It is no secret that kids between the age of 1 and 5 learn at a break-neck speed.. You go on a business tour for 2-3 days and come back to find your toddler saying new words, showing new expressions/emotions, and adding a whole new layer of personality onto herself. There is a dialogue in Narcos where a rich-man-gone-bankrupt is asked how he lost his money and he says "Slowly at first. And then... all at once."... Well, what is true for Escobar, is also true for most parents.
In a world where Annie Baby learns something new every day, "Apataadiya" has been a constant.. We don't know what it means exactly.. It's neither Gujarati nor Tamil (the two languages she hears the most) but we know what the word conveys.. Apataadiya means Cease and Desist!.. When she shouts this word, she wants us to stop whatever it is that we're doing — this could be something as important as feeding her or changing the diaper or something as mundane as combing her hair.. Well, whatever it is.. It cant continue beyond an Apataadiya! We have not only accepted this term but have also adopted it.. Now even we use it as an in-house term for stopping whatever is happening.. I guess kids teach us almost as much as we teach them.. The quantum of exchange may vary from time to time - but by the end of it, the balance is achieved.
It's not just a term she utters, we adopt the tunes she hums, the games she invents and even the famed head-tilt she's devised to manipulate us into giving her what she wants.. We adopt and we run with it.. We keep using it till it becomes a normal part of our being.. The way we bite and grind a tooth filling till the time it feels like a part of us.. And then comes a stage when the child out-grows that term or mannerism and looks at us in disbelief every time we use it in front of her.. Her look sometimes seems like "Dad! Grow up!“... I guess it is part of every parent's destiny to end up like Kamal Haasan doing that monkey dance in Sadma while Sridevi chugs away, oblivious of her past..
In a world where Annie Baby learns something new every day, "Apataadiya" has been a constant.. We don't know what it means exactly.. It's neither Gujarati nor Tamil (the two languages she hears the most) but we know what the word conveys.. Apataadiya means Cease and Desist!.. When she shouts this word, she wants us to stop whatever it is that we're doing — this could be something as important as feeding her or changing the diaper or something as mundane as combing her hair.. Well, whatever it is.. It cant continue beyond an Apataadiya! We have not only accepted this term but have also adopted it.. Now even we use it as an in-house term for stopping whatever is happening.. I guess kids teach us almost as much as we teach them.. The quantum of exchange may vary from time to time - but by the end of it, the balance is achieved.
It's not just a term she utters, we adopt the tunes she hums, the games she invents and even the famed head-tilt she's devised to manipulate us into giving her what she wants.. We adopt and we run with it.. We keep using it till it becomes a normal part of our being.. The way we bite and grind a tooth filling till the time it feels like a part of us.. And then comes a stage when the child out-grows that term or mannerism and looks at us in disbelief every time we use it in front of her.. Her look sometimes seems like "Dad! Grow up!“... I guess it is part of every parent's destiny to end up like Kamal Haasan doing that monkey dance in Sadma while Sridevi chugs away, oblivious of her past..
