Birds and bees and buzzing trees!

I have been bracing myself for the big talk: The one about the birds and the bees and how postman stork has figured out how to read addresses to deposit the correct bundle.

My elder one has now started disbelieving in Santa Claus. Gifted people, who read tea leaves, will tell you that is the first sign that your child is losing his innocence.

For the longest of time, poor behaviour on his part resulted in threats of returning him to the hospital he had been picked up from. The minute he realizes he is not a (non time-barred) returnable gift that we prayed for, this threat will cease to reduce him to tears and terror.

Meanwhile, I had been telling the ever elusive spouse that when the time comes he will have to have a heart to heart with his son. But the wily fox that he is, he weasels out of every difficult conversation by positioning me right in front of him. “Err, you have better knowledge of biology dear and in any case the kids are used to learning from you.”

Consoling myself that the difficult task was a couple of years away, I was unprepared when my younger kid who is just shy of five, asked me to check out videos as part of her homework assignment. She usually just clicks the microphone icon and speaks out whatever she wants to search for after the icon turns blue. I took the phone from her hand and saw the search message. It read, “What are harmful in sex?”

Ignoring her faulty grammar, with admirable composure, I decided to approach it at a level she could understand and said, “Poor personal hygiene can be harmful; also lack of protection can lead to all kinds of issues.” (No, I didn't say pun intended, she is not even five, Hello!)

She piped up “What about mosquitoes?”

“Yes, they can be quite a nuisance, their buzzing can really irritate, not to talk of the bites that can really distract.”

“What about cockroaches and house flies?”

Suddenly her questions didn't seem to quite add up and I asked her, “What exactly were you researching?”

“Didn't I just say harmful insects?” She complained.

In its infinite wisdom, apparently my phone had decided to educate her on a more important topic.

My phone, like it's owner, indulges in lateral thinking. I have often heard stories about how competitive I was with my older brother. Apparently in one of our many arguments we were comparing who had the larger number of a certain item (No one is quite certain what that item was. It could have been as prosaic as the number of marbles we owned or as bizarre as the number of green eyed bugs we hoped to collect). I must have been about four or five years old, but I dare say, the same person who reads tea leaves, would have marvelled and predicted a great future. Which goes to say of course, that the reading of tea leaves is as useless as possessing sacks of the denotified thousand Rupees currency. You thought it was significant but it's just bunkum.

So coming back to the argument, my elder brother said he had a hundred, I said I had nine hundred, so he upped the ante and said he had a thousand, I immediately responded with nine thousand (I always went with the highest value I knew, which was nine). Showing off as usual, he increased the figure to a lakh and as by now you might have guessed, I said “I have nine lakhs.” Unperturbed, he jauntily raised the figure to a crore. Stumped for a bit but never at a loss for words I responded with “And I have one parrot.”

My parents who had been watching this exchange were surprised, as might you have been kind reader, as to why I hadn't responded with nine cores, till it dawned on them that I had never heard of crores and had assumed he meant crows. Still, though the argument didn't make sense to me, I refused to be the first to give up and seeing that parrots are prettier than crows, I threw my heft behind that talkative and attractive creature.

Many years later, a trek up Kumara Parbat with friends yielded lots of laughter on what I euphemistically call ‘lateral thinking,’ when I thought pairs were sprouting up (probably hand in hand and much in love) when my friends exclaimed over fruiting pears. They decided then and there, to start a fund for a hearing aid for me. The funds have obviously been siphoned off as I have not seen sight nor heard sound of or from it.

The learning from all this however is that I don't need to brace myself for tough talks. When my son asks me awkward questions, I will take my devices off the safe mode and turn to Mr Google. (It doesn't sound as bad when you add the Mr does it? Sounds like a stern faced Assamese Maths teacher). Hopefully the education will be sound, accurate and up to date.