Kahaan gaye woh din…sigh!

Lately, Arya has been different.

She’s no longer shy or reticent. She seems very poised and confident. She makes humorous dinner-time conversation. Like yesterday at the dinner table, Baby aji pointed out that she’s become naughtier than before. She said she hadn’t and went on to say that earlier when Baby Aji asked her to do something she’d refuse by saying “No” and nowadays she doesn’t say “No”. So I asked her, slyly, “So when Baby aji asks you to do something, do you do it?” She said, “YES!” and then sheepishly said, “Sometimes” and we all laughed and laughed till our sides ached.

But going back to all the things she used to do that she doesn’t.

She no longer wants to come and sleep in our room, even when we call her. There was a time when not only did she insist in sleeping in our room, but she also wanted to sleep in the middle. She pronounced it MEEDEEL. It was so sweet. At night, when she was fast asleep, we would smile at each other, and slowly move her to one side. She had this uncanny radar sense as well. She’d realize if there’s no one on the bed and she’d wake up and go look for us immediately. All of this wanting to sleep with us waned to “Sleep with me until I fall asleep” and then “tell me a story to help me sleep by myself” to “Sleep with me for 5 minutes and then you can go to your own room” But now the biggul (big girl) no longer wants to sleep in our room, even if we invite her to. So much so that even when Kushal is on a business trip, and I tell her to come to my bed, she says, you can sleep in my room if you want!

She used to call everyone and everything “naughty” when things didn’t go her way. So when she fell down, the ground was naughty, if her pencil point broke when she was writing, then the pencil was proclaimed naughty, if the alarm clock woke her up from slumber land, it was sleepily pronounced naughty, and if I yelled at her and made her cry, I was (you guessed it) naughty. So that’s gone, infact, quite a few years ago.

She had these nasty allergies, which made her breathless and she had to be rushed to the hospital a few times. Thank God that’s gone!

Due to the allergies, we didn’t let her play with soft toys. There were a lot of tears that day, when we threw out each and every one of her cuddly soft toys. But when we realized years later that the allergies were gone, we consented guiltily into buying her one and then another and then another. The first one which we bought, a humungous dog, which Kushal christened Mangala, was a constant companion. Arya carried Mangala every where she went, including her trips to Mumbai. Everywhere that Arya went, Mangala was sure to go, like the proverbial Mary’s little lamb. However, all of a sudden, we find Mangala cast away in a stock pile of other cuddlies. Her sad, sad, hush puppy eyes look even sadder these days. Arya has moved on meanwhile to Lord of the Ring swords and rubber dart machine guns.

Yesterday, I played a game of snakes and ladders with her and to my delight I discovered, that she doesn’t cry anymore when she gets eaten up by a “snake” and has to go back to somewhere at the bottom of the board. She also cheers for the winner even if it’s not her.

She has done some funny things in her life. Like the day we discovered her jumping up and down on her bed, actually our bed, screaming “Naynaynay Gravity” over and over again like some sort of chant. Wonder if Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated in a similar fashion, his immense pleasure when the apple fell on his head! But yesterday when I told her a fairy story about a rainbow called Happy, she cut me short saying – “Well, then Happy is really a sunbeam that’s all.”

More and more it seems like her childhood is the sand slipping through my fingers and tightening my fist doesn’t seem to help at all. Sigh! Maybe I am ready for another baby now.