Athi’s Alapparais

Incident no.:1 

I think invariably each one of us would have atleast on distinct memory of something we did / something that happened to us in our childhood, which we wouldn’t have forgotten even till now. It might be of bravery, forgery, happiness or sadness or anything. I think this incident, that happened to Athi, would probably go down into his memory as one for his bravery and calm! 

So, this is what happened. My amma and Athi were playing with the bedroom door lock. Well, you can never guess the kind of things that’d excite a 5-year-old. It can be very random. This was one such thing. Apparently, he had just found out that the room can be locked from the outside using a key and can still be opened easily through the knob on the inside. No points for guessing who was inside and who was outside. Of course, Athi was in, and amma was out. As the boy was trying to understand this wow of an invention, he gets carried away and pushes another lock in the room, which is strictly an inside-only lock - meaning, you can’t unlock/undo it from the outside. And poor fellow doesn’t know how to undo his actions, a.k.a open the door. My mom tries asking him to unlock a few times, but he shouts back that it’s really hard and he isn’t able to do it. Oh, I completely missed to tell you about this - he’d just got one of his hands completely covered with Marudhaani (the boy is surprisingly quite fond of it and whenever someone brings them home, he’s all the more happy to get his hands adorned with it). So, imagine a little kid trying to unlock (which he is clueless about) a door with just one hand with all his might - perfect recipe for panic! My amma comes rushing to me trying to explain what happened. All of us assemble right outside the door of the room talking to him, asking him to try a little harder to get the door unlocked. Thankfully for him, the room had a bathroom. So, we instruct him to wash the Henna off his hands and then try with both the hands. Still no luck. Outside we were losing our calm, but inside, the boy is still all put together. He doesn’t shed a drop of tear, patiently trying whatever that we ask him to do. By the end of 15 minutes, we surely knew this wasn’t helping. Luckily my father’s phone was inside the room, so we tried to video call him, but gosh, android settings couldn’t find a better time to request for camera permissions to attend the video call. Because he’s barely used mobiles, he isn’t able to figure out why he couldn’t attend the call, and thus goes our last chance of trying to get him out of the door without having to break it. 

Just as we were thinking what can be done, my dad comes to the rescue with his absolute presence of mind - he decides to make a rectangular cut in the door near the lock by drilling holes. We instruct Athi to go and sit on the bed, while we try to unlock the door, and he promptly listens. Meanwhile, V contacts the maintenance folks and get someone from their team to fetch a ladder and try climbing to the window attached to that room. Thankfully, we live in second floor, so it wasn’t too much of a hassle. But Athi is too small to open the window to let him inside. As the maintenance anna tried to talk to him, asking him to stay calm, Athi replied back to him coolly, telling - “Uncle please wait, my thatha is drilling holes into the door and is going to open it for me”. Such calm and clarity, I sure don’t know where from he inherited them - definitely not me. 

After about 25-30 minutes, Appa had managed to cut out a rectangular portion, and the door is unlocked. Oh boy, we were so relieved. As soon as we get in, we ask him how he was trying to open the door, and as he shows it, we realize the poor thing had been trying to push the lock further inside on the same side, inside of pulling it out to unlock. No wonder it was very hard. A little while later, we question him if he was afraid / cried while he was stuck inside, he replies bravely - "first light ah azhuga vara madiri irundhuchu ma, aana aprom ellarum enna suthiteengala la, aprom enaku bayam pochu" (initially tears did well up in his eyes, but then once we were all right outside the door trying to talk to him, he started feeling much better and didn't feel the need to weep).

Quite an adventure it was, especially for my mom - because she felt she was primarily responsible for the whole fiasco, and dad - because he had to the hard work of drilling out the holes on a super strong door. An experience that shall forever be etched in our memories and be talked about for ages to come.

The hole in the door which was finally sealed yesterday with a patch of sheet

Incident No.:2

This is nothing unlike the previous one. This is more on how kids stump you speechless through their actions. We decided to enroll Athi for a Parkour Summer Class. It was the first day of the class and there's this huge slide in there made of wood, quite unlike the normal slides in the parks - this one is super steep at the top. Definitely looked a bit scary to me, at first sight. After a couple of other activities, the boy climbed to the top of this slide (through the ladder sort of thing), and the instructor asked him to slide down. He seemed pretty nervous and scared, and said he didn't want to do it. The instructor tried talking to him slowly, offering to help / hold him as he got down, and I did try to talk to him too, but he was quite unprepared and didn't want to do it. After about 5-7 minutes of trying to talk to him / making him slide, he was just lifted off and put through in the middle of the slide. He didn't protest much but didn't want to do it again, and continued with the rest of the activities for the day. As the day progresses, whenever he had a break, he'd climb up the slide from the bottom (instead of taking the ladder at the top and sliding all the way down) and reach a certain height and slide down from there. He kept doing it again and again, for God knows how many times - trying to get a hang of how the slide felt when he slid. As the class comes to an end for the day, guess what he asks - he walks up to the instructor and tells him he'd want to climb all the way to the top the slide, and get down on his own. I was quite stumped. Just about an hour ago, we were in the same place, pleading with him to slide down and here he was now, wanting to do on his own. Well, quite a transformation in an hour's time. The biggest take away for me in this whole episode was - you can try to push your kids to try the things that they might be scared off at first, but you really do have to give them the time and space to explore it on their own, without too much interference. Keep providing them that opportunity to explore things at their own pace, and don't forget to enjoy the beauty of how they figure out a way around it/through it.

The wooden slide