Looking through the photos of Bablu’s baby days I noticed that many of them are of him being introduced to some kind of food and of some that he discovered all on his own and which became his long term favorites – particularly his toes.
Bablu was breastfed most of his first year. Padmaja introduced him to cereals when he was about 6 months old. These photographs were taken the day he was first introduced to this new gooey stuff…
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Bablu seemed to like this change of taste and look forward to his cereal. Mamli liked to feed him whenever she could, which wasn’t often. She was in class 1 by then and had full day school. Her homework load had also increased and she had little free time.
Bablu introduced himself to the next new taste all by himself and he loved it so much that he couldn’t get enough 
The taste of a plastic toy! Particularly the ones that parents thought were dirty and should be nowhere near a baby, let alone in his mouth…
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Next came water – filtered, ionized, boiled. Maybe I can just say Aqua Guarded and then boiled.
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Then one day I noticed that Bablu had developed a taste for a new taste – Bablu. Or rather his finders and toes. For about 2 months his toes and their taste fascinated him. He sucked his big toes till they were pinker than the rest of him. I think unlike most kids he preferred his big toes to his thumb.
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One evening in mid August 2004, we were enjoying some corn on the cob. American sweet cord to be exact. I had visited the Erragadda Rythu Bazar that morning and picked up some corn for an evening snack. Mamli preferred them boiled rather than roasted and that is the way we have had our corn for the last few years.
Anyway, we all had our corn cobs and were munching away much to Bablu’s curiosity. Bablu was in Padmaja’s lap and kept looking at each of us in turn, following the movement of the corn from the plates to our mouths. On an impulse Padmaja offered him her corn and Bablu could not resist sucking at the cob. The salt in the corn must have come as a total surprise, the first time he tasted salt in his life!
After the first suck he latched on to the corn cob and refused to let go. He didn’t have any teeth but since the corn had been boiled with salt he just sucked the salty water mixed with slightly mashed corn.
It seems the taste was welcome. Bablu still loves corn. Boiled of course. And popped.
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