The bird who knows her birthday

It began with a math lesson. Simple addition.

Do you think animals have a sense of numbers, Angad?
Of course they do amma, they have a way of knowing their birthdays, how many days before it is their birthday, how old they'll be...

My immediate response was a smile. Then a hug. Then to speak about the sparrow who knows when an egg has been stolen, or how a mother lion knows how many cubs she has, or a mama-bird knows which chick has been fed and how much.

Migration and magnetic poles, estimation of wind speed or synchronising distance and the time required to cover it..., birds and animals would know all of this and more, but I could not think beyond eggs in a nest.

A couple of days later, Angad had to speak a few lines on how important water is to animals. In Hindi. So we wrote about how life began in water (to which he pulled out a dinosaur book which had illustrations of how life evolved from unicellular to multi-cellular to fish that began to walk and turned into dinosaurs) and so I had to drag him back into talking about the importance of water.

Kya aap jante hai ki prithvi par jeevan samudro me hi paida hua tha...

He took a while to memorise that, rephrasing it each time dfferently, sometime forgetting to say Paida, sometimes forgetting samudra...

We then spoke about how animals living in forests drink from rivers or lakes, how animals like the camel can live without it for days and others like crocodiles and turtles, live in water. Then some gyan-tinted-line on how the hot summer dries up the water around us, so please make sure to put out water for thirsty animals, cows, cats and dogs.

Of course he did not get 'selected'.

No matter how non-pushy or open one is about education, no matter how much we believe in giving each child his or her own space to grow and develop, if you are one of those parents whose only option has been to send your child to a school which lacks vision or imagination, you are left wondering what to feel when your child is not one of those who is 'selected'.

Looking inward, I also realised that in the hurry to give information and push an agenda (to put out water tubs for thirsty animals), to make Angad sound intelligent different, I forgot all he wanted was to have fun.
I forgot his bird who knows her birthday.