Write like nobody is reading – Post 8

There is this fella, my cousin’s ten year old boy, whose visions are unbelievably grand and his empathy is on a whole new level. His EQ is something you can relate to with the kids from the neoliberal post word war dramas of Roberto Rossellini. While he still misses out on the fair play award, he is someone who knows when to negotiate and find his place in the game, time and again. He handles money like a pro, he can quote the prices of cattle, pets, fodder, the cattle maintenance cost, agricultural produces like a pro. He has this impeccable capability to filter out the noise from information that he collects from his sources – primarily listening to the adult conversations and secondarily from the Internet. His eyes and ears are everywhere for details, not just for his usual areas of interests – animals, but also while listening to the conversations around for he is hungry for information in general. He pays attention when people speaks and demands attention when he wants to be listened, for he process so much of information as input, he make sure he reiterates them to people as he knows well recollecting information will keep them glued to his memory.

While I just mentioned he is hungry for information, he is not much into academics, when I say ”not much” I am actually understating. It is really difficult to get him sit down to read from his text books and to get him do his homework, neither kind words nor stern face can get him sit down to read. I am not romanticising for he is not into studies but into animals. Our family tries hard to cultivate his interests in studies, especially my mom. He is extremely stubborn and adamant, for he know how to get things done by still keeping his innocence. Its quite common for the kids to throw tantrums and that’s what make the childhood memorable and beautiful. My Nephew, he is the hero of our today’s blog – the miniature business guru without a fancy management degree.

Few days ago, we had to sell our two crossbred jersey cows and the one week old calf as my periyappa (paternal uncle) and my father were finding it difficult to manage our stable, for we do not have the labour capacity like before and self maintenance costs huge in terms of energy and time apart from money. My periyappa’s day start as early as 6:30 AM in the morning and my dad to start the day at 7:00 AM in our stable, to clear the dung and to wash the stable, then to fodder and water the cows, followed by milking. This takes over an hour in the morning for them, and these chores are especially costing my periyappa’s aging joints. We also had to feed grass, four to six times during the day, which needs to be brought from our estates through a jeep every alternate day that itself costs over 700 INR. Though it is not an easy call to make for my periyappa to sell our cows, he has been considering for a two long years. While we still have a girl calf at our estate stable, I do not have a memory of seeing an empty stable at home.

My nephew’s maternal grandmother who demised a couple of days ago (RIP), was terminally ill over the last week, so he went to their village that lies about 20 kilometres from ours for a few days of stay. On his return back, the first thing he did was to check on his pets – an orphaned calf, a dog, a love bird pair and a betta fish, fed them all and ran straight to our house to check on our stable only to find it empty. While he is not happy at first that the cows were sold, He then enquired the selling price and expressed his unhappiness saying “They should have sold it for over a lakh and 20 thousand“, when the actual selling price for the two cows and a calf is only 75 thousand rupees. They are growing few cows in their estate, as he carefully listens to the adult’s business conversations and after listening to hundreds of cattle price enquiries on google, he came up with this estimate. My father explained that the cows could have been sold for an extra five to ten thousand, not for over a lakh and there will be transit charger to bring the cows from hills to plains which my nephew did not accounted for. He was consoled only after hearing that explanation.

When I said he is highly empathetic, I was not exaggerating. In the previous blog post of this series, I was mentioning him googling for Neopolitan mastiff, the Dog with the highest bite force, in his terms something relatable to the Lions. He has a habit of thoroughly researching the animal breeds on various parameters from the origin, cost, feed, maintenance, availability in India, their authenticity etc, he randomly popped this question what is the term Neopolitan means as it sounded strange for him to remember, I was just telling him that the produce from an Italian locality will have this name, quoting him the world famous Neopolitan pizza as an example. He suddenly asked me if we had to go there how much would it cost, mentioning he understands bringing the puppy home would be a lot of paper work and not so economical, he wanted to play with those puppies for a couple of days at Naples and have Neopolitan pizza there and go site-seeing. As a ballpark figure, I quoted it would cost a couple of lakhs per person. The boy replied without giving a second thought, as he cannot go alone, he want me and my younger brother to accompany him to Italy. He also wanted to know, how many months will it take for me to make six lakh rupees for us to make that trip happen. When I said I would need at least n months to earn that money if I do not spend my salary on any other things but to save up for the trip. The little genius then replied, “I do not want to you save up all the money you make for this trip, rather save half of your salary for the trip and spend the other half to meet your needs. That way, we can make the trip in n*2 months rather than n months”. That is the kind of empathy I am talking about.

Did I say his visions are surprisingly grand, I was not exaggerating that either. I understand it is not surprising enough to find a kid of 10 owning so many pets and taking care of them. But I am sure it surprises enough If I say he googles not just to find the prices of various breeds of cows, goats, dogs, fishes and horses, but also researches about domesticating Elephants – their costs, commercial significance, maintenance and the time he would require to own one. He really is a miniature management guru without a fancy business degree, isn’t he?