Every year, children’s day is celebrated on 14th November to celebrate the birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru in India. Nehru was an iconoclast, a man who lived decades ahead of his times. It is befitting him to associate his birthday with hope for the future- the children of India. Children go to school in wonderful colour dresses for once shedding their dreary uniforms. They sing, dance, play and eat sweets at school. They fondly remember Chacha Nehru. Then they all get back to school and their routine the next day only to be children next year. It is just one day a year when they are allowed to be themselves.
In the hyper-realist view of life, we always find practical difficulties to be ourselves and be peaceful. In our race against time, we will not let our children stand and stare. We will not let them dream and giggle over nothings, to fall asleep and yawn loudly, drag their feet and splash in the puddle. We will not let them find their colours; we even deny that they have wings. They are for us our own extension, our future, our anxiety personified and sometimes our perpetual regrets too. I am not generalising; I have been fortunate to be born to two wonderful human-beings myself. But I want to stop, pause and remind us that often we leave our children to the company of loneliness and neglect. The big issues are too hard to miss- we do have poverty, child abuse and child labour. These are problems that loom like a dark cloud fogging our future like an ominous premonition. But here in the space of a few words, I want to focus on small things.
Small things are always easily missed- like the sadness and emptiness in a child’s eye, its silent scream for attention. I do not know how many of us have ever observed the gradual disappearance of the blossom and the butterfly in our child, the metamorphosis of our fluttering butterfly into an unbreakable façade- the process of dreams freezing, hopes vanishing and the coming of a stony silence between us. We give our children a good second look, when it is too late and irreversible and wonder whatever happened to that little bundle of joy.
Children are not born, they are brought into the world. They are joyful beings, it is sadness that takes some education. They arrive in the spring and look around the world in great awe, with great expectations. They smile and laugh for no reason, their tinkling laughter is brought to us to shake us out of our own stupor and see our life in a new light. They are the blossoms that bring the angels back and by angels I mean the human capacity to believe in irrational, impossible things; to be mad once again! The purity of a child’s thought is the beginning of all poetry. I believe whenever Man has done great things, it is only when he went back to the beginning and captured an image or a thought in all its purity and thought as if he were a child.
It is heart-breaking to see a drooping flower about to disappear and a butterfly about to die. I have only seen it too many times to forget. This November 14th, can we all celebrate Children’s day? Can we all celebrate the child in us? Will it be too much if I ask you to remember the happiest thought as a child and find the old chord and play the music once again where you left? It may be hard, but it is worth a try. And all those who are blessed with your little angels, do take care of them. They are the only blossoms and butterflies of this lonely planet...
Posted by Deepa Kylasam Iyer
Source: Beyond The Obvious
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