikini clad models advertising about some popular Italian beach destination. The moment he saw that billboard he shouted in utter excitement, ‘Daddy, it’s aunt in diapers, aunt in diapers’. Needless to say, hearing his innocent remark the entire upper deck was in splits and Gabbu Singh’s dad was found coping-up with a bout of embarrassment J.

Few weeks later while we were in the holy city of Vatican marveling over the iconic St. Peters Basilica, Avyaan was busy running around the large hallway of the basilica. We kept insisting him to fold his hands and seek blessings from the almighty but he was way too busy to enjoy his day out in that beautiful monument. When I kept on pestering him for the same, he finally paid heed by shouting ‘Jai Shree Ram’ at the centrum of the world’s largest religion, much to the joy of the omnipresent and giggling Indian touristy community there J.

So having emphasized the importance of grooming right from his early days, Avyaan acknowledges its credence and on most occasions adheres to what is expected out of him in those regards, timely cutting ‘yucky’ nails being one of them. So while visiting the London’s momentous ‘Natural History Museum’ couple of weeks back, Gabbu happened to spend his quality time in the most popular Dinosaur section of the museum. He was so enchanted by and observant of the gigantic replicas of those dinosaurs there that while leaving the section he innocently came to me and requested me to cut one of the dinosaur’s yucky nails. I somehow managed the situation by telling him that I have forgotten those big nail cutters at home. But it won’t be long when I would again be put on spot to cut some other dinosaur’s or may be a real dogie's yucky nails impromptu J

And as he speaks and speaks, that fun, frolic and little bit of embarrassment just keeps getting better and better.

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kin…

It's a relative world, will always be.

Sometime back I was reading an article on Accenture’s new appraisal system where they have done away with the age old bell curve mechanism of normalizing the appraisal process and grading their employees. Ever since, I couldn’t somehow fathom how and on what basis they would be rating an employee without bench-marking him against somebody else. My simple query was how would the company sustain its profitability and margins if they went on to actually rate all its employees on his merits, what if everyone actually does well some fine year. A very unrealistic scenario may be, but beyond a point can you actually function without being relative?

Relativity per say is a bitter/sweet reality that determines the course of every aspect of our lives today. It would be unfair to categorize it as good or bad in truest sense but it can act in our favour in some scenarios and against as well otherwise.

So if you are a Virat Kohli you won’t be just judged by the no. of runs, centuries and wins you clock for your team but fortunately or unfortunately you would be rated, pitched and compared against what some Sachin Tendulkar did by that time in his career. That’s relativity for you.

If you are some Narendra Modi you won’t be just judged by the goods that you would have done for the country but rather interestingly, you would also be evaluated by how badly you have fared vis-à-vis your predecessors on those unthought-of parameters which you would have considered inconsequential on the priority pedestal. That’s again relativity.

If you are a Ranbir Kapoor your star power is measured by the no. of multi crore blockbusters you have given vis-à-vis the mighty Khans of the industry. And if you are some Rajkumar Rao your acting prowess is measured by the no. of national awards or critics awards you have won in comparison to the Irfan Khans and Naseeruddin Shahs of the worlds. Voila, relativity!

Accenture or Lovely University, if you are an employee you would be rated and evaluated for what your peers have done better over you, rather than what good you would have done in general or even over them. That again interestingly is the resultant of the relativity in today’s realm of things.

And despite all your mental prowess and acumen if you could still manage to be a boyfriend or a husband your true worth is determined by how well you fare against the other boyfriends and husbands in your community. Needless to say you could never fare better, thanks to the unique form of relativity that operates in such scenarios J.

So Mahatma Gandhi is still considered to be an all-time  great national leader because the likes of Sonias and Rahuls do exist. Tendulkar is considered to be among the best batsman of his era because he was a shade brighter in his skill in comparison to the  likes of Ponting, Lara and Kallis. Aamir Khan happens to be one of the most successful actors of our times because the likes of Fardeen Khan, Tushar Kapoor and Aftab Shivdasani also exist. And so on. In a nutshell, it has always been a relative world, people are good, not so good or bad only because of the relatively that comes into play every single time irrespective of the trade you are a part of. No wonder relativity has and will always determine on how we fare in our lives and you don't need some Einstein to prove you that.

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kin…