In a particularly turbulent flight, Gautam asks questions like what if the wing falls off or if the plane’s tires do not come out when we land? While others are holding on tight, this boy just loves the rollicking of a plane as if it were a roller coaster ride for him :). His questions are sometimes morbid asking stuff about death and a lot of what if the train got off the tracks or if he dies and I will be left with only one child? Initially, I used to wonder why he would ask such stuff and sometimes got hyper myself. But, now I have realized that he does not understand the underlying connotations of dying. For him, that’s a mechanical experience of seeing stuff in movies or TV that he can hardly relate to and just asks out of curiosity.
Siddharth’s questions are a wee bit more predictable, and he is more often than not in the quizzing mode these days. Whether it is questions related to IPL, animals, birds, snakes, continents, countries to human beings. He is reading many encyclopedias and constantly wants to show off his knowledge. He knows better than to ask me because most of the time my answer is I don’t know :). I like his childish jokes though that he picks up from Tinkle or his kiddie books.
Sometimes, their questions or comments can be quite embarrassing, and I am sure that each parent has been in that situation one time or another. Digressing a bit, on my flight back from Ahmedabad, I started chatting with a lady who had two sons just like me. Her younger son was the age of Siddharth who is 9 years old. Incidentally, her elder son was also named Siddharth :). I observed that both boys kept on quarreling or bugging each other throughout the flight just like my boys do, and her reactions were the exact same as mine, sometimes irritation, sometimes warning, at other times anger! And we commisserated how difficult it was to live with 2 boys :). Looks like, this situation of the boys fighting will not get better any time soon looking at her experience.
Rachna says 
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