Sunday, July 12, 2009

Questions, questions, and questions...

I had heard and read about the phase of questioning. Why, how, what, who, where... but I had no idea it would be this irksome.

Puttachi is full of questions and that gets unbearable at times. The chain of questions can go and on and on, and neverending.

She: What is that?
Me: Shirt
She: Whose shirt?
Me: Papa's shirt
She: Who bought it?
Me: I did.
She: From which shop?
Me: XYZ shop
She: Where is XYZ shop?
Me: Jayanagar
She: Which Jayanagar?
Me: Jayanagar where so-and-so lives.
She: Who so-and-so?

And on and on on.

Nowadays, after one question, I do the questioning and answering myself.

She: What is that?
Me: Shampoo whose shampoo Papa's shampoo which shampoo XYZ shampoo who bought it Papa bought it which shop ABC shop ....
And then she looks at me and laughs, the imp.

She likes asking questions for which she knows the answer.
She: (pointing to a picture of Obama) Who is that?
Me: Tell me yourself.
She: Obama.
This happens all the time.

Some questions have no answer.

Me: Come on, let's have lunch.
She: What lunch?
Me: Rice and huLi
She: Which huLi
Me: pumpkin huLi
She: How?
Me: Now how what?

or

She: Who had called you?
Me: Papa
She: Which Papa?

I think that she feels compelled to ask questions - she doesn't even know what she is asking sometimes.

And then she wants entire conversations repeated.

Me: Let's take off your frock.
She: I don't want to.
Me: But it's dirty. Let's wear another frock.
She: Ok.
After two seconds.
She: What did Amma say?
Me: Amma said, "Take off your frock".
She: Then what did Puttachi say?
Me: Puttachi said, "I don't want to."
She: Then what did Amma say?

And so on. I used to answer patiently in the beginning, repeating the whole conversation, but now I ask her to repeat it herself, and she does.

Oh and one more thing. She thinks I am omniscient. She doesn't understand that I might not know the answers to some things.

Check out this example.

She: *Eating a bun* Who made this?
Me: It is from the bakery.
She: But who made it?
Me: I don't know, mari.
She: Who made it?
Me: I don't know.
She: Who made it?
Me: I really don't know, Puttachi.
She: Amma, amma, tell me amma, who made it, amma?
Me: An uncle made it.
She: Which uncle?
Me: I don't know.
She: Which uncle?
Me: I don't know, dear.
She: What is his name, Amma?
Me: I have no idea, baby.
She: Amma, amma, what is the name of the uncle who made this bun?
Me: Ramesh Uncle (blurt out the first name that comes to mind.)
She: Where is he?
Me: He finished making the bun, went to his house in Malleshwaram, placed his head on his pillow and fell fast asleep.
(Triumphantly giving myself a five, thinking that that should do the trick.)
She: (After a moment) How?

You get the picture.

19 comments:

8&20 said...

Ha ha ha ha ha ha :D. Gosh, she's such an adorable little darling!

More power to you though for your patience :).

Timepass said...

hmmm.so this is what I will be facing some mths from now...

praneshachar said...

shruthi I adore your patience Njoy the time it will not come back with puttachi in that place. once she grows u cannot get it repeated she will not. so u r doing gr8 job by recording
I have no words to express
its marvellous effort and simply superb u will realise when puttachi grows the importance of all this records whether she likes it or not u will njoy by recollecting these golden moments of your life
thank you BIG one from the core of my heart for sharing it and making our lives better
pranesh

Anonymous said...

Loved the post..!! Hilarious!!

Unknown said...

it my 3rd visit to ur blog n i love puttachi already!! Ur posts bring back such fond memories of my daughter whos grown past the stage now. Keep blogging!!

Adu said...

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha :)

Shadee001@gmail.com said...

hahaha..she is so adorable :) .

Anonymous said...

LOL!!! This is one superbly hilarious post!

Sorry Puttachi, laughing at your cost..but we love you and your questions. Keep them going..don't mind a bit about Amma getting irritated ;)

Hehehe.

Usha said...

While I can entirely empathize with you if you wanted to bang your head on the nearest wall, look at it this way:
This exercise is going to improve your imagination and story-telling skills exponentially. Who knows at the end of it all you might even end up writing a novel for kids.
So tell me what did Puttachi say and then what did you say?

Unknown said...

ha ha ha! M not only asks these all questions now his favourite is "Amele? he will ask "Amele"? for every answer I give!
Me :- Bega oota maadu.
M : Amele?
Me : nidhe maadi park hogona.
M: Amele?
Me : Aaata aadi barona
M: Amele?
me: Wash your hands and legs and then dinner.
M : Amele?
Me: swalpa hothu aata aadi.
M: Amele?
Me : aamele sleep!
M : Amele?
Me : Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
And it goes on and on and on and on!!!!

Raj said...

But, Shruthi, you haven't told us who really made the bun and how.

Veena Shivanna said...

too good shruthi. I was continuously laughing imagining the real conversation n better let me get ready..

yes, the same question again, which bakery at jayanagar and where did Ramesh uncle go? and the last question "How"?
I was reading this book "Born to Win", you can glance through if you could grab sometime out of puttachi's questions! Good one that is.

Swati said...

sailing in the same boat!

chethan said...

>What did Amma say?
the meta conversation was good :)

Anonymous said...

very nicely put.when Kipling said "child is the Father of man" I did not believe it,was a bachelor then.When I got two of my own I very well knew what he meant.
After reading your piece I feel an apt title would be "Puttachi is the Mother of Woman"

nazia said...

so cute....with loads of questions in her mind...may b sumtimes to irritate you..bt u r a kool mom...hats off to u..

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Sanjay M said...

ROFL ya kudos to your patience - I think its great fun as well may not always be not matter of patience :)

oh boy there are times esp when during a phase Abhinav would absolutely REFUSE to take his clothes off for a bath. He would say "idde baTTe bEKU" and throw a grand tantrum if anyone tried to enforce. And some days it would be inevitable and there would be a really bad scene of a flood of tears and... you know... the works!

So Appa came up with one story: ondh spider kathe gottha? (do you know the story of a spider?) (as he'd been fascinated by spiders off late) Ondh spider ittu... oDADthaithhu... baaglu mel hoithu... gODe mel hoithu... alli illi yella KaDe oDADkonDu... ee shirt mele banthu. (Appa's wrist was acting as spider) Amele... spider kakka maaDbuDtu... ayyayya shirt yella galeej aagoithu... avaaga... paapa shirt na bicchi (appa started removing shirt) ammaage koTTu 'amma washing machine ge haakbuDamma clean aaguthe' antha heLthu. (and so all his clothes finally came off, without the slightest fuss, and with him fully immersed in the story).

Of course this wasn't necessary everyday, and after a week or so we forgot about this story. Or atleast, Appa forgot. Once Appa hadn't yet had his bath. Abhinav on Amma's prompting told Appa 'snaana maaD hogu'. But Appa was busy and said 'hogalla hogalla hogalla!', Abhinav style. Then Abhinav explained to Appa... "Appa, hogde idre, spider bandhu... spider bandhu... nin baTTe melella kakka maaDbuDute...". Appa went to have his bath.

Diwakar Sinha said...

ha ha ha ha...that was one of the greatest posts I have read in a long time..

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