goldenboy

What is it about children that make our hearts go out to them? Just Nature down to her dirty tricks again for the survival of the species? Or something deeper?

My close and childhood friend Naresh became a proud father of a baby boy a year ago. When I met the baby, it was like magic. A bundle of joy on two little legs, that did everything to get your attention and love. Naresh turned 28 too this year, and when I look at him with his baby, I see the love that silently binds two people- a father and his son, a doting father and a loving son.

Sachin, another close friend and confidant, has a nephew Rahul. He is only 13 or so, quiet, shy, gentle – as I was when I was 13. Whenever I visit Sachin, I feel like a serious guardian in the company of this kid, as a gentle care and attachment takes me in. Then I feel interested in what he is studying, what he has to say, what subjects he will choose in his college. This is one feeling which is not rehearsed, not learnt, but comes naturally when a person comes of a certain age, an age when he could be a father himself. And in this feeling of guardianship and affection, lies something deeper… something beyond societal relationship of father-son, something that is to do with the spirit more than the human heart.

-x-

Children are everything that adults are not. Carefree, intelligent (in spirit), happy, friendly- people who still retain the spontaneity of an emotion called love. When one sees a kid, he is seeing an untainted form of humanity itself- man who has not lost himself to distrust, mind-chatter, hate and superficiality. There is something about children that makes us want to reach out and protect them, perhaps it’s their innocence that we value, which we treasure. An innocence that knows to love and trust.