I spied for a mischief-making monkey that might unleash a reign of terror and disrupt my writings even before I could type my first sentence. You never know what kids can do or capable of doing, especially in this great era of technological advancement in which Generation Y make us look like mere Neanderthal men in the evolutionary schema. So I didn't want to take any chance. Convinced there was not a single pigmy-sized darling in the vicinity, I began to write for all those adults who have been outwitted by the smarty-pants in one way or the other.

Since I am no epic writer, I will begin from the beginning. Flashbacks and flash-forwards are fast becoming hackneyed; so I will follow Aristotle's prescription of beginning, middle, and end. Besides, beginning with the beginning will suit my purpose. After all, I want to write about children who can be located in the early phase of human life.

Remember, Sphinx asking Oedipus of the famous riddle about the animal that walks on four-feet in the morning, two at noon and three in the evening. Would you believe it even a question like this was plaguing a whole nation? There was no one in the whole wide Greece to answer this question. Sounds Greek, doesn't it? Only the star-crossed, swollen-feet hero Oedipus could answer that the animal that Sphinx was looking for was actually 'man'. Knowing what happened to Oedipus, I will not dare pursue the riddle; rather I will focus on the phases in which the quadruped humans halve their walking instruments and become a biped.

When I was a First-Year university student long, long ago, I used to tutor this kid from a posh English medium school. I often wondered who was teaching whom though. For example, he would come to me with pieces of garlic under his armpits (not a good deodorant item). To match my bemused look my pupil came up with an amusing answer: putting garlic under your armpits would raise your body temperature. So the six-year-old first grader was looking for an excuse to skip the lesson for the day by pretending fever. On other occasions, he would deliberately leave his new video games on the table and distract me from teaching. Trust me Osama was like a grand magician with a hat with lots of bunnies inside, which he kept on pulling one at a time. The first one came on my very first day of teaching.

I was teaching him Biology; the lifecycle of frogs, to be precise. After I had explained him the diagram, he asked: 'I don't get it. It says, first, the he-frog here croaks. Then the she-frog there lays eggs.' I blushed and fumbled. 'Great observation , kiddo! I will have to think it over.' 'You mean you don't know.' 'No.' I wasn't in a mood to explain the mystery of life to a six-year-old. 'So how are you going to teach me?' Osama struck me with his plain question and my confidence melted down like the twin towers. I could see it in his eyes that I was not the first victim of his body-line bouncers. If morning showed the day, I could sense that my tutoring days were of the length of Scandinavian winter days. Fortunately, I survived. Osama and I became fast friends. There were times when I had to give him to the supreme wills of my student and even give him piggy rides before a lesson. Indeed, kids can do the darndest things. They can say the darndest things too (the title of this piece is from Bill Cosby's famous TV show).

In fact, one of the greatest philosophical statements that I have ever come across comes from a kid. Ahnaf, my nephew, cried out after a power-cut. From a pitch dark room, we could hear him cry: 'Where am I? I can't see myself.' Indeed, to see is to believe! For him (he was 3 or 4 at that time), he did not exist because he could not see himself. The electricity outage and the consequent darkness caused him to question his very existence. Existentialism apart, when electricity goes out, do you think we exist as citizens? The government doesn't see us or our misery. We cease to exist for them. The generators and IPSs give back our existence. We exist in our own will and by our own efforts. Our lights light up to cover up the state failure. I was attending a seminar given by a Deputy Minister of Singapore. And guess what, the electricity went off. The Minister told us, if something like that had happened in Singapore, the electric company would have been fined $1 million straightaway. No kidding!

Well, children are not political animals (they are poly-trick-al). Listen to this. Some friends of ours were visiting the house of a colleague. They were using an electric kettle to make their tea. On the day of their departure, one of our friends complimented the kettle they had been using during the visit: 'It's really good. But it holds just two cups of water.' The host was confused. He pulled out the kettle that read 1.5 l and opened it up. And lo, there was a pair of old socks inside the kettle. So all these days they had been drinking tea from a kettle containing used socks inside. How did they get there? Your guess is as good as mine. But did I tell you that there were kids in that house?

I am sure anecdotes involving children are so widely available in our personal memory that I don't need to bother you with details. I am just helping you remember some of the stories that you might have come across. I will just end my piece with another great quip used by another cousin of mine. Shwachhya is always nagging his mother with volleys with questions. His mother could not take it anymore. At one point, she had to say, 'Why do you ask all these questions?' 'Ma, you don't know,' the seven-year-older sagaciously nodded, 'baachtey holey jaantey hobey (you need to know in order to survive).' His use of the adage from the AIDS ad left his mom mum. I rest my case.