That Childhood, This Youth

The best memories that we carry are not of the loved ones, whom we met when our harmones erupted. Neither are they of the recent happy times we spent with our families. No matter how good these recent memories were but they aren't capable of being imprinted on the palate of the skull for a lifetime. What's imprinted there for this age are the happy days of our childhood.

When I was a child, some six years old, I was excited and jubilant. I ran across corridors, slided down handrails on staircases with my legs hanging both sides. I kicked stagnant water-pools and ran across the flow of running streams with my shoes on. I climbed benches and jumped off them, and hunted for bird's nests in small trees. I troubled puppies and patted calfs. I smelled my stinking socks and fought with pillows. Despite repeated warnings I wiped my hands on curtains and turned them black with fungi. I spun the front wheel of a parked scooter and saw the shift of digits in the odometer. Then I spun it reverse and applied brakes with both hands.

When I turned around ten, I was untamable. I jumped from high floors and dodged around the house. I spent my days in orchards eating mangoes and papayas. In monsoons I bathed naked in the open showers. When it rained heavily I stood under a draining shower from the roof top, It hit me on the skull and splattered everywhere. I made paperboats and sailed them in "kucchi-nahers" (irrigation-streams). If not a paperboat then a banana flower, with stones in it, it sailed across the little rapids. I played "fotta", that is what we called football then and we did that "suck-it", "suck-it" loud and bold whenever we scored a goal. We never knew what that meant, but there was fun in beating the hands across the genitals. It was abusive but who cared.

When I was twelve, I remember I used to skate on the mall road. I used to dash across the smooth bitumen infront of the Alka-Hotel in Nainital. I used to run up the steep climbs, and dash down in flying steps. I used to tease monkeys and langurs, and pelt stray dogs. I used to randomly handshake with pedestrians and ask for shelter under any umbrella. I shoplifted foodstuff in a gang of three, we ate upto our fills and threw the rest. We shoplifted from our acquaintances, and also offered them from the same. We saved our pocket money for video-games and Chacha-Chaudhary comics. We played Mario and Tekken-3, and returned home with a pocketfull of coins. If some money was saved, we went to Mamu Kabadi's second hand book store and bought story-books and comics.

Things changed in high school, we had to act grown-ups, but I was still a child. I was still a fidgeting insect, who couldn't stay stable on a leaf-top. Innumerable crushes happened and failed, yet neither the determination nor the stamina failed. Studies was a hell of a load, and boards were one big stone to overturn. All idiot friends started mugging books and schedules cut short our meetings. Boards came and passed, and along with them took away the free spirits of our youth.

Next was the year of science studies, considered even tougher. The group of many fragmanted and dispersed. Student got busy with their grade card improvement, and three tuitions a day. We often crossed each other while commuting. But, no matter how hard or fast life was, stupidity hadn't given off us. We were ballastic, humorous and idiots. We rang door bells at four in the morning and ran away, we punctured girls' bicycles outside tuitions and offered sympathy to walk with them. We spent nights planning how to study tomorrow and went off to roam around the next day. We burned volatile compounds in chemistry labs and hanged vernier callipers on our noses. We made paper tails and stuck "kick me" behind friends and gave them nice beatings. We celebrated birthdays with "ho-halla" and rode our bicycles on one tyre.

We rode across the streets with our horns buzzing. We rode with our heads trimmed in Ghazni styles, and often asked each other, if beer could really make us fat? If smoking did really kill? Or if "she" was indeed characterless? We raced on the busy "Kaladungi-road" and often dodged policemen. We studied to pass not score, and we promised heaven to girls just for a little walk.

If something was best, it was the free spirits we had. The untamable energy that we carried in us, and the radiating confidence within us. But ask me what happened to it. And I would say-

"THE WORLD TELLS ME THAT I HAVE NOW GROWN UP."

I am 24.
I am Graduated.
I am (or rather as everyone says, I SHOULD BE) in hunt of a career to settle down for lifetime.
I SHOULD LOOK for SECURITY.

But...

...there is a DREAM. A dream that I am carrying with me. A dream that says I am capable of an even better life (ONLY IF it works).

"ONLY IF it works," this is what I am repeatedly told.
*Of couse it will, I have that faith. I have that intuition. If it doesn't, I'll make it work.*

"What if it doesn't?"
*Why won't it?*

"Think about it."
*I think ABOUT it every moment of the day*

"Don't you see all your cousins have settled?"
*Unfortunately because they hadn't identified their calling of the self.*

"God knows what will happen to you."
*Exactly*

"You have an education loan to settle."
*God hasn't been so unkind till date, I hope he has some plans.*

There are innumerable questions now that haunt me, that pierce every thought of mine and reminds me of my non-happening existence. I wish I could alter the days and live my life carefree and wild once again. I wish I could bath under the draining sky on my rooftop, or ride a biclye from Mussoorie to Dehradun. I wish I could do this, and that. But the world tells me I have GROWN UP.

A little confession:

Within me there is this voice thay says, wrongs in life are not meant for me. I will sail through all hard times and waves, but there will come a time of true testing. I wish I survive that. I wish may god be with me to steer me across with his torch, for past that dark tunnel, I see, there is a WONDERLAND.

A little prayer:

"सद्बुद्धि देना सरस्वती के मैं भी कुछ कर दिखलाऊँ, उन हज़ारों उम्मीदों पे मैं भी खरा उतर पाऊँ। हिम्मत देना बजरंगी के मंजिल मैं भी छु आऊँ, बीच रस्ते साँसें छोड़ ना मैं चला जाऊँ।"