There is a balloon story about each of the girls and they will always make me laugh.
One day last year, Noor was describing to me how her teacher tried to inflate a balloon, and how a little boy in her class came and poked it at so hard that, she said, ” Mama and then the balloon burped !!”
Indira and I looked at each other and grinned, because we both understood that she got that word mixed up with burst. Noor thought, I suppose, that we’d found the story very amusing so hoping to make us laugh some more she said again with a dramatic fling of her hands, “and the balloon burped!! ”
The story of this balloon reminded me about another one that burst some years earlier, at Indira’s hands.
She was only four then, and more prone than she is now to mix up her English, Hindi and French.
When a balloon that she picked up from the dispenser at Pizza Hut burst as she played, she came running to me saying anxiously, “Maman, le ballon is futted!!”
That will always be one of my fondest memories of Indira’s childhood 🙂
The section on the right called “Le Futted Ballon” chronicles these and other memories.
An Indian Kitchen in France 