Observing Curiosity

Keen observation and curiosity, they go hand in hand. The more you observe, the more you get curious. 

After the unusual initial childhood silly observations, my focus shifted to my usual face, looking at the mirror and observing carefully. More frequently for longer duration. I was curious to know how my facial hair was growing. After becoming slightly older, that observation and curiosity had not died. The focus shifted to check how many had turned grey. Even today that curiosity persists. Just to check how many few more are left to turn grey. And sadly now, the number of items that makes me curious has come down drastically.

There is a story of tremendous curiosity backed up by his keen observation by none other than Uncle Paul, who had lived in my neighborhood many years back.  I prefer to illustrate certain points by telling stories, this is one such instance. Because stories are far more potent than ideas, they are easier to remember, they are more fun to read. Ideas come and go, stories stay!

Uncle Paul had also had a habit of looking his face in mirror, every morning, without fail. This he used to do, not inside his house but outside open portico of his house. He would begin as early as I started my morning walk.  He would not have finished his job even after I returned after a good 30 minutes of so called brisk walk, my speed of walking solely depending on the interesting things on the way. One may wonder why he should take such a long time to remove his beard, he was not a super human whose beard grew on an hourly basis. In fact, let me confirm to you, he had very little facial hair, much less than what one could think of. So what he used to observe was not his face in the mirror, but those ladies of many age groups who also had the bad habit of brisk-walking in the mornings. He was curious to see how they had dressed up and brisk-walk!

There is a reason for me to write about this run of the mill topic. I was standing in front my house the other day, my two pet dogs playing around in the front. Four kids appeared at the gate and started conversing with the dogs. The oldest one appeared to me around 10 years old and later I came to know that the other three were his younger brothers, could be just one year difference between them. “No school today?”, I asked them. “Yes uncle, it is in Chintamani. We had come to Bangalore because our grandfather died here”.  Yes, they were from Chintamani village, rural area. For them missing school for couple of days was not a big deal, coming to the city was big fun, though the cause for it was not all that happy one.

I was asking a few questions to the elder one, he was answering all right. But his observation was more on the dogs. Obviously, people from rural area, that too young kids, they haven’t seen many good things in life like the urban ones. They would not have seen a school uniform, pizza or burger, traffic-signals-jams, garbage heap right in the middle of the road – nothing of that sort, they have to be curious. He suddenly asked me the question “No puppies yet?”. He had quickly observed that one is female and the other is a male dog. Otherwise he would have asked the question whether these two fight each other! I said no, no puppies so far. His curiosity did not end there. Next question from him “how old are they?”. I told him that one is 6 years old and the other one is 6 months younger to it. He just remarked, “Oh, so big, in one year they should have had puppies and every year after that”, looking at me he would have thought that I am an ardent lover of dogs and have many more puppies inside my house. He wouldn’t mind taking one to his village.

I didn’t respond to his remark. If I had told him what the Vet did to one of the dogs, so that they don’t get puppies in their life time, then his curiosity would have just multiplied. Which would make me face much tougher questions from him. If not to me, he would go back and would have definitely questioned his parents as why they hadn’t undergone something of that sort like the Vet did to my dogs. So that he wouldn't have to fight with his younger brothers who came to this world after him, one after other, every year!

I liked him. I liked his innocence, knowledge, observation and above all his curiosity. 

I just could not help giving him a broad smile when he pulled his brothers along with him saying “Seri uncle, naanu hoggi barthinee “( Ok uncle, I will go and come back in Kannada). I wished him the very best. I also wished I were still a village boy like him.