What are some of your special memories of childhood?
Playing hide and seek with friends?
Going for a ride with family every Sunday?
Eating that special dish for dinner on Fridays?
Winter and summer vacations with cousins?
Celebrating festivals with family and friends?
I think all of these and so much more!
Nothing else compares to the joy felt during the spring of life. What do you say?
How we spend our childhood in many ways forecasts our future as grown-ups, the kind of person we become. Yes, it makes us what we are in many ways. But life is about going forward, isn't it? There’s no reverse gear in life. Hence just a trip down memory lane through the alleyways of our heart and soul is what we have to be content with. But sometimes all the heart yearns for is a chance to in some way relive those moments again. It could be in any way possible.
Maybe that’s why we take vacations to our ancestral homes or visit our family. In some way these connect us to those elusive threads of sanity in the form of memories that make us feel warm and fuzzy inside. Because once we are grown-ups we see through the false sheath of life and that’s when those years gone by become even more precious. So we try, and try hard, to hold on to anything remotely associated with those wonderful and magical childhood days.
Today my heart aches for those special autumns spent in Shillong, a hill station where clouds floated through bed room windows. Yes, I grew up in such a place, in the abode of clouds. In my abode of clouds! There my autumns began with
Durga Puja. Thanking the Goddess for the year gone by, sporting new clothes, sampling some of the scrumptious dishes ever, enjoying special dance and song performances, carnivals and so much more. Memories woven around glee, colored in orange and golden hues, I gathered year after year at this very time. But sadly I had to leave all that behind for living life as a grown up.
Now as a working woman I’m at the mercy of my organization for leaves, for a chance to weave some more memories. And this year I’m stuck, unable to go home, forced to let this year’s
Puja pass by. So my heart aches this year, my friends, for who knows if there will be another year. Or, will there be a year when I’m able to really enjoy this festival again in the way it is meant to be enjoyed? Life is so unpredictable after all. So it tugs at my heart, this inability to actually celebrate the way I had always as a child.
Sometimes I feel the price we pay for being as adult is a little too much. It’s more of a penalty in my view. Of-course, it could just be my currently depressed state of mind that is painting this picture. But seriously tell me don’t you think we have to give up so much for being a responsible grown-up? I think I do!
Sometimes the urge to go back to being a child again is so strong that I wonder if anyone else feels the same. Tell me, do you? Or, is it just me and my frivolity!
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