Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Powers of Persuasion

A few days back, on a Friday, I had to work out of home because of back-to-back early morning teleconferences and as driving into Bengaluru is a nightmare after 8:30 am. El Niño was having a holiday and the first thing he said after waking up was 'Thum aaj office nahin jaayaengaey'. We wonder as to how he manages to 'think' and talk in Hindi fluently when no Hindi is used at home except for watching what the characters mouth in Doraemon, Perman, Ninja Hattori, Shin-chan, Beyblade, Oggy and the cockroaches etc etc. :)

After fueling up and realizing that I was still at home and on my laptop, El Niño persuaded me to come and play at 9:00 am in the morning. Barked back saying that I had work to do and hence no play. For around half-an-hour there was no sign of him and then whoosh!, there was a paper rocket flying over my head. I ignored it and continued. A few minutes later, another paper missile landed with a dire missive. "Do not speak to me. Until you say sorry I wont talk to you".

And then I go, to find him behind a fortified barricade of pillows, sheets and blankets, drawn from all the rooms. A few sorrys and cajoling did not get him out of his frown. And then the magic words, "Shall we go and play TT and squash?", did the trick. And off we went out for an hour or so, burning a few calories with sweat, tears (me being accused of cheating in TT) and toil, while the work waited.

A similar scene two days back on Sunday. We had played tennis for around an hour in the baking morning sun on a concrete basketball court and came home to cool down when there was trouble again in the form of the swimming pool. Looked out toward the pool and not a soul in sight with only the shimmer of heat waves floating. Tried to wriggle out saying it is hot and I do not have swim trunks. And he went in, dug into my 'junk collection' and pulled out two big rubber-bands, strapped them to my knee length shorts and said, 'your swim shorts are ready. lets go'. Not to disappoint, drove down with him for around 6 kms to a sports shop, bought swim trunks and headed back home for lunch.

The negotiation started as to when we enter the pool.
"4:30 pm, when the sun is lower", I said.
"No, 2:30 pm", he refrained, "I'll finish food by 1:30 pm and then one hour to digest".
"It will be too hot even then. Look at you, all tanned. Okay, We'll go at 4:00 pm", I persist.

After a few minutes of back and forth of watching puppy-faced at the clock and at me, I had to melt (is there a choice?) and move the time up to 3:00 pm as the pool rendezvous. Slipped into an afternoon siesta after lunch with the drone of some toon TV channel in the background when a loud noise startled me. The TV was still on and the time was 3 minutes to 3:00 pm and there he was, before me, ready with his swim-wear accessories, towel et al and asking me to get mine to go to the pool.

And off we trudged to the pool, after dabbing some sunblock, with the sun beating down, for my 2 hours of flotation and attempted breath control in the water. I know only one water manoeuvre, the back float. (Need to learn swimming, but the thought of water going inside my nose freaks me out to panic)

Don't know where El Niño gets his energy from; his usual day now has an hour of swimming classes, an hour and a half of tennis thrice a week, then the local cricket and swimming sessions and at times, playing badminton and TT, hide-and-seek games with the kids around, Wii gaming as a side-kick to La Niña and then watching the toon channels. And for La Niña, except for the swim classes, and thrice a week music, the days are spent at immense leisure, watching TV/toon episodes on youtube.com, playing Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii and arranging and re-arranging her junk collection (like father, like daughter :-)) and maybe an hour or so of playing with her motley group of friends.

And for Señora, I have to thank her for all the mercies! Her day remains almost the same. She did mumble, 'Hmmm I should have the persuasive powers of El Niño. You seem to obey what he asks and he can twist you on his little finger.'

Ah! the joys of the school summer vacation, Still 50+ days to go for us to cope. Looks like El Niño asked Señora yesterday as to why I do not have a summer/Dussehra vacation like what he has. I am so overwhelmed with that gesture. Hope I had that luxury. :-) :-)

6 comments:

RS said...

Why don't adults have a summer/dussehra vacation as kids have? --a deep sigh from a longing heart that yearns for the time together with cousins :D

The three of you are eating away Senora big time, yeh? Poor woman (or girl is it?) :)

PS: Where and how have you been all these days?

Anonymous said...

Gr8,atlast some one who can make you budge for his wishes.Senora to follow his techniques of using pillows.

AA

RamNarayanS said...

@RS-:-D I understand, I understand. Appadiyae unga oor pakkam inga vandhuttu pohnga. Ellaam seriyaayidum.

ippdiyellaam solli you are making me remorseful. We are indeed troubling Senora, but not too much. :-D

Was quite busy at work and weekends just went off in a jiffy trying to recoup. Catching up slowly.

@AA-Yaenga, naan oru stubborn guynnu yaaru sonnadhu? :-) :-) (Senora says that enakku romba azhuththam jaasthinnu. No expression of what I feel. :-))

gils said...

lol..anaa chaancelanga..feels so happy to even visualise these scenes

Ramesh said...

LOL indeed. Senor is very busy understandably. The schedule seems to be even busier than a normal working day.

Plizzzz to embelish post with picture of Senor in the pool :)

RamNarayanS said...

@gils-:-) :-) Thanks.

@Ramesh-Senor Sr. is busy at work, Jr. is busy with all that stated. :-)

I can embellish the post with a photo of the pool, but not with the Senor. I do not want to drive away the small number of repeat visitors that I have (other than the junk comment posting blog crawlers from Russia) :)