How life changes. How we let it change us. How it wipes our identity slowly and gradually. How we let it take charge. How we become a different human being altogether. How we become someone we are not. How we keep wondering what happened? How we feel helpless that it’s not the same. How we cry inside our hearts and wish to god he brings back everything we lost. How we promise to him that we won’t let it slip away.
But time never comes back. Does it?
I am seven; I am traveling with my parents and my little brother in our sweet little Maruti 800. I am peeping outside the window, to feel the wind outside. My parents keep warning me. I listen to them for a while, but get tempted to feel the strong wind on my face, while it forcibly closes my eye lashes, makes it difficult to breathe… I still love it. I enjoy it, in its natural form, crude and true. I laugh and laugh more.
I am eight. I am running, playing chor police with my cousins in the courtyard. I never wear chappals. The stones in the yard never hurt my feet. They mud never spoils me. The sweat never bothers me. My mom calls my name, asks to buy some milk from the nearby store. I gladly agree. I wink at my best friend. We start running. It’s a race. Who reaches first and eats a mouthful of raw rice from the gunny bag of the little store with a broken roof is the question. Laughter never leaves our faces.
I am nine. My mom is asking what I am going to wear to the birthday party I am about to go. I announce happily, that I am going to wear the same dress I wore the previous day! My mom shouts back, informs me I could wear the new dress my aunt has brought for me. But I don’t budge. The dress I want to wear is the one I love the most. I don’t care if it’s not dry cleaned. I don’t wonder if anybody would notice me repeating it. I merrily wear it and join the party.
I am 13. I and my friends are returning from our classes. We are hungry. We enter a joint. Buy Wada pav, hog on it. Crack jokes on each other. Tease a few teachers with secret names. Discuss the current gossip in school. What we eat is not the question. We fill our stomach because we are hungry, never forgetting to enjoy every bit of the food and the gossip of course.
Today though I am mature enough to know how to live, I still can’t figure out why I cannot enjoy the wind on my face anymore, why I can never walk without chappals. The stones suddenly are too hurtful. Why I am so careful about what I wear, why I worry so much before eating anything! Do we all lose the true sense of living life to the fullest when we grow up? I guess so.
