The golden time, the good ol' days, a carefree world, unlimited fun...No, I am not talking about a sequel to the many prequels of 'Golmaal'... I am talking about childhood. Ah! to think of a world in which we are always taken care of... No bills or deadlines, no EMIs and for sure no heart-breaks, where the biggest worry in life is who is going to pounce on the last piece of candy at home...All this and more constitute the proverbial ‘age of innocence’. It seems like 'just yesterday’. A fond place in the golden casket of the memory lane. Where time was still but we were not.
The day began with going to school, meeting up with friends, continued with finishing the dreaded homework which was often a permission slip to go out and play!
To top this, were the diligent ‘rules’ set by our parents and if we belonged to the era of joint families, the entire brigade of ‘grown-ups’. The immutable laws included the time to wake up, set number of hours for homework, play, friends, T.V. and even sleep! Phew! At the age of 5, I didn’t know that this is going to be the cycle of my life for the next 10 years! And here I am, still reminiscing this time and calling it the most convivial time of my life! If I am successful, you are too!
Why does this seemingly agonizing time, full of rules and regulations seem so desirable and easy? Do we hate our adult lives? Nah! Is it the helplessness of not being able to go back in time and do all those things we think we should have? Was it the fun in breaking and sneaking past those rules? Maybe. As kids all we wanted was the love minus the punishments that we definitely got and how! We wanted to be 'independent’. Remember the 'Dhara’ advertisement in which the adorable kid is angry with everyone at home and is at the train station ready to 'leave the house’?
Back then, we had it all figured out. 'I want to become a doctor, lawyer, teacher, etc., get married and maybe have kids’. We didn’t think ‘what after that’. And I think now is the time to do that. We crossed the bridge, made it to the ‘other side’. We wanted to grow up and here we are. Time to start after the middle. Time for us to make the rules for the kids in our lives, which they will break! I think this is what is called ‘the circle of life’?
All the kids I see today are smart, intelligent, zealous and more. At the age of 6 they can teach you a few moves of chess! I think we were still learning spellings back then. All I want to tell them (and their over-competitive parents) is, just be kids for a while. Leave the laptops for the grown-ups and enjoy the sun! Get your feet dirty and your have mom go nuts over the same. Don’t let your ‘smart’ overshadow your ‘sweet’. Don’t be in a hurry to zoom past to the ‘age of experience’. Revel in the ‘age of innocence’ for a while. A little secret of life, growing up is inevitable! hush-hush ;)
Urooj Fathima
No comments:
Post a Comment