On a train yesterday, a small child, wearing the make-up of “Hanuman”, accompanied his father with a “manjeera” (a percussion instrument). The father walked through the passage singing his music and the child trailed behind him asking people for alms. His manjeera was filled with coins but no notes yet. One of the gentlemen took out a 10 rupee note and put it inside. Without being prompted, the child began counting coins from his manjeera and tried to hand over a significant part of the 10 rupees back as change. The innocence of that gesture and his expression brought a smile to all our faces. When the old man, refused to accept his change, the child automatically gestured towards all of us with a questioning look in his eyes, as if to say, “So this is from all of you?” The old man nodded, and with a disarming honesty, the child walked away without asking anyone else for money. The child’s understanding of honor, was far superior to many people I know. I wondered if I had as much honor left...as the child in us.
The incident was so rankling, it triggered a series of memories...of children...and the pure simplicity of their approach to life. In another place, many years ago, I was helping a class 5 child (quite a brilliant class 5 child at that), prepare for his examinations. In the course of things, he asked me the meaning of the word Agoraphobia. I could see the cheeky sparkle in his eyes. The question was his response to my pedantic style, a result of my assumed superiority. When I couldn’t answer, he went on to explain it meant “fear of open spaces”. The importance of that incident had yet to dawn on me, when I appeared for the XAT, a very competitive examination for MBA entrance, a week later. Staring back at me from one of the pages was that same word…”Agoraphobia”. Thanks to that little child’s cheek, I had an unfair advantage in an examination where one mark means life and death. The child’s knowledge was better than mine. Who knows what else I might have learned, had I respected the child in us?
A nephew of one of my umpteen crushes found himself and his family entering a temple in the Himalayas. The temple belonged to a small religious community, which forbids people from anyone outside the community to enter the temple. The child asked his mother, “Why are those people standing outside”. The mother explained, “Because they are not the same as us, God does not want them to come inside the temple”. The child’s response was pretty simple, “When I go and meet God, I’ll strike against him with my friends. How can he not let some people not enter his temple?” I remember listening to the story...and wondering, how different our societies could have been, had we listened to the child in us?
I was watching my sister in law, feeding my nephew. The young fellow had only just learned to crawl and was giving her a horrid time. And to add insult to injury, he did it all with a delighted giggle. Every time, she reached his open mouth with a spoon, he would close it shut and refuse to open it. The moment she gave up, he would crawl to a distant corner of the room, pick something up off of the ground and play with it, until eventually, he’d put it in his mouth. My sister-in-law would then run and wrestle his mouth open to deny him his prize. In exasperation, she screamed “Kya bevakoof hai, jo cheez mooh me daalni chahiye tab to mooh band kar leta hai, aur jo cheez nahin daalni chahiye, use kha jaata hai!! (What he should eat, he shuts his mouth to and then he’ll start putting all kinds of dirt in his mouth!)” I'd understand flight the significance of this moment years later when I struck up a conversation with child psychologist, years later, on a random flight. Turns out, the nature has taught the child to resist anything happening to him by force as a part of his survival kit. Which is why, when we try and force food into a child’s mouth, even if he is hungry there is a chance he’d resist it. It’s just his way of staying safe. On the other hand, his mechanism of perceiving his surroundings is the exact opposite. A child, when he notices an object of curiosity, uses all his sense to comprehend that object. So he would touch it, play with it, smell it, see it and finally…put it in his mouth to taste it. Here too, the nature has given the child his defenses. He would not for example try a shiny or bright colored object as easily as the opposite.
So it wasn't really the child who was being ignorant or foolish when he resisted force-fed food or tried eating everything that came his way. The child was merely telling his mother all along, what he thought was fun doing. The conventions of bringing up a child meant that mother simply failed to use her instincts and read him. The child’s instincts were far stronger than the grown up mother.
Maybe next time I'd have the brains to slow down...and listen to the child in us.
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