Last week there was a picture of a colorful pichkari (water gun) in the newspaper. Holi, the festival of colour, was round the corner and businesses were doing their best to sell their products. This particular pichkari was shaped like an elephant with a raised trunk and was colored bright green, blue and yellow.
Well, Panna had one look at the “elephant-gun” and decided that he wanted one too. To evade the repeated demands, I told Panna to ask Pappa to get one while coming from office. Panna did as told and so a request was placed with Pappa to bring a “Peechkali.”
But, Pappa being Pappa, didn’t get the pichkari. No, he hadn’t forgotten it, but was only too lazy to walk a few steps to the fancy store after alighting from his office bus! As soon as Panna saw his Pappa, he asked, “Pappa, did you bring my peechkali?”
“No Putta, the shops are closed now, we’ll go get it tomorrow morning, ok?”
“Ok Pappa”. (That’s my darling Panna. No tantrum, no questions asked!)
But throughout that evening he kept mentioning the word Pichkari or rather “Peechkali”. Soon, it had begun to sound more like fish-curry than pichkari!! So, everytime Panna said “I want pichkali”, Pappa would ask, “what do you want, fish-curry is it?”
Fish-curry, pichkari, peechkali all got mixed up in Pann’s brain when he went to bed that night.
The next morning Panna woke up, came to me and said, “Mamma, I want fish-fry!”
For a split second, I didn’t know what was he referring to, but then it struck me immediately that my poor little boy had remembered only the “fish” part of the previous night’s pichkari topic and had forgotten the curry and the actual pichkari.
So, the Panshul’s pichkari had become peechkali first, then fish-curry and now it was fish-fry!!!
Panshul's Toddler Days 