Elephant as bell for the cycle

Jagriti has been an interesting journey so far. Inspiring, eye-opening; but most of all confusing. On the ground, it is opening new kinds of interactions with my son.

Couple of weeks ago, we had a session on creativity. Post that session, I started to pull my-creative side in my conversations with Advay. Here I share one such incident.

My son (Advay) has recently become fascinated with riding his bicycle. It was a hand-me-down from his cousin brother Avyay, who is 6 years older to him. Advay & I took the cycle and got it serviced. Advay also cleaned, sand-paper-scrubbed and painted some parts of his cycle & personalised it.

Anyways, the other day Advay came up with this during dinner

Advay: I think I need a bell for my cycle. All the other kids have bells for their cycle, I also need one.

Me: With a bell you can made sound right? Can’t you make the sound with your mouth? Do you really need a bell?

Advay: Yes, I need a bell for it. Lets go buy that bell we saw in Decathlon.

Me (catching myself giving gyan & feeling a light-bulb-from-session-on-creativity switching on in my head): Lets think of different kinds of bells we can attach to your cycle. There is that one kind in Decathlon. Hmmmm…. How about tying a dog to your cycle? Whenever you want to bell, you can tap the dog and ask it to bark?

Advay (clearly amused by the image of dog barking on his cycle): I think we should use an Elephant instead of dog on the cycle. Elephants can make very loud noise.

(My wife, Advay and I are sharing a laugh at the image of an elephant on his cycle)

Me: Yeah, or how about tiger?

Advay: People will run away and make space for my cycle. Or how about <some cartoon character, I forget which one>?

Like this we went on imagining a whole range of “bells” we could attach to the cycle. He was laughing and clearly enjoying all the imagination. At the end of which he said

Advay: I don’t want to buy that bell from Decathlon.

In his face, he seemed to have an expression that said – “I would love to attach an elephant as bell to my cycle. Seems way more fun than a typical bell.”

Buying a bell was not an issue for us. But the session on creativity gave me a sort of impetus to try and bring creativity, to what would have otherwise been a transactional (or authoritative) conversation, to spark imagination and go wild and have such a fun time with Advay. There was no agenda in the conversation, no end goal. But my son saw many possibilities for his cycle-bell. Which I take as progress!


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