Skip to main content

Pappu Grows Wiser

Suddenly Pappu remembered.  His English teacher had given him a project.  He had to write 5 sentences about his grandfather or grandmother, about their likes and dislikes.  So Pappu ran into grandpa's room.

Grandpa was dyeing his hair.  Why should a 65 year-old man dye his hair?  Pappu was a precocious child.  Though he was studying in class 5 some of the questions that rose in his mind belonged to class 10.

"Grey hairs are a sign of maturity and wisdom," explained Grandpa with a mischievous grin.  "I possess neither of them.  That's why I'm dyeing my hair."

The next morning, as soon as the school bus dropped him on the campus, Pappu ran to Matheikal Sir, one of the teachers in the school, and asked, "Sir, why don't you dye your hair?"

Comments

  1. Sometimes the dye cannot hide the wisdom ;)
    Your wisdom will shine even through the dye if you decide to dye :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm not going to do it, Aram. Hasn't the colour become part of my identity?

      Delete
  2. The Grandpa may be yet another Matheikal!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. All characters have something or the other to do with the author's personality. So you are right.

      Delete
  3. Ahaha! Pappu sure has grown wiser. :P

    ReplyDelete
  4. Smart Pappu. He's gonna pass this year, I guess! :D

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ha ha ha.The child is more wise that the grandpa.Precocious children make life more lively. They are really the masters.

    ReplyDelete
  6. That's why, perhaps, Wordsworth said that the child is father of man :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. It seems gradually I'm becoming matured and gaining wisdom as well :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. The very best of self deprecation. FANTASTIC, though not true.

    If you are the "Matheikal sir" then the school, fully residential, is not the one you work in. The logic is equally applicable in the other direction.

    RE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is fiction, Raghuram. What actually happened is very simple. I was in the hostel the evening before I wrote this. One of the students asked me the question why I didn't dye my hair. I gave some banal answer. But the question tickled my mind while I was half asleep. Quite many of my stories are born in that state: while I'm half asleep. This too was born thus.

      Delete
    2. This is fiction, Raghuram. What actually happened is very simple. I was in the hostel the evening before I wrote this. One of the students asked me the question why I didn't dye my hair. I gave some banal answer. But the question tickled my mind while I was half asleep. Quite many of my stories are born in that state: while I'm half asleep. This too was born thus.

      Delete
  9. Although this is a fiction, it reminded me of a kid who used to live next to my house...she used to come up with the same questions and she was not even in 5th class... :P

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Children are born intelligent, the school ruins the intellect :)

      Delete
  10. Lol....that kid was tell you something :P

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Indeed, Pankti. There are some real kids of the kind I've created here.

      Delete
  11. Short and sweet story :)
    So when are you dyeing your hair?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Diventia. Even if I want to, I can't dye my hair for the simple reason that I'm terribly allergic to the dye.

      Delete
  12. A brilliant piece of writing having the flavour of a good short story. I enjoyed this laconic one.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Some flashes of inspiration that come occasionally, that's all Kajal ji.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Subhuman Social Media

Illustration by Copilot Designer I disabled Facebook on my phone yesterday. There’s too much vulgarity, subhuman crudity, on it. And the first thing I read this morning was a Malayalam weekly – Samakalika Malayalam from the Indian Express group – whose editorial lamented the treatment meted out on social media to Dr M Leelavathi, renowned Malayalam writer. Leelavathi refused to celebrate her 98 th birthday because she said she was distressed by the pictures of innocent children dying of human-made hunger in Gaza. She was trolled by the Hindu right wing in Kerala for saying that. The editorial mentioned above requests the “Hindutva handles” to leave alone Leelavathi. If Kerala’s beloved poet and educationist was moved to tears by the sight of little children behaving like insane creatures as soon as they espy some food, it only reveals the deep humanity that sustained her poetry as well as her world vision. The editorial went on to mention that 20,000 children were killed by Is...

Death of Humour and Rise of Sycophancy in India

Front pages of Newspapers in Delhi on Modi's birthday Yesterday the newspapers in Delhi (and many other places too) carried full page photo of Narendra Modi to celebrate his 75 th birthday. It was sycophancy at its zenith in the history of India’s print media. At no other point in the country’s history had the newspaper industry stooped so low. The first Prime Minister of the country was a man who encouraged the media to be critical of him. Nehru appreciated cartoons that caricatured him mercilessly. Criticism, particularly in the press, helped Nehru keep his ego under check. Shankar’s Weekly was the best cartoon magazine of those times. Launched in 1948 by K Shankar Pillai, the weekly featured political cartoons, satire and humorous articles. It criticised politicians mercilessly by caricaturing or satirising them. Nehru was a prime target. And the PM wasn’t upset. On the contrary, he appreciated Shankar Pillai’s efforts to make the nation, particularly its political leade...

A Man Called Ove

Book Review   Title: A Man Called Ove Author: Fredrik Backman Translation from Swedish: Henning Koch Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, London, 2015 Pages: 295   Ove is a grumpy old man. Right in the initial pages of the novel, we are informed that “People said he was bitter. Maybe they were right. He’d never reflected much on it. People also called him ‘anti-social’. Ove assumed this meant he wasn’t overly keen on people. And in this instance he could totally agree with them. More often than not people were out of their minds.” The novel is Ove’s story It is Ove’s grumpiness that makes him a fascinating character for the reader. Grumpiness notwithstanding, Ove has a lot of goodness within. His world is governed by rules, order and routines. He is superhumanly hardworking and honest. He won’t speak about other people even if such silence means the loss of his job and even personal honour. When his colleague Tom steals money and puts the blame squarely...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...