Of rhymes and reasons

The fact, that Junior had taken to rhymes in a big way, dawned on me close to midnight, when he was chanting “Johnny Johnny yes papa” in his sleep. I was so surprised that he had picked up his first rhyme I woke up wifey immediately so that she doesn’t miss out on that momentous occasion. She looked at me with eyes full of sleep and anger and said that he has been singing that rhyme for almost a week and went back to sleep!!! Nevertheless it was exciting that he had picked his first rhyme and I was so happy. Nowadays, it is his signature call for addressing anyone and everyone.
One day when I was reading something he came to me and called “Appa Appa”
“Ennapa”
“uhumm..Yes Johnny sollu”
“er…yes Johnny?”
“reading paper?”
“yes”
“uhumm..Yes johnny sollu”
“Yes Johnny” (I got the drift only now)
“telling lies”
“no johnny”
“Open your mouth”
I actually did open my mouth and got corrected again that I should say “ha ha ha” instead (apparently the drift drifted over)

The other favorite rhyme of his is “Finger family”. He would call out for his mom or me by singing “daddy finger/mommy finger where are you”. The correct passcode of a response is “here I am..here I am.. how do you do”. Anything to the contrary would be rejected and would be deemed as “User Id or password invalid”.

I could already see AI playing a big part in education system down the line. Junior is big time into YouTube video watching and despite all restrictions he would be immersed into it. He knows more slokas and bajans than me and wifey put together (me contributing a mighty zero to the score with a measly few dozen from her). He started watching one chant and the AI setup kept throwing bajan after bajan on similar lines across all gods and he keeps singing them even in school. ABCD recital would’ve Sai Baba aarathi intervening and the alphabets would culminate with Ganapati bappa moriya!! He has a tap dance kind of step for Shasti kavasam and uses this pretext to put maska for his paati getting allowance to watch his cartoons over the net.

Even in office, for some of the sessions, instead of CBT’s we’ve been provided with YouTube videos for reference, that are even editable to the point of being made interactive. Watching videos to learn may be the way to go and pretty soon even the schools have to start adopting, if not already. Right from infrastructure setup to proper counselling and guide for adopting such approach needs lot of planning. Do we’ve the right set of people, both at policy maker level and at implementation level, begs a query. As for anything and everything, only time will tell.