In Vidhi's world, each object, person, activity, emotion is a fully fledged entity. It appears that she understands that her doll is not exactly same kind of friend to her as are her classmates at Day Care. But then, sometimes, as adult you find that perhaps that's not true. In her world, her plastic dog feel hungry when she does, demands milk, requires petting and hugging, and gets tired. She requests, often, to feed her toys/furniture and ascribes other anthropomorphic qualities to them.
Her obsession with Lakdi ki Kathi was talk of the house. Well, everything she does is talk of the house, but this obsession went a level higher. She would demand and listen to this song for hours at end. She would dance in circle as in the song. She would notice a flicker of Teddy Bear near the end of song and point it out to us. She would make hand gestures to mimic tiny Urmila Matondkar. So, of course, as doting parents we decided to find out where to acquire one for her. We knew that that can be bought from Channapatna, a toy town, about an hour's drive from Bangalore. But we wanted to find something in town. Two local hangouts were found wanting, and once we rejected because she swung so much that we felt that she would fall off the horse. In the end, we bought one when we visited Bannerghatta National Park with her bua Khushboo Gupta. As anti-climax go, her fanaticism has subsequently tapered off quite a bit. Lakdi ki Kathi is neither as much demanded on video nor actually played with.
