Daily Times

1.

My 7-yr-old nephew loves cricket. But he’s also a huge IPL fan. So he switched on the TV and wanted me to discuss an IPL game that was being beamed live.

I don’t watch IPL. So I frowned. He noticed the frown and asked, what the matter was.

I sank in my sofa and mumbled some incoherent stuff about Modi, Kohli and cows.

He raised an eyebrow. Then patting me on the back, he says: ‘Koi baat nahi, Taau (never mind, uncle). T20 is not for old people.’

I sank deeper in my sofa.

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2.

My nephew was entirely baffled after I told him that when I was a kid (in the 1970s) there used to be just one TV channel.

He was shocked when I added that the channel used to have no more than 6 to 7 hours of daily programming. Transmission used to begin at around 5-30 pm and end by 11-30 pm, max.

But the thing that completely stumped him was the fact that there used to be just one 5-minute cartoon daily!

After recovering his composure a bit, he asked: ‘Where the dinosaurs still alive?’

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3.

The nephew and I were playing chess. He is just learning and it was only his second game. In the background a TV channel was running Bilawal Bhutto’s speech. So my nephew turned around and said, ‘what good English he has.’

I responded by saying that ideas were more important than language. He started to think and asked me to explain.

So I tried to explain to him what I meant, but struggled. At the same time I made my move on the chess board.

I then sat back and began to ramble on about why the quality of ideas was more important than proficiency in a language, when I heard him say, ‘your horse is gone.’

I looked down at the chess board and, indeed, he had knocked out my horse with his bishop.

‘You distracted me,’ I complained.

He just shrugged his shoulders and nonchalantly said: ‘Attention is more important than talking.’

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4.

Last Sunday I noticed my nephew wanting me to talk to him about politics. He told me about Nawaz Sharif’s march in Lahore, Imran Khan’s ‘tree tsunami’, and some speech Bilawal had made.

So I asked him who his favorite politician was.

‘Edhi,’ he replied.

‘But Edhi wasn’t a politician,’ I said.

‘Yes, but he was a good man,’ he explained.

‘How come you know so much about Pakistani politics?’ I asked. ‘You have been watching TV news channels, haven’t you?’

‘No!’ He firmly replied, frowning. ‘I don’t watch those.’

‘Then what channel do you watch?’ I asked.

‘Only Disney and Cartoon Network!”

Figures.

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5.

I took the nephew to see the new Spiderman movie at Nueplex. He enjoyed it. It was his first 3D film. A week later he overheard me talking to my brother (his father) about Dunkirk.

‘The war movie?’ He asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘How did you know?’

‘They showed a trailer of it before Spiderman,’ he replied.

‘Indeed. Good memory. I had forgotten.’ I smiled.

‘You were too busy trying to open your Fanta can,’ he said.

True, because I kept breaking the tabs of the cans and had to keep ordering new ones.

Trying to change the topic (of failed can-opening attempts), I asked: ‘Dunkirk looked like a good movie, right? Remember the planes’ scene, just before the hero says, ‘where are the planes?’

‘He didn’t say that,’ my nephew replied. ‘He said ‘where are the bloody planes!’

True, that’s exactly what he had said. ‘Good memory,’ I laughed.

‘That was wrong English,’ my nephew announced.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Planes were coming to help him,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘So?’

He said: ‘So then he should have said ‘where are the buddy planes …’.

Point.