……………….AND MANY CALLS LATER……..

It was Sunday 7 AM. The land line rang. The call was for my son. He took the call. His friends were planning an outing. The group consisted of 5 girls and 5 boys. They wanted to go for a movie. They decided to go for a Hindi movie. The phone rang once again at 9 AM.  The boys did not want to go for a Hindi movie. Two of them could not understand Hindi. An hour later, my son was attending one more call. They decided to go for a Tamil movie. Unfortunately, some girls could not follow Tamil. Soon, more calls followed, so did the confusion. This kept on until 3 PM. Finally, all of them decided to go to “Mummy.”   The problem was not over. Two girls had already seen the movie. By this time, already 15 phone calls had come. Each call lasted on an average for 20 minutes. With each call, the frustration was increasing for him. The last call came at 5PM. A decision was yet to come by. He could not handle the endless discussions anymore and finally dropped out of the program.

He was sitting on the sofa, with a sullen face. I was busy packing, as I to leave on tour, next early morn.

 I patted him on his back, and told, “Cheer up, we will see the movie when I return from tour.”

He replied, “It is not possible, today is the last day, for the Mummy movie.”

I said, “OK, we will go for the night show.”

His face brightened with enthusiasm.

We enjoyed the film. When we came out of the theater, it was raining heavily. We took an auto and reached home.

After I came back from tour, a similar call came on a Sunday.

I advised my son. I told him, “Two things are important in life; People and personal desire. For satisfying your personal desire, you have to do it alone or with just one think alike friend. When it is group activity, let the group decide, because then the group is more important than your personal desire. All you have to do is to join them to have fun.”

He was intelligent. He caught the message. Ten minutes later, one more call came. He answered the call.

He said, “All of you decide. After you finally decide, call me and just tell me, where and when to join you people. I will come there.” He put the receiver down.  Turned around and smiled at me. He said, “Thanks dad.” My son was growing. I smiled proudly, and said,“ Good.”