Childhood on the other side of adulthood

Every adult looks back at their childhood as a time of innocence, purity, and happiness. Everyone feels a yearning to return to it. Other than the selective memory-bias, which erases unpleasant experiences and keeps the happy ones, and hence makes our past life appear better than it truly was — what really lies at the heart of this appeal of childhood?

When I look back on my childhood, various images flash by in my mind: playing with my friends in the vast fields near Samanwaypalli; sitting down beside the small window of our Dangalpara house during the rainy days; waiting eagerly in certain afternoons for the fortnightly children’s magazine Anadamela to arrive; sitting on a madur with my father on the roof at night during those frequent power-cuts while he sang one song after another.

Regardless of the external circumstances, everything felt idyllic. The fact that our rented house in Samanwaypalli just had one small room where four of us had to live, sleep, and cook made no difference. Rather, what mattered was our landlord had three children of our age, and we could run around the house and play. My parents didn’t have much money, but I had access to the vast fields outside, and plenty of boys of my age from nearby houses. I was rich.

When we returned to our family house in Dangalpara, the size of our room didn’t change. It was still a very small room and my mother still had to cook inside that room. In spite of that, my best memories are from that house. Regardless of the size of the room, I could be immersed reading a story book sitting on the bed, or watch the rain from the tiny window.

Every child, untainted by the world, has in him to find joy in the smallest things: in the sunrays coming through the window in a winter afternoon, in the fierce breeze hitting his face during a train journey, in getting together with other children of the house when studies are suspended due to a power-cut, in playing with friends with a paper ball and a chappal as an improvised bat, in returning home together after a school day.

As an adult, in the middle of our hectic days, endless striving, worldly pursuits, we sometimes feel this unexplained yearning to return to those simple joys of life: sometimes our childhood calls us during a dream, sometimes during the dead of night when everything is silent, or sometimes when we are alone by a window during a rainy day. In such times, we vaguely remember something that we left behind — which we can fleetingly feel but cannot any more touch.

Where did we lose that version of ourselves who could find joy in everything, who didn’t have any worldly needs, who could be completely immersed in many activities?

For me, personally, it happened imperceptibly, stealthily. After my tenth standard, when I automatically chose to study science and sit for engineering entrances, I took the first step towards becoming an adult, becoming ordinary. My first worldly decision was not even a decision — it felt like a natural course of action; after all, every one of my friends, and everyone who was any good at studies chose that path — how could I be different?

For the first time in my life, I led a compromised life — I didn’t enjoy learning, and overall didn’t like the IIT experience. New needs were born: I desperately needed to reverse this mistake. The cycle of adult life had begun.

I studied for CAT and went to IIM-A but I didn’t learn from my mistake. After finishing my MBA, I wanted to become an investment banker. Why? Because it sounded good, and because most of my friends — the toppers of the class — all wanted to become one. It sounds hilarious now, but I even chose a niche for myself within the broader investment banking work: I wanted to be a bond-trader.

Again, I was miserable during my short investment banking career in Mumbai, and spent the year desperately trying to reverse this mistake. By sheer luck, I then got into a role that worked for me. I didn’t choose it — it just happened to come my way. For a while, I did well and I almost had my childlike excitement towards back — this time directed towards work.

But on the personal front, I kept on making mistakes of the similar nature. World tells you to marry and have kids, and I didn’t give it a second thought — those steps seemed like the most natural steps one takes after a few years into a job. Very soon, my world became small: like all modern men, it became limited to my family. I did the routine things like going out with my wife to shopping malls to buy grocery, and playing with my daughter after returning from office.

So this is the way the world gnaws at you. It comes at you stealthily: when myths devour you, they don’t advertise themselves as myths. They pose as the most natural courses of action. And within a few decades, the pure child changes into a contaminated adult, who wants to increase his bank balance, wants to get a better designation, wants to do better than his batchmates, wants to get his child admitted to the best school, wants to live at a fashionable address, wants to post foreign vacation photos on social media, and wants to buy an expensive car.

At the altar of those so-called ambitions, the true ambition of life — to enjoy every moment, to be immersed in every activity, and hence to realise one’s full potential — is lost. I have finally realized that people who develop those worldly ambitions actually sell themselves short — they are the ambitionless ones, because life offers us far greater prizes than those small dreams.

So what must one do to remain a child? Unfortunately, ‘remaining’ a child is not an option. The pure childhood, that everyone is endowed with, will inevitably be lost when one comes into contact with the adult world of needs and pursuits. The childhood that you cannot lose is the one that is on the other side of adulthood.

There are some people who could indeed return to a childhood on the other side of adulthood: for example, authors like Rabindranath or Sunil Gangopadhyay who wrote until the very last day of their lives rather than trying to earn more money, fame, or power. They resisted the worldly pursuits and continued to do what they loved to do. However, even people like them must have gone through a phase where worldly pursuits shackled them for a while, but they actively wanted to resist it, scrub it off, purify themselves, and return to their purer selves. A lot of Rabindaranath’s songs actually talk about this struggle of his.

Once you are aware of how myths can imprison you, and once you can strike at the root of it — worldly needs and ego — then they lose their power over you. They cannot stealthily sneak back upon you any more. Then there is a possibility of returning to a purer self, which is as joyful and pure as our first childhood, but possibly more permanent, to the extent anything in this world is permanent.

I myself am still far from it — but if there is any ambition that I have in life, it is that.

This children’s Day, I wish that, one day, far into your adulthood, you too can make this journey of returning home.