A road to the mind of young child goes to the time when milky teeth still hung, waiting to separate out, ending the pain and convert into a gift by the tooth fairy. When every stranger seemed to be a friend and when friendship was not defined by price tags, when the best amusement was to watch the cars going by spilling the mud from the potholes on the road, when fun was running around in a park playing lock and key, when thrill was the speed of ‘great stone slide’, when the only thing that worried us was a ghost in the dark, when all the tears shed were rewarded by love of our close ones, when the fight was only for a remote of the TV for a cartoon show, when the mind was not laden with the actualities of life, I dreamt. I dreamt of the skies, of the water, of the greens, of the blues. I imagined myself as a grown up, with a smile on the face, with all the worldly achievements in pocket, with all the then luxuries I could imagine of and with all the love and happiness that anyone can possess. My mind showed myself doing the best of the best things for my loved ones.
As I grew up, I realized that those were just wishes in the darkness and wishes don’t come true. I had to specify my dreams as per the surroundings. People made me believe that this is real life, where dreams don’t survive and I have to leave them.
Then I joined engineering to save up whatever was left of them. Irony is that every year lakhs of engineers come out carrying certificates of their so called four years of technical experience, running behind the jobs given to them. Some get it, some don’t. It is like the Darwin’s theory of evolution. Only the best survive.
The life, the happiness and the love are still there, but they are all forged into a very superficial form. Everything becomes different than what it appears, and yet everything required appearances to survive.
The remains of that child still dream. But they dream of his past and think, ‘life figured out to be so different than he expected.’
