BRINGING UP GRANDPA

I met 2 year old Shailav in the suburban locale of a moffusil town. He looks like a well adjusted little chimpanzee. In any case, who has heard of a schizophrenic chimp? Shailav is extremely popular in the neighbourhood. Each one of his neighbours calls him by a different form of endearment as if to establish an exclusive relationship with him. When he passes by, anyone in sight, can not resist stopping and exchanging pleasantries with him. An exchange with Shailav seems to lift the gloom off the face of his interlocutor. Age groups do not bother him. He is equally at ease with children, the young and the aged. The fair sex is however one of his weaknesses.

Shailav has an aged neighbour. As it happens in every neighbourhood, this old man is the one who detests children. According to him, they spoil his garden, clutter up his walkway with dirt and make a lot of noise outside his compound. Even when they are playing silently, they appear to him to be planning some devilish scheme to torment him. He therefore jealously guards his property, shooing off any child coming within even a mile of his domain.

One day, while the old man was attending to his fence, Shailav walked up to him, looked into his eyes and said " Grandpa " in his usual calm and dispassionate manner. Before the old man could react one way or the other, Shailav had completely forgotten him and had got busy with some other activity. For want of any other excuse, the old man had been calling him a pampered brat. However, this incident set him to thinking. At least, he is different. He has never vandalised my garden. Never picked any fruits. What if he is pampered?

Then on, Shailav got one more person to smile at. What is more, the old man smiled back. The news of this transformation of the old man spread like a wild fire in the neighbourhood. Just then, one day, Shailav was not to be found. His anxious mother, scoured the entire neighbourhood, checking out each of his numerous haunts. He was nowhere. Everybody gathered outside his house speculating on where he could possibly be. After what seemed like eternity, Shailav emerged from an unexpected place - the old man's house, mouth properly splattered with chocolate, hands and pockets bulging with toffees. To the various cries of exclamation and querries, he had very little to respond to. He merely pointed to the place of his recent habitat and said " Grandpa ". In that one word, he was telling the children of the locality that there was always a way of dealing with any grown up. To the adults, he was saying, look, the old miser is, after all, not that bad. The old man is now ready for grandfathership!