Childhood

Toddler days…

~ Rishi ~ Leave a comment

There is a child within all of us. I have heard it often but got reminded about it quite strongly this week…

The last time I had a toddler in my arms was when I spent time with my niece earlier this year. But as it was during my cousin’s wedding, those moments came and went, not completely registering themselves.

This week however the experience was more absolute. We had my brother-in-law and his family over for a few days. His younger son, all of fifteen months, was the center of attraction.

I was meeting him for the second time. The first one was for a short while and he hadn’t started walking then. This time however, he was raring to go.

Having adjusted to the surroundings quickly, he was on the lookout for fun. And I, eager to make friends with him, started playing along. The next three days, as he spent time with us, I grabbed a lot of opportunities to become a child again.

It was amazing. Doing things not worrying about how it looked. Talking in a childish accent or playing kids games with him felt normal. And liberating!

It reminded me of the days I spent with my daughter when she was younger. How I would spend time with her doing things which only made sense to the two of us. How we would find joy in little things, not worried about others in the world around us.

It also reminded me of my own early childhood days. I don’t remember a whole lot of those moments but whenever I hear anecdotes about my childhood, those days feature prominently. Perhaps a reflection of how the memories of early days of our kids get imprinted in our minds.

My daughter, observing the fun I was having, commented that she wished I could be so with her too now. Her feelings touched me deep inside and brought out my guilt.

That guilt prompted a number of discussions around the memories we had when she was younger. Leaving us all laughing and reliving those days.

While I was able to assure her that I was as playful with her as she was observing me being, I also realised that in the flow of life, I have probably become too drab with her generally.

Time for me to change then. She is all of ten, so I still have time to do a lot of fun things with her. And hopefully create many more fun memories for her and us to relive later in life…

Dreams

~ Rishi ~ Leave a comment

It’s a fascinating word, encompassing thoughts that cross our mind. While mostly when we are asleep but for some even when we are awake!

But what do those thoughts tell us? What do they mean?

This has always been fascinating to me. Since childhood, I recall waking up and then recounting my dream(s) to see if there was something interesting hiding there.

Most of those dreams were worthless trinkets. Hallucinations about things I had done that day or in the recent past and which recurred for whatever reason.

But some were exemplary gems. My imagination running wild and taking me down the rabbit hole into unknown lands, making me meet interesting people, telling me great anecdotes, and making me laugh and cry. All while I was asleep.

I remember, after waking up from those gem dreams, I always had a flush feeling of having conquered something. For whatever reason…

Then slowly, as I grew up and entered adulthood, those dreams receded. There were some still which were interesting but none was as exemplary as before. It was as if the imagination was lost in the woods. Without a path back home.

I endured this phase in my life for almost 20 years. Initially in this phase, most of my dreams used to be about training horrors. After all, what do you expect a Gentleman Cadet training in the Indian Army to dream about! But post that phase, it was mostly work related or some fantasy that I was chasing as life changed colors from being single to being married to being a parent.

This long phase made me forget all those sojourns that used to happen in the private space between my ears. I almost resigned to the fact that I will continue to dream about the usual stuff only now.

Until a couple of years back…

Egged on by my daughters dreams and what she made me listen to on an everyday basis, I started remembering how I used to be in those days. I also started turning my creative wheels, writing regularly and thinking a lot about multiple things, in a way I hadn’t applied myself yet.

Perhaps both of these things combined to give me some of my power back. Maybe it was something else.

But I was elated when a few days back, I passed out in the dark of the night and my asleep mind took me down a rabbit hole I hadn’t visited in ages!

It was exhilarating to wake up and think about how the dream panned out. From whatever details I could recall, it did seem like some ride. Maybe not up to the standards of my childhood. But a start, nevertheless…