Potli Baba Ki

When I was a just a kid in school, there used to be a TV serial called as "Potli Baba ki" every Sunday. The storyline was about an elderly character who used to roam around and the local children running behind him pestering for a story. And that man used to oblige the kids with a wonderful new story every time. I don't remember much of those stories except that they had us glued to the idiot box. Actually I loved stories in any format..be it a printed book or a TV serial or a story told by somebody. As I grew up my liking for stories continued in the form of reading books.

Now I am a father and see the same attachment for stories in my kid. I guess all kids have fascination for stories. So it came as no surprise to me that my son started demanding stories during bedtime. Now that caused me considerable panic, for while I have read a lot of stories and can recall quite a few of them, I am an absolute dud at story-telling. I had hoped that my wife would take up that particular activity and spare me. But I miscalculated, she already had the same plans for me and was more prepared for the eventuality. She convinced our son that I was a master story-teller as I read a lot of books and I could tell him many stories. So to cut a long story short I got nominated formally as the story-teller.

Since I had no faith at all in my story-telling abilities I took the next best way out. Fortunately, I had a good collection of the Tinkle Digests. It contained some good stories with supporting pictures. I started telling those stories to my son along with the pictures. This way I memorised 4-5 stories and then took to repeating them one story every night. This went on for a while and I congratulated myself for the danger averted.

I was premature in patting myself. My kid is in the habit of visiting his grand-parents every weekend and his story listening continued with them. Now as with grandmothers and grandfathers the world over, they have quite a good supply of stories with them. All those kings, queens, prince and princesses and fairies and witches started appearing and started making life difficult for me. And when the animals from the jungles made an appearance then my life was just shot to hell. Now my kid started demanding stories with particular characters. The Aesop and Panchantra helped to a certain extent. But one day my son demanded an animal story that I didn't knew of. I should have refused, instead I somehow made up one with the help of my wife. It just gave my son an incentive that I could have done without. He started coming out with different combinations of animals. I tried to blunder my way through, and with my wife laughing her head off in her pillow nearby, it was very discouraging. Many times I tried to dissuade my kid by saying I will tell him the normal stories, but he used to be adamant and insisted that I tell a story for the combination he had prepared for that day.

Gradually I noticed that I had actually started enjoying making up stories during this activity. I noticed that after I completed a story my son appreciates the story and then goes off to sleep. Occasionally he makes a return to the normal stories, but mostly he likes the stories that I make up as per his wish. This is now a pleasurable activity for both of us and I found that we have started bonding more with each other. I also noticed that he tries to make up his own stories. All this has had a positive impact on both of us.

I guess that when I become a grandfather, I too will have lot of stories to tell my grand kids. I will have then joined the rank of story telling grand parents like the world over and I have my kid to thank for this. This makes me think that I too now have what my kid can refer to as "potli baba ki".

New Year Resolution

It was that time of the year when you prepare yourself for the most pleasurable task of all. Preparing the list of resolutions for the new year.

I am sure that many of us would agree that the exercise of making resolutions is such a fun activity, especially when you compare your list with your friends and find some unique items for copying. Making new year resolution is that time when you feel that you can will yourself to do just about anything. The only constraint is that there are so many things to do and so little time that you have to take a very hard and painful decision of cutting short the list of things that you would want to do. I am also sure that the same people would also agree that actually doing those things in the list isn't as much fun. I mean look at all the efforts and the time that you have to spend to stick to your resolutions. I mean it is simply not worth it. So all these years I have had a enjoyable time making such an impressive list of resolutions....and not sticking to them.

But this time I thought let me buck the trend and actually stick to my resolutions, at the least one. With this in mind I started to think of the things that I would want to do this year. It was proved to be very difficult. The resolution lists of the earlier years were of no use at all....I mean you don't seriously think that I would think of doing all those inhuman feats like getting up early in the morning before the sunrise or even worse go out for a brisk walk or jog for that matter or horror of horrors cut down on my intake of all those yummy items like icecreams, shakes, pizzas, sweets etc. to get in a shape that no longer resembles a bean bag.

Perish that thought...such resolutions are not meant for the likes of me. Simple and manageable is my motto when it comes to resolutions. I wanted to think of something sensible..something that I can actually execute without any problems..something like..like..you get the idea right. I wasn't used to making resolutions that I actually wanted to follow. So when I wanted to make one that I actually wanted to follow, I couldn't think of one..so after a lot of deep thought I convinced myself that I needed to borrow a resolution..and so I did. So my resolution for the year 2009 is...
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1024*768 pixels...what the heck, you can't fault me on this..a resolution is a resolution and I guess that I can stick to this without much problem.