Kid stuff!

What is the most shocking city? The answer is electricity! If you think that this is the mother of all PJs then think again. This gem came, not from me and neither from The King of PJs (my son-law!), but from Raghav, my grandson, all of 6 years of age!!! Imagine! I cannot but feel - a little grudgingly, to be honest - that today's kids are far more developed in their intellect than we were, or at least I was, at that age.

Take for instance the case of this hapless writer. At the age of six I remember asking my parents whether M/S Mukherjee and Mazumdar of the Imperial Bank were Indians! This was also the age when I stole four Black & White cigarettes from my father's case only to chew them thoroughly before being sick as a cat all over the drawing room carpet! Six was the age when I fought with my mother one day because she refused to allow me to use her make-up! And six was also my age when ,on another occasion, I bawled my lungs out at my first sight of snow, as it lay blanketing the entire landscape that was visible from my window!

Do you still feel that today's child is not smarter than his agemate of 50 years ago? Were you very smart?

Take the case of Kabir, our other grandson, much the elder at the ripe old age of nine! At nine I used to wonder whether I could ever be clever enough to become an engine driver! Or a "bara babu" in my father's bank! Kabir has other ideas. Recently, he traumatised a cabbie in Sri lanka by asking him where did that country obtain their petroleum products from and whether it had its own power industry! See what I mean?

I remember that, when I was about nine years of age, I spent a lot of time trying to perfect the various techniques of spinning a top or swinging a yo-yo. At times I was better than the other boys and girls and at times I was not. It seemed to me at that time that to aquire the extreme skills needed to execute the more complicated manouvres was nothing short of a Herculean task.

Todays' children play video games. The games are actually very interesting and seem easy enough till such time I have a go! On several occasions, I have been bold enough to contest Kabir at various such games. And I must say that I did fairly well considering the initial trepidation that I had. Sadly my euphoria was always short-lived because the 200 or 300 points that I had managed to garner on these occasions did not at all appear as match-winning as I thought once Kabir had totted up the points in excess of 2000 or so!

Both Kabir and Raghav are adept at anything electronic - as I am sure are thousands of kids elsewhere. This generation's affinity for digital contraptions is amazing. May it gather more momentum to be able to cope with the marvels of technology that are sure to come in the future.

As for us grandfathers and grandmothers, may we continue to perpetuate all the nuances of Darwin's theory of evolution!!!