Some performers don’t like doing corporate events, saying, “I am a true artist — I shall not conform to your prototype of my artistry, etc.” Good for them. I have no such qualms. Before the lockdown, I would perform any event. You could call me to do an outdoor show in 48˚C heat in Agra for a group of arms dealers that sell guns to Colombian farmers and I will be there, as long as the full payment has been received. Because I have kids.
Each corporate show pays the yearly school fees for one of my two kids. I also loved these shows because I could take care of them while being in a five-star hotel away from them. Best of both worlds. Now I still do corporate shows, but they’re online. Last week, I did two Zoom shows in three hours and spent the next two hours homeschooling my kids. The work never ends. And now I can’t even pretend I’m out of network range.
Surprisingly, it is not so bad.
Earlier, I’d be home three days a week and spend a tonne of time running around parks, malls, the museum or the zoo with them — anything that would distract them from breaking furniture at home. Now I’m here seven days a week. And I’m really enjoying their company, even when they inadvertently insult me. Like the time my son saw hair on my arm and asked, “Papa, what is this?” I said, “ Beta , that’s hair.” He said, “Oh, it fell from your head?” Or when he suggested, “Papa, we should take all the sanitiser in the world and put it in volcanoes. The volcano explodes and Covid-19 is gone.”
I’m glad my kids are only five and three. Because I should not home-school anyone — I failed every subject in school, including art. Every day, for an hour, my son and I do an ‘assignment’: we spent all of last week finding the total of every number from 1 to 100. The answer is 5050. The joy on his face when we finished would outdo the face of scientists at CERN if they demystified dark matter. The three-year-old has finally figured out how to write ‘2’, and I feel she may be precisely my daughter.
We also play a lot. My wife is a genius at inventing activities. The dining table is transformed into a plane, and the kids are taking a trip to China (only OK to do that in imagination right now). Or they’re building homes like the three pigs. Or converting cardboard into rockets. Or potting plants to be like the protagonist in Jack and the Beanstalk . Versus my games that include throw ball, catch ball, hide ball and the show stealer, throw two balls, catch two balls, hide two balls (that sounds perverted).
My favourite quote by a famous yogi has been this: “The lockdown is a series of good days and bad hours.” That yogi was me, and I believe in myself. There are people suffering terribly across the world, and I cannot find reason to complain with all my privileges. My kids have made this lockdown fun — barring the rare times it has been overwhelming. Like when for Mothers’ Day, we sneakily made a nice card for my wife. Mainly, I made the card and my kids stuck glue on their hands and painted random robots. But we pretended it was their handiwork. I’m pretty sure that tomorrow, they will scam me the same way.
One of my favourite things was the start of a bedtime game called, “Ask me 10 Questions”, where I attempt to reward my son’s curiosity and remind myself of how interesting things are. The questions include:
“Snails are small, how do they carry that shell?”
“Do we die only when we turn 100?”
“How do paper planes fly?”
And my favourite question, “Why are we here?”
I still don’t know the answer to the last one, but currently, the lockdown is reminding me that ‘here’ is not that bad.
If you’d like to hire me for a corporate event to finance groceries for my kids, email pantonfirecomedy @gmail.com
