June 02, 2007

Watching my youngest sister, Rida, develop for some years, I cannot help thinking that her childhood has not been as ‘busy’ or as adventurous as ours. Now that she is around 12 years of age, she has not done lots of things we did when we were kids.

For example, we played a lot during our summer vacation. There were endless rounds to nani’s home, where there were lots of other kids to play with. The fun would be electric and never-ending. Because schools were closed there was no concept of waiting all the week for Saturday to come. We went whenever the car honked at our doorstep. Or, if there wasn’t a car honking around, there was always a rickshaw around. That good old rickshaw whose very future is now at stake due to environmental concerns.

Because nani’s home was huge by all standards, modern or ancient, we could run around, play any game we liked, and keep the parrots behind the bars for few bucks. Once, I and my cousin, Suffian, trapped our un-suspecting American cousin, Naureen, in the cage of the Australian birds. That was very amusing. I still can recall that moment with a lot of clarity. None of these things have been experienced by my sister and our cousins of her age-group. Now they stay at home and watch TV or read books over and over again. Nani is there no more, only the house, and it has only a few kids; most of us have now grown up.

Modern city kids also miss the fun of climbing trees, gathering flowers (I am not talking about the select few who’ve got them) and a traditional way of life, like an endless round of discussions revolving around some person, generally found in school, on a dadi ka jhoola. Nor do I find kids as innocent as we were. Kids, I think, have always been innocent. This is the only period in human history that kids have ceased to be innocent. And that’s very sad indeed. Let me thank the non-sense soap operas, so very popular in our (generally boring) households. They have really provided a sort of entertainment, which we as kids, got only for few hours per week; and only when we had grown up considerably.

And all of us, who’ve grown up in cities, missed out on a pollution-free atmosphere of small towns and hamlets. We have seriously missed out on the perennial streams of water, the joy of eating directly from the fruit tree; and we have missed, above all, the stunning wild life that exists quietly in our now-vanishing forests, grasslands, and mountains.

All this I say from the hindsight after spending endless hours (after growing up) in forests, hidden hamlets and mountains. I have found those children, extremely innocent and devoid of any pre-conceived notions about life. They are not aware of the complexities of life; they are not sure what it means to be living amidst the jungle of concrete or sit for hours on end in front of the idiot box.

Of course, I don’t suggest that you stop watching TV altogether. But you need to cut down on the time you watch it or play video games. Too much of viewing the screen makes the mind dumb, eyes bulge (due to extra tension) and makes you a somewhat boring person. The best minds at school, at least in my time, were those who watched less TV and concentrated on constructive activities like educating themselves about wildlife, playing outdoor games, reading books apart from what was prescribed in school. As an example, the genius at my school was the one who, along with his sister, would build up an entire colony from building blocks. I, during my ‘stretched’ childhood, built entire cities and even countries out of chart paper; I built airplanes out of shoe-boxes, which would be filled up with all sorts of things like the food (cut out from chart paper) and the airhostess (made from the sponge and painted with markers). These activities could easily take up my whole day, even two if my mother was relenting that day. And yet, I wouldn’t be quite satisfied; I wanted to do more, to design more to achieve more targets. And my creativity just sky-rocketed. Nothing ever stopped me. And, of course, I kept a bird or two. You know, birds and animals can teach you a lot about life, if only you are willing to learn.

But we should remember that childhood for many is not fun. There are kids on the streets mopping your windscreen, asking for alms, washing your dishes, as you play inside. But we can at least try to do something, first for ourselves and then for others. You can, for instance, help your massi’s kid with some easy books; if you are very generous you can ask your father to at least support one poor kid and send him/her to school.

Helping others is a constant joy, something that would last longer than your childhood. For sure!