By Aditya Acharya

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“Je ne parle pas français.”, I told.

The kiddo did not understand. How could he understand me speaking French! Sometimes, I do not understand these French, speaking English! 😂

So I took my mobile near to his ear and made the google speak the sentence. After listening twice or thrice, he repeated the sentence laughing, “Je ne parle pas Français. Haha.” He also repeated for two or three times and laughed. Somebody was telling in French that he does not speak French! Maybe he got confused.

I do not know if he understood what that means. He seemed to be 5 or 6 years old. Did he even know that there are people who speak different languages?

I was wandering around a park nearby in the evening. I heard some good music and saw people dancing. So I went towards that. And meet the kiddo. I stood nearby some other people and started watching the dance, and a kiddo behind a pole just started playing hide and seek with me. 🙂 And I played with him.

He went away after sometime.

He was playing with other kids. Whenever he saw me, he used to smile. I did the same to him. He started becoming really friendly; catching hands, climbing on the back by climbing on the small wall which I was leaning against, and asking so many things. So we talked for a while; but he talked in French and I talked in English. 😂

He seemed to be asking things (that is how kids usually are) but I did not understand anything. So I decided to tell him that I did not understand French. And took help of google translate to tell it to him. And he laughed repeating the sentence. There was another older kid (I knew later that he was his older brother) too this time, playing. I just took some photos of them, to make some fun and to get engaged with, and showed to them. He made different expressions and enjoyed it, and I kept on taking photos and showing to them.

And then a lady who was playing some instrument came and (maybe) scolded them. They went with her, away from me.

I just stood there and kept listening/watching the music and dance. After a while, maybe some 10 minutes later, the lady came to me and asked if I took photo of the kids. “Yes”, I said. She told me to not publish them in Facebook or anywhere in the internet. I told that I would not. I asked if they were her kids.

Yes, she was their mother. That was why she scolded them and took them away. Probably that is how all mothers are supposed to be! Children being too friendly with a stranger is not good, at least in cities.

Maybe you already know, but that was when I realized again that it is not a good idea to take a photo of whatever/whoever you feel friendly with. I had no purpose of taking their photos, I had a mobile in my hand, which I used to tell him that I did not speak French. I was just making fun and playing with them, taking their photos. I thanked the lady for telling me to not post the photo in the internet, and deleted all of them right in front of her.

Probably I would have posted one of his photos in this post now had the lady not told me to not do so.

“Thank you so much for telling”, I told her.

“That is how we keep learning!” I told myself.