wake up ball

It’s always a struggle to wake Jispa in the morning. Not because she is reluctant to wake up, that is definitely the case, but more so as she is a nice warm cuddly that I want to cuddle along and use to wake me up. It’s such a sin to wake up someone so beautifully asleep. Which heartless creature would want to disturb an angel, warm and asleep?
But on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, when you have to wake up at 5 and leave home at 5.30 am, all the warm fluffy feelings go for a toss. You just literally drag her from the bed. HI Jispa wake up time and pop, I have to pick her up. This is something that Jasmine invented. It takes a mother to invent something like this. Before jispa knows what is happening she is half way to the bathroom. And while she opens her eyes, she is in front of her mirror ready to brush. There is little time or scope for negotiation. I found it cruel at first but it is the right way. If I allow her to gain senses, she starts negotiating. And when she negotiates with her arm around you and says, “Dad one minute please. It won’t make a difference”, then I just melt and it’s time for us to get scolding form mom. GET UP NOW. YOU ARE GETTING LATE!
So it’s a yank and pull wake up three days of the week. No fluffy teddy for me. But on Tuesdays and Thursdays it’s the return of the teddy! I max these two days. I get into her bed and then cuddle up and then begin the process of waking her up. So I have to hunt for new things to wake her up. Because merely cuddling is not enough. She can then sleep for hours like that. And while the pressure is lower, it is still not absent. I still have to get her up and ready in time. So I start talking to her. Start asking her questions and other stuff. That lasted a couple of times till one day she said, ‘dad, don’t irritate me and ask me questions nah. Don’t do that in the morning”. So now that is effectively ruled out as an option. Her highness the teddy refuses to talk rubbish in the morning.
A few days back I hit on a new thing. I get into her warm mattress and start talking about my life. Nothing big or dramatic but simple stories that I find most amusing or talkable at 6 am. The last story I told her was about the games we played during the break at school. I was in Dubai till the third grade and moved into the fourth grade here. My first memory of the first break is when my new found friends said, ‘chal, join in, we all play aaba-dubee. What you mean Abu Dhabi, I corrected him. You see I was fresh from Dubai and the capital city for UAE is Abu Dhabi. No no. It’s not Abu Dhabi, its aaba-dubee.
This conversation today reminds me of the little prince where everyone told him, it’s a hat and he corrected them.. no no it’s a boa constrictor who swallowed an elephant.
Forget that. So my friend, if I am not mistaken Amardeep it was, says, its aaba-dubee we are playing. he had a rubber ball in his hand so I figured that’s got something to do with it. It was the first time I had seen a rubber ball, popularly called rubdy ball in Mumbai. In Dubai a ball was always a tennis ball. I soon learnt that tennis balls were really expensive– pre reform era, remember? – and this ball at 2.5 bucks was IT. So how do we play the game. We take this ball and hit other people with it. Ok. I was waiting. It sounds like kings. We used to play kings where in, there is the denner and his job is to hit someone with the ball, then they both together get the third one and so on till we are all out. You can’t run with the ball. That’s the only other rule in kings.Amardeep then explain aba-dubee to me. You only hit anyone else with the ball. And yes you can’t run with the ball. So, ‘who is the denner’ I asked. There is no denner in aba-dubee. You just throw the ball high in the air to start it. Then whoever gets the ball has can throw it to hit someone and then whoever picks it then throws it at someone with an aim to hit him and so on. It’s not a sport; it’s not a game, its mindless action. It has no end. You just keep throwing the ball. The playground has no boundaries, no one to judge, nothing. IT WAS AWESOME.i remember playing it forever. You rush out at the bell and throw the ball into the air and you start and continue till the bell rings to get us back in. short break, long break, you just play like crazy.
i never understood we boys would just rush in and try our hand at getting the ball. That is always a high risk high reward strategy. To get the ball you always compete with one or two other guys and then if you get it first then you have two really close targets. If not, then you are one of the two really close targets. Also the trick if you miss it is to get really really close to the guy with the ball. He can’t really throw a hard ball at you if you are an inch away. At around three to four feet distance, you are a sitting duck. So it’s a stick or run early strategy. So in a game where there are 20 to 30 kids playing you are not likely to get hit more than twice. Aim has to be right and you have to be stupid. I remember only once a guy called Ashish Kaul got hit five times in one session. I remember singing happy birthday along with the others. It was his aba-dubee birthday.
So I explained the brain dead game to Jispa one morning while waking her up. She found it most amusing. A game with no real point and that doesn’t end. She soon woke up. Now to think of more stories from my life to tell her. Some from college, some from school, some from Dubai, and possibly some stories will be hers, things that she would have done as a younger kid. It’s like a talking blog every morning. A Tog?