Jai’s Worries

They say, worries start as you grow older. Jaiteg is going to turn 5 this April 11th. He is already worried. He is worried about the content of sugar in the foods that he eats.
It so happened that one day his didi and I were talking about the bad sugar- sugar that might kill if habitually taken in large amounts. And Jai was close by, he immediately shot a question, “does one die with sugar?” “Yes,” I said, “but only if you take too much of it. And it kills slowly. It’s not like it will kill one today”. But a child is a child. Everything else got awashed from his little head. The “killing nature of sugar” stayed back in his mind. He said, “Mama I have eaten sugar today. Will I die?” Oh dear dear. I wanted to hug him and tell him “maa sadkey, why would you die.” But I told him “no, you won't. Because you keep walking and running about so it gets burned by your body and it wont do you any harm”. But boy, he was worried. And the devil of a didi he has got, she said, “Yes Jai, the sugar is not good for you”(she can herself consume chocolates in wholesale if given the opportunity). Jai was upset, visibly upset. So he started to take extra precaution. That night, he took a stroll. It was so funny to watch him take a walk in the living room with his small legs while we dined. He was walking briskly to and fro - in an obvious effort to burn any kind of sugar that he might have in his system.
And this was not all.
He had overheard me telling Rasan that too much of salt, especially the one we consume with chips and packaged snacks, and the salt she likes to lick with her fingers after dipping the wet finger in the salt container, is bad. Here was another cause of worry for him.
This is all what happened bout 15 days back. Then onwards, he likes to make it doubly sure that the food does not contain either sugar or salt. He has stopped eating chocolates, samosas, chips, and, by God, every kind of junk because they might contain sugar or salt. He does not want cold drinks anymore. Even while he can see his didi or her friends and even his friends sipping away at the fizzy drinks, he makes no show of any greed. Last weekend, when I offered him some soda drink – just so the paneer pakoda he ate could be digested easily, his response was very grown up. “I don’t take any junk food, tuhanoo pata ee ai na.”
If, by chance, he has no option but to consume sugar, he makes sure that it is God's sugar (natural sugar) and not insaan wali cheeni. He always want to know if the salt contained in what he is eating is in moderate amounts or is too much.

My tragedy is that I cannot laugh, for fear that it might make him feel he is not being taken seriously. I know he will grow out of it. But it makes me feel good that he is watching everything that goes into his mouth.