My Childhood Days

My daughter often asks me such questions that put me in a state of being that requires some recollections either from my past or some mental exercises based on personal thoughts,analysis or imagination.

 One day she asked me- Father, how were your childhood days? 

The answer to this seemingly easy question was rather difficult for me. Nevertheless it was worth attempting as it gave me moments to relive my past with amusement and interest of self-exploration.

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 It provided me an opportunity to look back into my past to the extent I could stretch my memory upto the period almost four and half decades ago.

I said to her that my childhood days were full of fun,if not comfort. It was so because ‘fun’ didn't require much of money while ‘creature comfort’ does. 

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I told her that how in a mango orchard popularly called ‘Shanti Babu Gacchi’ just in front of my modest house I along with other boys of my age would play ‘Gulli Danda’ for hours in the afternoon while most of elderly people used to stay at home to escape scorching heat of the Sun. 

I further said to her - You may not believe that the market complex that you see just opposite our house in Saharsa was once the same “Shanti Babu Gacchi ''sprawling in acres; it is now no more.

Now the place doesn't have even an iota of the trace of an orchard.

          Thanks to the forces that support the views- “Don’t leave any property in a state that doesn't pay. Either sell it or convert it or transform it into something that makes it money yielding on a perpetual basis.

It's true that our forefathers were not that much calculative or driven by the urge which respects money while disrespecting nature, environment and of course social relations. 

For them 'commercial concerns' were not the everything in their lives.

After detouring myself from the above, I continued-You would hardly believe it as you in Most of us of that age didn't have a cricket Bat Ball. Only a fortunate few did have ones. 

I told her-Not to speak of color TV, I like most of the boys of my age had not even black and white TV set in their homes.

 No mobile, no internet, no social media, no laptop, no multiplex, no web series, no remix, no IPL(only test matches), no Mall etc. what you people are badly used to such an extent that you imagine how life would have been those days without such gadgets.

In our childhood days only cinema halls were there where we people, after accumulation of some pocket money, would go only for being able to sit in the front row of the hall to watch a movie and often engage in boisterous rivelling awkwardly at the scene when a villain was thrashed by the ‘hero’ of the movie.

Also,sometimes we would go to the cinema halls just to get a  glimpse of some posters and placards displayed in the showcase of the Cinema Hall Premises. 

What a passion!

How ridiculous it sounds today to find out that we were the ones who have done like this- I admitted it before her. 

Perhaps no child of your time will ever do this that way what we people did.

 So we were less mature in comparison to the present days’ children- I unhesitatingly accepted this fact.

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 On every occasion of Holi(s) or Durgapuja(s) my parents could not afford to let us buy new clothes- I remember. Even then we enjoyed the festival without too much of a feeling that we were the ones whose parents weren't well off. Even then we enjoyed it in full without money in our hands. 

    I said to her that the flights you often board in the course of your travels was for me and for many like us ‘something beyond our reach’ that times in more ways and sense than one. Whenever I would hear the guzzling sound of a flying plane I, along with my peers, would rush to my 'aangan' or the open space of any place so that I could enjoy the ‘sight’ of a flying plane!

 I continued- my childhood days were not full of competition,at least in the way the children of these days compete with one another in terms of showing off their shoes, watches,clothes, apparel and trinkets etc. 

We were more or less content with a few pants and shirts. We didn't mind having only a single pair of shoes or even without the latter or having a pair of chappals instead.

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On top of it, I told her-I would like to share with you. Parents of those days had to arrange for payment of examination fees with a certain amount of difficulty. 

In our times parents were hard put to let us buy all the books in one go. We would purchase them one by one in view of less money at any particular point of time.

 To my great dislike, many students of any class would sell their so-called read-out used books at half price after they passed the examination.

 But I never resorted to that practice and would give out those books free to ones who were in need of these books.

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 To put it short,my childhood days were neither full of facilities nor devoid of happiness due to sheer lack of the former.

 I stopped thereafter. 

R.R.Prabhakar.

29.03.2024.