Aaj kal ke bache!!!

These days, thanks to my joblessness, I get to spend more time with my kid cousins and realized how creative they are. Creative not in terms of art but the way they make peace with angry elders. My 5 year old cousin, famous for his notoriety and dadagiri, started pating his chest gently and saying ' All is well, All is well' when my aunt was getting ready to give him a lashing. I was like 'waaaaaaaaaaaaat' and my aunt n I couldn't stop laughing at his actions. And then, to entertain us more with his antics, he started tapping his rear and singing "All is well" like it is done in the movie 3 idiots. Once, when I asked him what he did at school that day, he replied " My friend Avishtha wore a pink frock today. She was soooper." and to top it, he is such a big story teller that he comes up with so many stories showing off his dadagiri that I started calling him Fake-u. He is so mischievous and when ppl at home start shouting at him, he goes ' I am only 4 years, can you shout at me like that?'. And he makes such a cute face that you will not feel like punishing him or scolding him.

And then there is this another cousin who conveyed the news that he failed his social studies exam to his mom with all smiles. When my aunt started questioning him, he was like "Light Ma! What is there studying about wars and dead ppl. They should teach me about peace and gadgets instead."

I was shocked at his answer and was staring at him with my mouth wide open for a dozen mosquitoes to fly in and out, comfortably!! I know i sound cliched, but...

But then , I think I like their creative side..the creative excuses the come up with to evade scoldings and punishments and i wonder when this creativity starts taking a back-seat in our life. With time, I think we begin to stop thinking laterally, may be because of fear of being mocked at or maybe we become cautious. I think that is the age when everything stops being fun and we become more of robots and machines. Or do we start to lose the creative gene as we age? May be, schools kills our creativity instead of nurturing it... What say?

The last one week, I was busy with a workshop that I attended on soft-skills. All the participants were in their late 20s and 30s, and years since the last lecture they attended, would get restless within no time, and the trainer had the onus of preventing us from getting bored and this was when she used to come up with activities. One of them was building a limerick. Each one had to contribute one line and the end result had to be sensible.

Speaking of creativity or the lack of it, this was the best we could come up with..

The early morning sunshine
I could think of nothing but wine
which was not very fine
Because it is not made from pine
I still drank it coz its mine
and then, everything went out of line..