Slowness Helps

After months and months of hibernation of sorts, by withdrawing from everything else and immersing himself deep into only Mine Craft, the 'seasons' they are a-changing, in this part of the planet :)
While it is probably autumn in many parts of the world, I can see and smell all the colours and fragrances of spring out here! For Raghav has been up and about over the last few days, exploring all kinds of things (some old and some new), bubbling with a new release of energy and enthusiasm.

Today, after several months, he took out his huge collection of small cars, examining each one, pretending to race with them and making up stories and dialogues with each one, while I was asked to watch . At the end of the day, he came up to me and said this:

"Amma, do you know something? Most people would think that in a race, only the fast car can win, and the slow car can never win. But actually, the slow car has an advantage. It can win. A fast car can speed up real fast on straight stretches of the track, overtaking all the other cars. But a slow car can actually do better at bends. Do you know why? While a fast car is going so fast and has to make an effort to brake suddenly and sharply at the bend, a slow car can very easily take the bend and even overtake the other car. It can even win sometimes. Its slowness helps." :)

Simple yet profound words from a nine year old, who finds his own truth by living it. He is not one who will take another's words as 'the truth' easily. He has to immerse his whole self into his life, enjoy it, struggle, let it all sink in and simmer slowly inside for as long as it takes, until it explodes quietly one fine day, in the most unexpected moment.....when your heart will skip a beat, pause, smile and say to itself - "Hey, this seems so true!"

When you soak in the slowness of being, of life; when you pause and hold things inside, letting them simmer for a while, the aroma and taste of that learning is both divine and unforgettable for its simplicity.

Wait Until Dark!

One of  Raghav's dreams has been to drive his remote controlled cars - a Lamborghini Aventador and a Ferrari, with his father, on a long stretch of concrete and in the dark!....only because he wants to admire his car's shining headlights in the darkness of the night :) I love all the details that he makes sure to add to his dreams, to spice them up a bit more.

This evening, Srinath came home early and so Raghav made his plans :) He put the rechargeable battery on charge, set an alarm on my phone to remind himself when to take it off charge, and made a plan with his dad about what they would do downstairs...and I made my own plan to take pictures of them.

They found a parking lot at the back of our building, where hardly any cars come along, and were on the job! Raghav drove his dream car, while the 53 year old kid drove the Ferrari :) The obscure, drab parking lot suddenly came alive with the sounds of the two "super cars"!...with a Drag race in the dark, Time Trial (where each car is timed for a particular distance that it travels) and a Tug-of-War (where he tied a rope from one car to the other, and each person reversed his car to pull), I was witness to a game that was a cross between Real Racing 3 and the Clarkson's series :) - we got DVDs of his TV series from British Council Library.

Here are some pictures that I took from above while eavesdropping :)

Crazy about cars!

R's latest fetish is cars- all kinds of cars, how they are made, the different models, their history, details about each one - for example, how the brake lights look, the symbols, the shape of the body, and many other details like maximum speeds, etc.

A few days ago, he asked me to suggest something that he could do (from his toy collection), which he hadn't done for a long time. I suggested that he take out his car collection and look at what he had. He jumped up and dashed off! 

Soon, he was all smiles, picking out each little car from the box, inspecting and naming it....and then placing them in little groups according to the companies that made them. He discovered that many of the cars that he has raced with in his latest iPad app Real Racing Challenge - like the Lamborghini, Dodge, Mercedes Benz, Fiat, and even the prized Koenigsegg, were there amongst many toy cars that he owned since he was 2 or 3 years old! Some of them had the symbols of the companies, while for the others, he just gave names depending on how close to the original they looked :)

Then he wanted me to help him make placards for each car that he chose. He Googled the symbol, printed each one out, wrote out the names himself, cut each one out patiently, stuck them on the cardboard and placed them alongside each car. His car showroom took shape slowly in the corridor, as he waited for his father to come home and see his surprise!

We recently bought him a remote controlled Lamborghini car (his dream car!) and now he spends a good part of the day playing with it, talking about it, and admiring it. He even wipes off the dust with his towel (something you would rarely see him do) sometimes! When he gets a little bored playing with it in the same way, he asks me to think up challenges for his car to do. Soon he is busy maneuvering the long, unwieldy car through obstacles (old wooden blocks lined up), making figures of eight, turning it 180 degrees within a narrow stretch of space (that he pretends is the road), without going off the road, reverses all the way around a table from start to finish, accelerates full speed and brings the car to a halt just  before the finish line and many more. Many of these were things that I did while I was learning how to drive a car, many many years ago! I was amazed at the elan and dexterity with which he managed to complete all these challenges.

He also has an astounding memory for some of the facts and figures to do with these cars, that are mentioned in his iPad app. For a kid who keeps saying that he has a 'forgetful mind' most times, this is simply amazing! He will rattle off performance ratings, maximum speeds, time taken to accelerate to 60mph, model number and name etc. from memory, while I am washing dishes or cooking in the kitchen. He will then quiz me on those and rejoice in my goof ups :) He will get me to list out all the cars that he owns after having cleared some levels in the game; or he would ask me to choose a car to race with for him to clear the next level and go ahead.

During the course of one of these conversations, he told me how much a car's speed (in miles per hour) would be in kilometres per hour! He had worked that out based on some comparison that was there for one of the cars, in the app. He then kept asking me questions like how long a car would take to travel a particular distance, given its speed....or how much distance it would cover in a given time, if its speed was a certain number...what was amazing was that he would look at it from so many points of view and permutations at one shot, not waiting to finish and completely understand one, before moving to the other. It was as if each point of view of the problem was helping him in its own unique way to arrive at some understanding of it. Fascinating!

The next thing that he wanted to do was to measure the speed of his new Lamborghini Aventador - remote controlled car and then compare its speed to that of a hand-driven Mercedes Benz Unimog U400 (a huge LEGO model with motor et al) that he had recently built. It was a perfect setting for an experiment and an opportunity to find out what speed is and how it is measured. He set up the experiment, deciding on the start and end-point, how to measure distance and time, organised everything, gave directions to me as to what was my role, and even arrived at an approximate speed, with a bit of help, with all calculations done mentally!

You can see a video that we took (of ourselves doing the experiment together) of it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8myRkIXWFQ

His craze for cars has driven him to explore other paths too on his own. He has watched many videos on Youtube on how many of the top cars are manufactured, found out about their history, and he now also has another app that plays the different engine sounds of the different cars! So he is busy straining his ears to listen and tune in to those special sounds :)

I had not in the wildest of dreams thought that his passion for cars would get him to travel to all these places in such a short time! Uncharted territories are always fun, exciting and mysterious :)

What lies beneath

Raghav has been into types of cars and car-racing of late. A trained mind (like my old one!) would often only see what lies out in the open - what is tangible, visible, quantifiable and measurable, not so much what lies beneath. So what thoughts would cars and car racing bring to this kind of a mind? Types of cars, how cars were made, history of racing, names of racers, speeds, and things like that - right?

Right, but not any more though! Now I like getting into this roller coaster journey with all my senses on high alert, waiting for and enjoying the mystery of what unfolds in the most unexpected places and in the most unexpected ways! And so it has been with this new passion for cars that he harbours...so read on to find out more....

Raghav loved cars even when he was a little kid. But of late, he has been wanting to delve deep into the world of cars and racing. So we found some cool car racing challenges on the App store, that he  downloaded and now plays almost everyday. He has also been watching some old recorded programmes of Formula 1 Racing on TV, and wanting to find out so many things about racing, cars and related stuff on the internet - stuff like "what is drag", what is the "DRS", what are the different flags used in racing and what they mean, the different car companies; we watched Youtube videos on how Lamborghini and Porsche cars are made; he looked at pictures of different cars and built models of those with his Lego, and even played a game with me where I would name a car and he would quickly do a make-over of one of the models, by adding or taking away a few pieces, to make it look like the one I wanted! Then he would set up a mini race track on the bed and race them along, declaring winners and awarding trophies to all. He would calculate speeds of cars (convert from kilometres per hour into miles per hour), figure out how many years ago it was made and therefore how old the car was, would repaint his car in colours of his choice as many times as he wanted to, would figure out how much money (against points earned in the game) he needed to get a car of his choice, and weave dreams of all the cars he wants to own when he grows up.

One day, we were driving back home after dropping in to see my dad. Usually, Raghav plays his music in the car and sings along loudly. But he had forgotten his pen drive with all his music. So instead, he decided he would sing on his own and talk to me when he needed a break. Soon however, there was no break :), as he chatted non-stop about his car racing games, enlightening me on a subject that I had hardly any interest in! Then out of the blue, came this, from him:

"You know, when you win all the time, you don't learn anything anymore, because you already know how to beat the other person. But when you lose, you learn so much....because you try and find out what you can do to beat the other person and win. You learn more when you lose. I learned this while playing my Real Racing Challenge."

Whoa! That hit me hard and deep.

I recalled how all these years, I had struggled with this with Raghav and myself. He hated losing; he always had to win! That used to get my goat. I had wanted him to be perfect...and selfless... and "good". He was none of that. Conscious parenting helped me make the shift inside and let go of what I was holding onto. Inside of me. Fear. That's what it was.

And then, when that gave and I broke free, I freed him too. I freed myself, so he could be himself.

Today, yet again, I realised the power of letting go. What he said was like a sudden dive for me into the darkness, on a roller coaster ride! My heart sank; my stomach churned; and I felt the sheer beauty and joy of not knowing what lies beneath, until it is revealed on its own. That for me is the magic of all learning and being.