Mira recognizes Papa

Like all other days, Mira and I sprawled out on our green flowery chatai next to the French windows, ready to begin the day with some fun and play. The only difference today was that rather than having stacking cups, animal puzzles and picture books between us, we had heaps and heaps of music CDs.

Yup – Music CDs! Mira’s Papa and I have this constantly growing but barely-listened to music collection that has gradually occupied each room of ours, some hiding in the drawers while some peeping out from book racks. So, finally I decided to clean up the mess – to classify all the CDs appropriately and place them in their designated places. Though Mira’s presence was a little dangerous with her mega successful track record of damaging things (my laptop keyboard still aches from a cruelly extracted tab key and my swarovski crystal though still on the center table, has tonnes and tonnes of glue around it), but I still decided to carry on.

So, here were we all ready to begin our task! While I stuck to the conservative method of categorizing CDs into jazz, pop, bollywood, ghazals etc., Mira was much more enterprising and novel in her approach. All the CDs with boring black and white covers were immediately discarded – a few strong well-timed back hand strokes and there the CDs went completely out of reach! The coloured ones sadly, were much more unfortunate – some were forced to revolve around her tiny finger while others were banged against the floor to see if they could really make some music!

We had almost cleared half a mountain of this stuff, when Mira suddenly exclaimed “PAPA”!

Considering it to be one of her show-off sessions where she rattles out all the words she knows one after another, I decided to ignore her completely.

And then, it hit me again – “PAPA”!

“Papa’s in the office baby”, I said sweetly, while my eyes still engaged in sorting out the mess.

But no – Mira wasn’t ready to stop and then, it got out of control – “PAPA PAPA PAPA PAPA……!”

Picking her up immediately and taking her in my arms, I noticed the CD firmly held in her hand:

……..and I burst out laughing!

The caricature on the CD wore a turban, just the way Mira’s Papa does! Though Papa lacks the majestic moustache and the dark glasses, the turban did the wonders and Mira connected the picture to him.

Fearing her to address all other turban-clad men as Papa and then, to ruin my otherwise highly cordial marital relationship, I looked her into the eye and said sternly, “That’s not Papa, Mira!”