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The Creature at the Window

“ Sweet dreams honey! There are no evil creatures there. It’s just your imagination... and try not to suck your thumb. You are now six years old! Good Night.” Mother tucks Ditoo in bed and leaves the room. Mother’s footsteps fade away. Her bedroom door creaks. The latch clicks. The night “Mom’s gone!” Ditoo whispers. It’s just you and me now Barker.“ The night lamp throws weird shadows on the wall. Ditoo tries to suck her thumb but is too scared. She can hear her heart pounding loudly against her chest. “Shut up heart!” The sound of the heartbeat subsides. The night is still. Dogs bark in the distance. Then there is silence. Suddenly there is a tapping sound on the window! Ditoo is startled. She pulls her rug over her head and hugs Barker, her toy Dalmatian, tightly . The tapping sound continues. Ditoo peeps at the window through a gap in her rug. There is a black creature at her window! It seems determined to break into her room! In sheer desperation, Ditoo throws Barker at the window
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Young Descartes

[Dhrithi is an eight year old with a quick brain and her own brand of unbeatable logic. She does not accept facts that are handed down by her teachers or parents. She deduces her own truths about the world with deep intuitive reasoning. I am just a regular mother. I often find myself in a precarious position, trying to match my hand-me-down knowledge with my daughter’s rhetoric. Here is a slice of conversation between us during a long car drive home. I am driving after a long day at work, it is late evening, a good time to raise basic questions about life that we take so much for granted.] Dhrithi: Ma, ma guess what! We are learning about living and non-living things in school. After we go home I need to make a chart. Me: Hmm. So tell me, what are living things and non-living things? Dhrithi: A living thing is something that can breathe, grow, multiply and die. Me: Good. But what does multiply mean? Dhrithi: It is something like ‘grow’. I did not understand properly. We lea
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Do as you would be done by ?

A stray dog stood near the busy tea shop hoping to get a few scraps of bun. People moved, traffic moved, the world moved oblivious of the three watchers. Ayush, Abhijeet and Chirag were out on the terrace of a tiny makeshift recording studio watching the lane below. The watchers were bored. They were waiting for their turn be called for the recording. They had been awfully proud that their friend’s mother had selected them in an audition. They were to provide voiceover for a short animation film that she was making. It was a late Sunday morning. The routine summer power cut had stalled what to be a three minute recording. The studio’s power back up system was under repair, the electricity company was not answering calls and so all that they could do was wait - for their three minutes of fame. While they waited and watched, a policeman brought his bike to a stop with an arrogant screech. He almost drove over the dog which yelped and slinked away. The crowd at the tea shop gave w
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