Friday, January 16, 2009

The true smiles

It's been a fortnight long I had been to the home for children. Thought I would visit them without fail this off day. It's always fun being among children. They don't have pretensions. Their love is genuine and you feel like a bird when you are amidst them. You become a child again. It was not surprising to see them sing a song from a latest movie. Kids nowadays learn everything very fast. Be it movies or lessons. They are really smart.
Avudai, a special child, started becoming very close to me nowadays. Think she had started identifying me after my frequent visits. She even hugs and kisses now.

Was trying to tell them some stories. But, was ashamed to find myself struggling to recall the stories my teachers and parents taught me. When I was a kid my grandparents used to tell me stories from epics. They would have a moral at the end. The story-telling session would be very interesting. We would sit in the terrace in the moonlight. I would be sitting on the lap of my mother or grandmother. Feeding the rasam satham, my mother used to tell stories of crows, foxes and even Krishna or Rama. Though dozing, I found them very interesting. Those days there were no cartoon network or pogo channels. We children had to depend on elders to hear some larger than life stories. Doordarshan was the only solace then. We waited for sundays to watch He man or malgudi days.

With each generation passing, children have become cleverer and smarter. They now know what a local body means, the difference between Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, what olympics and oscars mean, how rockets are send to moon and on what issue India and Pakistan are fighting over. They can even understand the value of emotions, trust and love. Children are like clay balls. Moulding them in a right way is our duty. And once it is done, you never know the heights they would reach and the success stories they would create.