Part II

It seemed that he just wanted to leave Teja’s house, I guess he just wanted to go to a place where he can find mom, or probably he just wanted to play. If it is mom that he was looking for, then I will be in trouble, so I decided to divert his attention and took him to the common play area in the apartment. Luckily, there were 3 more kids already playing there, all three seemed to be of the same age group, probably around 10, and playing football.

For some strange reason, Solomon likes football, probably due to the size of the ball. He immediately started cheering those three, and started pointing at them with both hands and was “seriously” telling me something. I only wished I could understand. He was telling something like clu-clu-la-la-pa-pa-la-la-… and making a lot of facial expressions. He was probably saying that he could play better, once he is 10, or was it just my impression. For once I thought that those facial expressions were transmitted from my DNA …

An old lady who passed us by, stopped and talked to him for a while, he was not particularly interested in her, but … intently looked at her, probably wishing that she can tell, where his mom was. We spent around ~25 minutes sitting and watching. All this time Solomon continued to talk to me. Suddenly for some full 25 minutes I thought taking care of Solomon was fun, and somehow easy. After 25 minutes he started making his moves, he wanted to go for the ball. After all he is a boy, I thought. I would let him go, those three kids never cared for him, but Solomon only cared for the ball, and he even managed to reach the ball twice, and once he reached, he would take it and give it back to those kids. He would clap his hands after giving back the ball. Solomon cheers himself every time he does “something good”, for example, when he “correctly” throws the garbage into the "dustbin”, or if he can switch on the television. But sometimes his thinking of “something good” does not match with “what is really good”. For example, he would cheer, when he throws something down the balcony. Amusing for him not me (and also Shanthi).

Suddenly, another girl of the same age group of those three kids showed up, and all four went away to the another part of our apartment building. It seemed that they were practicing some new kind of “kids skate board”. Solomon was not very much interested in the skating stuff, probably this not from my DNA. I love skate-board …

We came back to the play area to find their foot-ball. He was very happy as he can have the football all for himself. We both started playing with it for some 10 minutes. He looked exhausted, but continued to play. So to get him some rest, I carried him and we both went round the apartment once. While we were walking around the apartment, his face changed again, probably he started looking for Shanthi again … So, I decided to take him to Teja’s house again. This time I wanted to feed him something.

We both went back to Teja’s house. She was already eating, so I thought it would be easy to feed him. Once I started feeding, he started taking some 3~4 mouth-full very fast. And suddenly after that started spitting the food. The frustrating part of taking care of him, sigh! The smooth ride with him for sometime had come to a grinding halt. Though he looked a bit tired, he wanted to go out again and started crying. At this moment, Shanthi called to inquire the status, he was still crying slightly. Shanthi was a bit worried that he was probably crying all time. Bad timing.

My friend, Nanda, decided to try and amuse him with soap bubbles, and it worked out. At first he was afraid of the bubbles, but after seeing Teja playing with it, he joined her in the fun. Both of them were pumped up and they were laughing very loudly. Again, while all this was going on, I relaxed. I was worried that he was not eating, but happy that at-least he is enjoying. This bubble stuff went on for more than 20 minutes.

These days Teja is in “toilet training” and do not wear diapers, so when the soap bubbles were all around, Teja suddenly stopped when she saw some of her excretes on the ground and started crying. In-fact she was not wearing her under-pants too. Solomon was clueless, he looked at me with a strange face. For a moment I was clueless too … But I decided to give Teja some space and took him outside the house again.

We both headed out to the play area, again. Those three kids were still playing on the other side of the apartments. The had left behind the balls they were playing with. So, Solomon decided to play with the ball. He took the ball far away from me and would throw it,  I ran and picked it up for him, he enjoyed this sequence. So we repeated this many, many … times. Both of us were very tired. It was already ~3:10 PM, I was hungry. So I decided to take him back to Teja’s house. This time though, immediately after reaching Teja’s house, he started playing with her. I decided to relax for sometime while he was playing with Teja. For a moment I thought that he was not thinking about this mother, and … at this moment the calling bell of rang …

When Teja’s mom, Lavanya attended the door, it was Shanthi, I could hear her voice. In a flash I thought it was a moment of relief. But when I realized that I had taken care of him for more than 3 hours. I was happy.