Category: Humour

Maps in Books

It was a lovely week-end afternoon. We lounged about – each in our own worlds, forgetting the pressures of the world and reading. Earlier that day, the children and I had piled into the car and headed out to the library. I was given reading lists to catch up on. 

“Been a while since you read your children’s books huh?” said the son, handing me a few he’d picked up from the children’s section. I accepted the lot with gratitude. “Yes! Spirit-savers they are!” I beamed and he seemed pleased with himself.

“You really need to get a good go on world building. Harry Potter is all very well, but you must read the Throne of Glass, amma.” said the daughter. I looked a bit skeptical, but the daughter assured me that I was going to immerse myself in this world and love it.

I gingerly opened the book like it was a cat with claws and would pounce when awoken from slumber. Teenagers (or at least the ones I interact with on a regular basis) really seem to like fantasy – most books I hear them gushing about are SF/ fantasy after all. The first page had a map of Eritrea, and I felt a small smile tug at my lips. She detected it, and quickly went in for the close, “Nice map isn’t it? Can you ever resist a book with a map? I know I can’t. Aww…look at this place – the mines, the capital, the desert. Hmm.”

“Over the course of the series, I feel like I’ve visited everywhere!” she said. I nodded absentmindedly. I did like books with maps. EarthSea, Lord of the Rings, Wizard of Oz, and so many more. Maybe it has to do with this fascination and awe for those with spatial skills. Maybe it has to do with the possibilities of imagining ourselves in another space altogether. Whatever it was, I opened the book, ready to enter teenage conversations again after the book was read. 

The daughter, I realized had ulterior motives for encouraging me thus. Apparently, she and a friend had had a bet that I wouldn’t finish reading the book – too ‘teenagy ‘ they’d thought. The daughter, of course, said nothing of this till I was well into the book . Celaena Sardothien had taught her well.

I had seen the books lining the shelves. Large tomes, and going up to 7 books. If I liked one, I did have a series ahead of me, and that was an intriguing thought. 

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I did like the book. I loved the pluck of the women, the cluelessness of the crown prince, and the competence of his guard. Whether I would go on to read all 7 books, I don’t know, but the first book was a good one, I said to the daughter. 

She smiled and said she was not particularly fussed either way as she only wanted me to read the first one to win her bet. Oh well!

The Storms of Vincent

Regular readers know that I am a pluviophile (one who loves the rain). On my recent visit to India, I was out walking around the apartment complex our family lived in one night, and found myself caught in the most brilliant and relentless rain they’d had in months apparently. 

I was delighted. 

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I was on a late night phone call to the family back in the US, and I rushed to the building in the center taking refuge there and looking stupendously happy for someone who had no idea how to get back home in the rain, or if the door would be open for me when I did get back. None of that mattered just then. Living in the present and all that. I poked my tongue out to catch a few raindrops.

“Hello!” said a neighbor, and I gulped feeling foolish. She smiled and I smiled back sheepishly, hoping she hadn’t seen. 

“I don’t think this is going to stop just yet. I am just going to run for it. “ she said and gave me one of her dazzling smiles, and plopped off through the rain. 

I stood transfixed by the pouring sheets of rain. It would have definitely been classified as ‘a storm’ in California.  Lightning lit up the skies, and thunder rumbled. It was beautiful.

I don’t know how long I stood there gawking like that, but soon I realized that the downpour was not stopping any time soon, And it was close to midnight. Unless I wanted to spend the whole night outside, I would have to run through the rain. So I did. I splashed into the house – luckily the daughter was still awake, chatting with her friends on the phone and she opened the door. She gave me a disapproving cluck and said “Oh my gosh – let me get you a towel.”

As I watched the rain pour itself out, the little rivulets of water sliding down the building walls, and the flashes of lightning illuminating the cityscape every now and then, I found I could not sleep and picked up the Vincent and Theo book by my bedside, and flipped to the part where Vincent likes painting storms.

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Excerpt:

It’s been stormy and stormily beautiful to Vincent in Scheveningen lately, and into the squalls he goes. He is just starting to paint with oil and is not used to them yet, but he takes oil paints into the storm to paint the beach, the waves crashing one after the other, the wind blowing, the sea the color of dirty dishwater. He makes one of his first oil paintings, View of the Sea at Scheveningen, with a fishing boat and several figures on the beach. The wind is fierce, kicking up the sand. Sand sticks to the thick, wet paint.

Vincent loves capturing the turbulence of a storm. “There’s something infinite about painting”, he tells his brother. “I can’t quite explain – but especially for expressing a mood, it’s a joy.”

A few days later, on a quieter day, he sketches the beach. Sending the sketch to Theo, he describes a “Blond, soft effect and in the woods a more somber, serious mood. I’m glad that both of these exist in life.”

Wild and somber. Room for both. Room for all.

https://ontrafel.vangogh.nl/en/story/167/traces-of-a-nasty-little-storm

Please check out the View of the Sea painting and further details here

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Vincent’s life was a stormy one too. He was not an easy person to live with and this caused many rows with his family, though he was intensely dedicated to all of them: his parents, siblings (especially Theo), uncles etc.

I looked out of the window again. We all live through the storms in our lives. But, the good thing is that no storm lasts forever. Not all living beings would have the luxury of drifting off to sleep like that, and that made me very grateful for a warm bed and dry clothes.

“There is peace even in the storm”

― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

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The Boiler of Milk

I was on a visit to the old homeland. After the fond welcomes, and affectionate enquiries about all our friends, I was tasked with boiling the milk packets. I took to the task with enthusiasm and surprised myself.

How many of you have boiled milk? I realize that this bit of cooking is something that I do not miss living in the United States. The vessels are always a nightmare to scrub afterwards, and the milk itself has a cruel sense of humor. It would sizzle, and nuggle and miggle without actually boiling over, for ages. The entire time you are there alone pondering on the n-different things you could be spending your time on, nothing happens. Images from the poignant movie, The Great Indian Kitchen juggle with the forced quiet and calm of the post-dinner boiling milk time. The house is finally quiet. The milk is quiet too. Like a volcano. Dormant and slumbering. Rumbles from time-to-time, but slumbers all the same.

Then, the moment you decided to flick an eyelash out of your eye, the whole thing would come pouring out, making a mess. It is also curious that it seems every adult in the vicinity is peculiarly attuned to the sound of the hissing milk gushing out of the vessel. No sooner than this happens that the hitherto empty kitchen gathers distinguished guests. 

  • The old grandmother, who minutes ago complained of knee aches and the inability to stand for a few minutes, comes prancing into the kitchen to offer advice. 
  • The older grandfather hears this sound when one has to otherwise yell into his hearing aid to eat his tablets. He hobbles out of bed to see what the fuss is about. 
  • The children – oh the children. You can spend entire evenings calling their names to come and finish their tasks, but this. They jaunt in to get in on the action with no invitations!
  • The man of the house looks amused at all the fuss, and wonders why the woman of the house looks petulant. It is just a packet of milk!

The boiler of milk, in the meanwhile, has nowhere to go – the results of her ineptitude spooling out helpfully for all to see and revel in.

Just a packet of milk. 

Really, adulthood is very trying!

Still, it just goes to prove that time is a great healer and all that. All milk-related trauma seemed laughable just then, and I headed into the kitchen to boil a packet, looking like an angel in a night-suit. Patience oozing from my every pore, I smiled back as if to tell everyone present that I have it handled. My guardian angel or gatekeeper os whoever else keeps score, had better be jotting this down, I thought to myself as I stepped into the kitchen.

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I had no idea it was a task of such a technical nature. 

India launched Chandrayaan-3 and managed to safely land the space vehicle on the less explored side of the moon with less instructions.

  • Don’t use the aluminum vessel. No, no, not that one. We need that to boil milk in the morning.
  • Take the packets to the left of the tomatoes in the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Not the tomatoes in the middle shelf. 
  • Keep the flame between sim and high. Not that low. No no…not that high. It could have been instructions for my blood pressure. 
  • Don’t use that ladle – use the milk ladle
  • Why do you need a ladle?
  • No need to stir – are you making theratti-paal (milk peda) 
  • Better to stir it every now and then, so you know what to expect.

I took a deep breath, and shot back that I knew how to boil milk – thank you very much, and would everybody turn away from the kitchen please? 

I felt my guardian angel scowl. 

I stood there, meditatively stirring every now and then, watching the bubbles form and gather as the milk began to boil. Just as I stood watching, and switched off the gas, the milk hissed over anyway. 

“Forgot to tell you that this is a thick copper bottomed vessel that conducts heat. You need to switch off a few seconds prior to it actually boiling over.” said a gleeful voice. “I was going to tell you but you seemed to be so impatient for no reason.”

The Magic of Malgudi

Maybe it was the fact that we visited the home of R K Narayan after the opulence of the Mysore Palace, or the fact that while all of rural Karnataka seemed to have decided on Mysore Palace, nobody had thought of R K Narayan’s abode, but the author’s bungalow on a quiet residential street was like a little cocoon of quiet and peace. A lovely setting in which to imagine the most magical tales of small-town Malgudi.

It isn’t a humble abode – it is a beautiful house set in an upper middle class neighborhood. White and two-storeyed, it is a lovely home and while inside, I couldn’t help remembering his own notes on how he had acquired the piece of land on which it was built. 

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Book: The Grandmother’s Tale – By R K Narayan.

Far away from the town center as it was then, the realtor had promised him that it would be the bustling center of town one day. He left his noisy abode in Vinayak Street, and moved to this one – with the railway tracks to one side, the lilting hills and the then empty lands stretching between the home and the Mysore Palace.

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With his characteristic wit, he wrote of his gardener, Annamalai, who helped maintain the land around his house. Annamalai, like most men of the soil, intuitively knew how to clean and maintain lands.

I stooped to look at the plants for a brief moment before entering the home and remembered Annamalai’s classification: “This is a poon-chedi” (flowering plant) and chuckled to myself. 

“If he liked a plant, he called it poon-chedi and allowed it to flourish. The ones he did not like, he called “poondu” (weed), and threw over the fence.”

  • R K Narayan –  The Grandmother’s Tale (Story: Annamalai)

Annamalai was no horticulturist but seems to have taken care of the great man’s lands well enough.

Inside the house, it was largely quiet and the lady who stood at the entrance was happy enough to receive us. She was diminutive, and oddly neither welcoming nor dismissive. She surveyed us as if mildly annoyed with herself for being interested in us. She sometimes followed us as we entered the household and read the quotes off the walls. When it was obvious that we were in awe, and really happy to be in the place where R K Narayan wrote his gentle tales of Malgudi, she turned into a hesitant hostess and urged us to explore the rest of the house too. “Go upstairs and see the bedrooms. That’s where he slept.” she said, and I had to resist chuckling. 

I wondered what the master literary giant would have to say about her. It would be an insightful description no doubt and one tinged with the gentility and charm that he saw humanity with. That much was certain. 

The thing is: going to this quiet house tucked away in a residential locality in Mysore was comforting, and I thanked the brother profusely for showing me this gentle giant’s house. 

“Do you realise how few ever really understand how fortunate they are in their circumstances?”

– R K Narayan

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Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami, the author and Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Laxman, the cartoonist together enthralled the world with the spontaneity, humor and joy of Indian life. 

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Also read: 

A Rosely Abode

The rose bushes were blooming all summer and every time I saw the blossoms fade, I felt a pang. How did these bouquets in stores retain their freshness for that long while my blossoms faded so quickly? There was one white rose still unfaded before the next set of blooms came in, and I stopped to admire it. I’ve always loved white roses. I leaned over to pluck the beautiful blossom, picturing the peaceful looking flower in Buddha’s hands.

Peace. 

Such a nebulous quality in our lives, I mused. Also, something that one only appreciates wholly when threatened or is lost. Maybe turbulence is a necessary component of life in small doses so we appreciate sturdy peace when we do have it. 

roses

I peered into the rose and saw an inner petal that looked slightly less white than the surrounding petals. Maybe it had started to brown, I said to myself and reached in gingerly to pull the petal, when I gasped and leaped back. A small albino frog leaped out at me from within the white rose petals. 

I don’t know whether any of you have had albino frogs leap up at their faces, but if you haven’t, I can tell you it is quite the shock especially when you are expecting to loosen rose petals and have amphibians leaping at you instead.  It is like finding crocodiles in your bath-tub.

I gasped and tried regaining my composure. All thoughts of peace forgotten – the heart hammered against the ribcage as if on a great adventure, I willed it to stop. So much for courage – a frog is all it takes. Maybe it wasn’t a good thing. I thought forlorn, as irrational thoughts came flooding in. 

What is it with adrenaline and irrationality?

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Regardless of that first reaction, frogs are apparently omens of good luck, prosperity and fertility. 

Later that night, as I drifted off into sleep, I couldn’t help thinking of the little frog in the white rose that I had inadvertently disturbed. What a lovely abode? Drinking nectar, snuggling into the softest petals, and resting in the fragrance of a rose. Sometimes, the gifts of nature are marvelous. I wish I had the sense to take a photograph. White frogs are rare enough. White frogs in white roses must be even rarer. As for, white frogs leaping up at writers from within white roses: well, who says that nature doesn’t have a sense of humor?

I’ve always admired bees for having their feet dusted by a thousand blossoms as Ray Bradbury says:

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‘Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.’

– Ray Bradbury

Frogs or Moths?

The morning started off with a commotion in the room. “Get me a magazine!” said the daughter. She was standing on her window ledge. The English language can be woefully inadequate at times like these. What adjectives could one use to describe a goddess incarnate in shorts and tangled hair shouting like the devil? 

I goggled at her: sleep addled myself and asked her what was going on. She sputtered and shuddered as she regaled the heroic tale of how she came to be in the position she was in when I was summoned into the room. 

As most tales of heroism in our home started off, it was with a big moth. No lepidopterists in this house as you can see. 

Apparently, one ‘huge’ moth had been flying around and after several minutes chasing after the monstrous thing, she had managed to trap the thing between the wall and the upturned waste basket. She stood there looking determined and sheepish all at once, and asked for something to slide between the wall and the waste basket. 

moths_in_bedrooms

“All that evolution for using tools, and this is what we use it for!” I muttered and went to get something of sufficient size. 

A few minutes later, she came smiling widely and looking very pleased with herself. She had released the gigantic thing out into the wild. (notice how the moth turned from ‘big’ to ‘huge’ to ‘gigantic’ in 3 paragraphs?)  

I used the opportunity to talk to her about being less-dramatic, feeling compassionate towards our fellow beings on the planet (I have compassion when the moth is outside, not in my bedroom, Mother!), and generally learning to be calm about little things like moths in bedrooms.

She rolled her eyes.

After this, peace was restored and we went about the day. It was later that day that she got her revenge on Yours Truly. I had just driven back home on a high traffic day, and noticed a rather large white rose in our garden. I’ve always loved white roses – they have a pristine look before they start drying up. I leaned over to pluck the beautiful blossom, picturing the peaceful looking flower in the Buddha statue’s hands.

I peered into the rose and saw an inner petal that looked slightly less white than the surrounding petals. Maybe it had started to brown, I said to myself and reached in gingerly to pull the petal, when I gasped and leaped back. A small albino frog leaped out at me from within the white rose petals. 

frogs_in_roses

I was still looking shocked and spooked when the daughter came to the door. She asked me a few questions and I croaked a thing or two in reply. Getting nothing intelligible out of me, she ushered me into the house. I ran to the bathroom to wash my hands. I had just touched a frog, had said frog jump out at me, and had leaped away with the agility that the frog was proud of. 

I don’t know whether any of you have had albino frogs leap up at their faces, but if you haven’t, I can tell you it is quite the shock especially when you are expecting to loosen rose petals and have amphibians leaping at you instead.  It is like finding crocodiles in your bath-tub.

A few minutes later, the daughter breezily walked into the room and said, “Okay – I’ve held off long enough to let the frog shock wear off a bit, but I can’t hold off anymore. Here goes! Proud, are we? Huh?!  After giving me a nice big lecture for the moth in my bedroom this morning, you can’t even croak a word out when faced with a poor, measly frog, huh?” 

“Yes – but a frog and a moth are not the same. The frog leaped at me!” I said.

“My moth flew at me. Your point, Mother?” said she, ever the astute debater.

A Problem of Niblings

We were out gallivanting around town with the young nephews and nieces.

“Crows scare me! The way they come and all squawk together.”, said one.

“What? Why? “ said the other. “I love crows – ravens specifically. They are so cool, and in almost all the books, they spy and report back to their evil warlords!”

“Butterflies and moths on the other hand!” , said another with a shudder, and I chuckled to myself. I loved butterflies – no use upsetting them by letting them in on the secret.

I left them to it and admired the bottle shaped tree in the park and wondered how it had acquired that particular shape.

After a while, my attention was diverted back to the conversation.

The niece was affronted. I tried ignoring her, and walked on at a brisk pace. We were out a-walking and I refused to be side-tracked by such ‘trivial upsets’ as I told her. She gasped and pressed on.

“But there should be a word for it. I mean you can club sons and daughters and call them children, so why not have one word for nieces and nephews in the plural?”

How she finds something to be affronted about is a blog piece unto itself. For it usually is not the meaty stuff one gets one’s back up about. It is usually something like this.

This time it was because there was no collective nouns for nieces and nephews together. I tried nodding and waiting for the moment to pass. But she harped on, “Don’t you agree? I mean if not a word, at least a collective noun!”

“Who said there isn’t? It is a Problem of nieces and nephews! “ I said my face deadpan.

“Really?”, she asked momentarily disconcerted.

“Yeah! Just like it is a murder of crows. It is a problem of nieces and nephews.” I said and she nodded seriously, before catching her uncle chuckle at her. I threw my head back and laughed loudly at her affronted face, and she was forced to join in and concede that it was a good one. 

Luckily, the internet can be relied upon to come up with words for just these sort of things. They are niblings. Derived from siblings, niblings refer to a collection of nieces and nephews.

The Sounds of Cricket

India has always been host to the resounding sound of cricket. The game and the insect. Television crews lose no time in covering the game non-stop, while the sound of crickets in the hills don’t seem to warrant coverage. Though, there is just as much excitement there if you ask me. 

We had gotten away from the immediate hustle and bustle of the city, and were thus allowed the luxury of listening to the sounds of nature. We shushed each other with rather more vigor and noise than was necessary and finally, the room quieted down. The sun was setting outside. Combined with the excellent company, the warm conversations reminiscing some of our pleasant times together, the beautiful light filtering into the room,  and the thrumming of crickets all around us, it all made for a surreal calm setting. I could imagine what people meant when they said ‘ports from the storm’ in that setting.

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I had no idea how many crickets would be required to produce a racket like that, and filed the question away for another time. That is the sort of the thing that the son would find amusing to find out. In the meanwhile, my friend was telling me about she noticed that at 7 o’clock sharp, the sound of crickets just died down. This was curious. So it wasn’t at sun-down. It was a few minutes past sun-down. 

The act of producing the sound is called stridulation, it meant that the thrum buffeting us in the hills was the sound of vibrant life finding a way to thrive in its environs. Much as the hum of entertaintment in the form of games, music and televised stories in our cities is a sign of thriving life of humans. 

The sounds of a species do have a story to tell – though I envisioned this line of thought quickly devolving to burps and farts, and wisely held my tongue. Just as my friend said, the clock ticked from 6:59 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. and the sounds instantly died down. An eerie quiet filling the void in its space. 

Later that night, after we had played a game of cards and quietened down for the night, a few minutes after lights were out, the sounds of our whispered conversations, the giggles of the children, and the admonishments of the older folks all died out. Just as sudden and just as deafeningly as the crickets earlier that evening.  

I smiled, and clearly exhausted drifted off to sleep myself, the lack of sound a cocoon for which I was grateful. 

Do Active Menaces Travel or Vacation?

She shook her head, as though explaining things to a dim-witted troll.

“We are on vacation – yes. In the sense, that you’ve taken time off and we are traveling. But we are not vacationing, we are traveling.”, said the daughter. It was during our trip to Alberta, Canada. We had been enjoying the joy and grandeur of the Rocky mountains, and trying to see as many lakes and blues in the waters and hikes as possible. The long summer days combined with the splendor of the Rocky Mountains make for pleasurable days – even if physically tiring ones after 3 days of non-stop activity, and that was the reason for the conv.

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“My friends are wondering why I can’t pick up any calls from 6 in the morning till 10 at night, and I am telling them it is because we aren’t in any place with connectivity, and they wonder what I am talking about!” she said wringing her hands as teenagers tend to do when trying to explain things to parents.

“But, don’t they go on vacations?” , I’d asked in response to which I got the spiel on traveling vs vacationing. 

“Most people, when they go on vacations, stick to the place they booked – a resort maybe, and stay there. With excellent pools, televisions and the like. Not that I am complaining – I like the way we travel. I like seeing the places, hiking and having a wonderful time. Just saying that what we do is traveling, and what they do is vacationing!”

“Hmm!” I said thoughtfully, “But these days, we do add a day of rest, or a day we have a late start here and there don’t we?”

“Yes and those days are appreciated Mother, believe me! But it is not vacationing. When you vacation, you spend all the days everyday doing nothing.” 

I nodded. It did sound nice. I’d like to try something like that. Though I am not sure the husband would be able to take it. He is a do-er, and would by the end of day two have me climbing palm trees in the nearby oasis. I said so, and the man laughed – guffawed actually, chuffed at this, though it clearly wasn’t meant as a compliment. Sigh. 

The daughter, meanwhile, gave me a diagnostic glance up and down, and said, “Yes! Yes! We all know pops is like that, but you are an active menace too. ”

I drew myself up haughtily. An active menace?

“I mean did we really have to do all the hikes near Lake Louise on one day?  30,000 steps Mother. Some of my friends don’t do that much in a week!”

“Aren’t you proud though, my dear? Aren’t your spirits refreshed and rejuvenated?” I asked.

She took a moment to answer. A faraway look in her eyes as if contemplating the joys of traveling, and said, “I like it. I like traveling and I like our trips filled with places to see, hikes to do, and all that. Just making you realize that vacationers have different expectations. “

I conceded: “Fair point. “

Rainbow Colored

I picked up two books on separate trips to the library and enjoyed reading them. The first was a book of fairy tales retold in the African diaspora: Crowned. A book of fairy tales is always enjoyable, and one that has a good smattering of classic fairy tales combined with some myths from the African heartlands are a joy. 

The children shown as the princesses and princes are the best. The costume designs and makeup are exemplary, as are the re-imaginings of their origins. Most books illustrate Cinderella and Snow White as fair-skinned princesses, and it is refreshing to see these pictures.

The second book was: The Dark Fantastic – By Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games

The Dark Fantastic is a book of essays exploring the absence of color in fantasy. The author starts off the book with Vernon Dursley’s famous saying in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: “There is no magic.”.

She then goes on to explain her upbringing in working-class Detroit in the 1970s. 

“The existential concerns of our family, neighbors, and city left little room for Neverlands, Middle-Earths, or Fantasias. In order to survive, I had to face reality. “

A few sentences on, though the author states:

“In the realm of the fantastic, I found meaning, safety, catharsis - and hope, Though it eluded me, I needed magic.”

I identified with this statement of needing magic. Humanity’s need for magic is evident in our myths and epics from thousands of years ago. 

  • Was there a flying carpet? A pushpak vimana?
  • Are there heavens and hells?

Yet, for thousands of years, we have told ourselves increasingly fantastical stories to keep our spirits alive, and our imaginations intact.

“I like nonsense. It wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.” Dr Seuss. 

A common thread emerging from lack of diversity in books, is that children don’t see enough of themselves in the books. I lay the books down musing on this. I, like many in my generation, grew up surrounded by the fairy tales of snowy white princesses, and the fantasy worlds of Enid Blyton. Yet, I don’t think I ever wondered whether I would be able to climb up the Magic Faraway Tree to have adventures, or swish away on the Wishing Chair to magical places.  The protagonists were all British children, but it did not seem to make the slightest difference to a middle class brown skinned Indian child. Maybe I was just lucky that it never occurred to me. But did it occur to my friends? If it did, I am not sure we discussed it. 

That sort of limitation in thinking only came as we grew up and saw for ourselves the inequity of opportunities. I am grateful, of course, to see a book in which a child refers to their mother as ‘Amma’ as we do at home. (Why is my Hair Curly – by Lakshmi Iyer)

Or see that picnics can involve rotis and potato curry, and not just sandwiches. But I am more grateful for the reach of fairy tales. They provided a much-needed element of magic and hope. 

As children, the inhibitions of things like race, creed and color are not there. I fondly remember the picture drawn by the son in kindergarten when his teacher had told all children to have more colored people in their illustrations. He had drawn all their faces rainbow-colored 🙂