Articles/Poem
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By Suresh Sharma
1)Toy Houses and Name Plates
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Transalated by Arya Bhushan
from Hindi to English
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It was in 1930 when I was eight years old. My family lived in a small village of Rajasthan. My father was a Head Master in the village school. There was only one school in the village and I was, then, a student of class three. There was a small river by the village, that would flow only when it rained. Often when there was high ground or hillocks on three sides, the river was bunded on the fourth to dam and store water for irrigation purposes. This is called 'Tal' in local language. When the Tal got full to the brim, the water would flow over the Bund and the small river would get flooded. The residents of the village would all collect and watch with wonder, the flowing river. It is no wonder that where there was scarcity of water, such flooding of a river would turn into a great event to justify festivities.
We young peers also would collect on the river bank to amuse ourselves. The unmarried girls also collected there and played with the pebbles collected from there. The game was called 'Laduda' in their village dialect. We boys made mud toy houses from the sand on the bank. We would first take the wet sand and accumulate it round our feet and then cautiously pull our foot. This way the wet sand would stay in position with an opening on one end. then we decorated it with doors and windows made of local straw and wood strips collected locally. Round the houses so made we would put a boundary and a gate with our name plate in front of it. Everyone tried his best to make his house as the most beautiful. Sometimes when some one was not able to make one, he would out of jealousy destroy the house of his neighbor. This would result in a fight and the boy doing so was given a good beating. This is how we spent long time after school hours. During those days the village could not afford expensive games like Hockey, Football and Cricket. We used to entertain ourselves with such inexpensive games as 'Gulli Danda', 'Ghora dari', 'Danda-gair', 'Gulam lakri' etc.
As soon as it was evening, the elder brother or the parent of one of us would come to alert us about the sun having set and of the approaching darkness and it was time to return home as our mothers were waiting for us. It was a strange sight at that time. All the children would jump on and destroy the toy houses they had made with such labour spending hours to build them. And then all the children would return to their homes to rest.
Today, when I look back and remember those times, I feel that the strange sight of those evenings is the story of the human life. A human being labours whole of his life, acquires so many things, never rests and in the evening of one's life, he leaves everything here and returns 'Home' for ever. However, he does not only put a name plate on the houses he makes but also on his only face. He wears different masks. He forgets that his maker had made him only a human being to live as one without such masks.
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2)Poem
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EGO
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By Suresh Chandra Sharma
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My EGO is bigger than me
Whichever way I wish to go
It stands before me like a wall
Thus my ego blocks my way.
I strive to be tender and gentle
Want to speak the sweetest words
I try very hard to be humble
Like a straw resting on earth
But I cannot bend even a bit
As my limbs are hard like wood
Again my ego fails me to be tender
How I wish to cast away
The masks that cover my face
And wander free thru the universe
In my real bare form
But I fail again because
My real face is very ugly
Alas ! my EGO is ever mightier than me.
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3)What Can I do?
(I am bored)
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You will be startled to hear as to what question is being posed by me. The object of our collecting here is clear that we should exchange our thoughts on various subjects of common interest and produce some objective and useful material through such writing. Please don’t get impatient. Through above title, I am presenting a problem, which needs to be given a serious thought.
I am not aware if any of you have noticed that very young children three to seven years old are seen weeping crying, “what Can I Do?” They feel so bored in life even at this young age that all the objects to entertain them collected by their parents for them are inadequate. In every household where there is even one child of this age, you will find a big stores of toys for him. In every house there has to be a room full of toys only which forms an important section. Even then, purchase of new toys continues unobstructed. In addition, the children are taken to the swimming pools, to the Gym Classes, for music lessons and to learn dancing of different styles, kathak, Bharatnatyam, Ballet, etc. One also sees another scenario, in which a child has collected, utilized or mis-utalized more items of stationary of much finer quality, even before reaching the pre-school stage, than we had used from the beginning our education even up to the matriculation. Then he has full freedom to watch television and vedio cassettes of his choice. In addition another item has been added to his long list of entertainment material, which is CD worked with the help of computers. The question that arises is that with all these means of entertainment why does the child feel bored?
The main cause of all this, according to my meager intellect, is that in that in the modern society, the child grows in an environment of want. He gets much less company of her mother than what he needs or should get. Immediately after birth, the child is separated from mother and kept in nursery. And then, this beginning of separation from mother never ends. If the parents go for shopping, the child is either in a crib or in a stroller. The starves for the close warmth of the mother and this good luck is available to the baby only during breast-feeding. Some of the modern mothers, breast feed only for a very brief period as they have notion that feeding the child for a prolonged period will impair their beauty. Mother’s place has been even above the creator of the universe, and it is a great insult to motherhood that mother should for her looks, deprive her very own child, of necessities of life. The essence of a woman’s life is in her motherhood and if the mother give preference to their sexuality over this prime duty, what would be the state of society.
Another cause for such a situation is that in modern age, life has been interpreted to mean money and pleasure. In the social system of DINK(Double income no kids), when both the husband and wife, both are equally busy in working and earning a living, the coming of children in their life will only be considered to be an interference and they are bound to be ignored and neglected. Major portion of their daily life would be spent with a baby-sitter or in the day care center. The child then yearns for company of parents. For sleeping also child is put in separate room because the woman who is needed by the child belong to some one else.
The material life of to day has disrupted the entire family life. The joint living, which was considered the foundation of family life, has gone into background. It is not necessary that the husband and wife will return from the work at the same time. The children are able to get some time and bit of their love only in the weekends and that is the only time that the home could be considered to be a home. The home at present is only resting-place for the night as there is no one present there during day. The man and the lady of the house are at work while the children are with baby-sitter or in the day care center. There was a time when the home a work place for each member of family. That system has now disrupted. It looks that money minded priorities have dried the elixir of family life and home has shrunk itself as a resting-place for the night. I take pleasure by remembering the home management of a relative living in ahamedabad where even now all members of the family, children and the elderly, everyone, after the day’s work collect in the prayer room, pray and light lamp, do the ‘Arti’ and then dine together. At least there is some time in twenty-four hours that they have an opportunity of sitting together. This is the way in which an interest can be generated and maintained of sitting together. This is the way in which an interest can be generated and maintained to have common interests. At such place the problem of ‘what Shall I Do’ indicating boredom will not arise.
There is another cause for this boredom. Our sense of neighborhood has vanished. Each family, which has already restricted it self to self has stopped interacting with, neighbors. The social life of man now exists only on name. In actual life one has restricted oneself only to family. Relationship is such a plant, which needs the fertilizer of closeness, the warmth of love, the watering of compassion, the breeze of nearness, and fencing of cooperation. If all this is there, healthy relationship will develop and will establish real emotional cordiality. Let us ponder for a while that even if we collect all the worldly wealth and lose our mental peace and happiness, would we have gained anything.
It is possible that readers of my thought might get annoyed and irritated. Their reaction might be extremely severe. They have every right to such feeling but I would humbly request them that they may spend only few moments from their busy life to think of this problem of boredom and try to find a solution so that our little ones could become useful members of the society. Believe me that I have not written even one world in spirit of criticism, blame, or taunt but only to attract attention of the readers to this serious problem likely to cripple our society. If I am able to do so, I will consider it my good fortune.
(Writer is a Spiritual and Religious Thinker. He is a Retired Senior Statistic Officer of Government of India)
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