Bring Out The Child In You…

There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again.

Read the above somewhere recently and it got me thinking. How I would love to relive my childhood.. feel the wind in my air as I run away from the big neighborhood dog, make mischievous faces as I play a prank on my best friend, run to greet my dad on the door when he comes back from work and sit on his lap, listening to his boiler stories, play ‘gully football’ with my buddies… What I would give to get the carefree days back.

When we are children, we always want to grow up and act as grown-ups do. We expect our parents to treat us as adults the moment we turn 13, not realizing that when we are 23, we would want to be the child again. It is a classic case of  “The grass is always greener on the other side”, except you do not have the chance to keep jumping between the 2 sides.  Once you are 15 (considering how fast kids are growing up these days, thanks to technology and its ways), you are expected to behave a certain way and if you don’t, you are an outcast!

In my days, our grown-up age was 18.. and no I am not ancient.. but I think I managed to keep and enjoy my childhood till the ripe age of 18. Not a care in the world… Never had to worry about where the money came from, where the veggies came from, how the house ran, investments..err..what?, how the holiday was planned, how the house ran… nothing! The only thing that I had to worry about was doing my homework on time.

The only thing I had to worry about was eat my food. And even if I did falter, the only thing that happened was, my mom yelled at me. There was no catastrophic, life-altering disaster that happened. In the end, mom used to just come and hug me and the world would be a better place again. Oh! what I would give to be a child again.

Remember when you came back home running from the school bus, with your mother waiting at the door to receive you… Remember when you used to dump the school bag at the entrance and run to the TV to catch that cartoon or Nikhil Chinappa on MTV Select coz that is the only time you can watch TV… Remember when your mom ran behind you, so that you can at least take your daily dose of greens inside your mouth and chew… Remember when you would keep looking at the clock for it to be 5PM, so you can wear your shoes and run outside to play with your buddies… Remember when it turned 7PM and your mother called for you to come home and you said,  “5 more minutes Mummy, please” … Remember when you saw your dad on the scooter/car returning from work, you would chase him and greet him at the door, jump on his lap and vie for his attention…Remember when the only talks that happened at the dinner table was how you made it to the football/cricket team and how your teacher gave you an A+…. Remember when your mom would put you to bed at 10PM and you would crib, telling yourself, “when I am older, I will do what I want and sleep when I want and watch as much TV as I want”…

Well honey, you are all grown-up now. Are you enjoying your late nights, your mindless TV? I am not.. well that is not entirely true.. I am.. very much… but sometimes the child-Tanu, inside me, speaks in her squeaky tone, telling me to be carefree again. I so wanna listen to her, follow her and be that carefree, happy-go-lucky, chirpy ME again.

I wanna live with my parents forever and not worry about where the food came from. I wanna have my mother to tuck me to bed. I want my dad to teach me maths. I want my sister to do all the whisper gossip when everyone has gone to bed and the lights are out. I want to play ‘London statue’ with my friends on the street. I want to dirty my clothes in mud and come home and not worry about how to get it clean. I want to LIVE.

I wanna keep the child-Tanu, in me, always alive. I wanna always be that child, who I loved…and miss sometimes now.

Childhood is a Short Season… But I it to Last Forever…