Bollo pakhir chaa....tumi ki amar maa?

The paradox of being a parent is most probably that you want your child to grow and not grow at the same time. I always feel that birdie is growing up too fast, but I also want him to be at a age where he can participate in the things that I enjoy.

New year for me means fairs, trade fair in January, and book fair in February. I have been to all book fairs since 2003, until recently. Over the last two years, for various reasons, I failed to visit the 'praner mela'. When the only certain thing in life becomes uncertainty, you take drastic measures, lest it be the last time you ever get a chance. So I decided to visit the book fair, on the last day, despite the fear of huge crowd. 

Since I went early on, I did not face much crowd; but what took me by surprise is that I missed the book fair for two years, and so much has changed. Within Bangla Academy were only the stalls for children publications, little mag, media and some organization based publish houses like Bangla academies own publishing, Islamic foundation etc. The main fair was hosted in a totally segregated ground.

Since I went to buy books for the little one....who by the way is a huge fan of reading, I was almost done soon. All those kids holding the parents hand and roaming around the book fair, made me miss my little birdie. I long for the day when he will be big enough to hold my hand and visit the book fair! So here's the array of books that I bought for him


and here's a array of things that I bought from the fair, that does not count as a book.


1. From the left top corner: An Assortment of vegetables made with clay, to teach him about our heritage. He already broke a few of them.
2. right to it is a sticker of mickey mouse.
3. Left bottom corner: a mask, which was birdies favorite among everything.
4. beside it is a bag to carry all the unnecessary things that I bought.
5. lying on the back is a ghungru. Since birdie walks around the house all day, its fun to add a little sound effect to his walking.
6. in the middle is a piri-belna. Now that the little one can walk around the house, he cozies up in the kitchen, pull out all the utensils, and plays with them, the piri-belna is an addition to his existing set of hari-patil that his nanu bought him earlier. By the way, he knows exactly how to use a the piri-belna.

Now getting back to his original purchase...books, he showed interest about the books at once. He opened them as soon as he received them, and looked through them, till the robot mask distracted him.

Again at night when he was done playing with the other things, he brought me the books, and cozied up to me, and asked me to read them for him. He enjoyed the book 'are you my mother', and after that I read him the rhino book. There was a picture of a ball in it, and the ball interested him more. So he ditched reading, and one by one he looked into all the books to search for pictures of ball. Every time he found a ball, or any round object, he pointed at it, and kept on saying ball. 

So that was the end of reading for him for the first night. I am trying to put him into a sleeping routine for him, that involves brushing his teeth, reading a book to him, getting a soothing massage and then going to bed. The purpose of the reading to him is both to calm his extra energy down and settle him, and to get into the habit of reading early on. Hope he gets to be a book worm someday just like both his parents!

Chotopakhi....this book fair is very special for you. A book dedicated to you has been published and launched by your Dadu, in this bookfair. :) 
Here are some pictures of the book launching event on 8th Feb, 2014