Blessing of a Human Question Bank

My little girl is the perfect extrovert revenge by life on both her introvert parents. Apart from her apparent love for reading, story-telling   and being a quiet child happy with herself, she is a people's person to the core.

 

So we were not surprised when even at such a  young age she had an extremely warm and friendly relationship with everyone in the family and extended family that she met.

 

A particular trait that stood out was her incessant tirade of queries and questions about everything. So much so that I often call her my human question bank.

 

She shares little anecdotes about her and make the keep asking the other person to share theirs. She has dozens of supplementary questions for every query that she has, and to top it all the perseverance to be a patient listener of tales.

 

One of the people she formed a special bond with is with my father. He was 74 when she was born and by the time she had started having meaningful conversations his health had taken a dip, resulting in frequent irritability and some age-related bedimming of memory.

 

But he was the most peaceful when he was with her. She would put him at ease and they spent hours huddled in a blanket sharing anecdotes about friends and incidents. Some of his stories  going long back to a pre-partition childhood in now Pakistan.

 

Three months after she turned six he passed away. She was my pillar of strength and as I was trying to come to terms with this new life without him ,I was surprised, how she knew details about his childhood that even I didn't- like his first bicycle was red, his younger brother had bitten his ear bad enough for a couple of stitches just to snatch a few mangoes, the boy who taught him to swim in the Jhelum was a Sikh.

 

Three of my four grandparents were alive for many more years than her brief six years with her Nana and still I don't know as much about their childhood, their memories with their siblings and the like.

 

I am glad my  aaj-kal-ka-baccha had the time and the patience for all those questions to him. I am glad she was so involved in my father's last years and that she has created so many fond memories with him.

 

So while most of the world complains about #AajKalKeBacche , I call mine my personal little Buddha, who is an amazing teacher and co-learner in this master class called life.



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