“Belonging” to a community rich with traditions, rituals and delicacies, it is next to impossible to avoid getting carried away in the current of wedding, threading, opening, closing ceremonies. The current is so strong that it could easily replace a few hydel power plants in the state! One moment you are shamelessly extending your “five more minutes” of sleep on a Sunday morning for the umpteenth time and the very next moment you are on the road looking for the venue of the ceremony you have to attend. Such gatherings are awkward for me, alright. So let me warn you that I might really hurt your sentiments (or let me say, I will!) I find all the smiling, nodding and everything very weird and more often than not, superficial. Youngsters dressed up in their best possible attires, trying to throw around themselves and hence making sure that others see (natural for homo sapiens sapiens, I will give this to you), and others are seeing! Middle aged people trying to hold on to their “oh so pretty” days still and refusing to give in to the universal fact that meat can’t be stored for a very long time! :P The elderly people of course, grumbling about all the show-show. These ceremonies are melting pots for the denying, the embracing, the aging! Describing these ceremonies and how I feel about them is rather unimportant. But there is no denying the fact that these are a part of our up-bringing and teach us a lot.

But wait, where are the little kids who got me writing about all this?

I’m pressing

So today I am in this gathering (which for me appears to have formed around me) in a tightly packed auditorium, with at least half times more the atmospheric pressure between one another other. Half the guests are engrossed in discussing the facial features of the bride and the other half has taken up the jewelery. They seem to be doing an extempore, speaking to and about every other guest, one at a time. The turbaned grim groom is discussed relatively less. The men are discussing the sad state of today’s politics and the diminishing values among “our youth”. Some young boys dressed up in traditional attire are ushering the guests in and are a little negligent in smiling at species that isn’t girl and isn’t beautiful! The young girls, who are designed to give the bride a complex of a lifetime, move around leaving a thick trail of rosy jasminy fragrance. There is a frequent exchange of curious at the same time nervous glances between these young men and women like they are ants stopping for a quick exchange of signals; ornate ants, I must add.

And I am tightly pressed against my chair, feigning to read some text message sent to me by an unknown number, unknown name, nonexistent actually. I frantically type some words “I am bored blah blah blah I am” and delete them, so that at least some part of me is busy while all the others continue to be judgmental (that’s right, judging should not be considered an important work). These ceremonies are to me what Bodhi tree was to Buddha :P . I tend to think a lot and analyze every passerby. Anyway, we don’t talk much about me here, do we?

Do you want to update?

Just then something caught my eyes, ‘version 1001.000′, it amused me that someone must have this printed on their shirt! He was picking something from the floor, a stick or something. He seemed to be very pleased to have picked it up and that brought on his face such a wide smile that he swayed his head back and just as he did so he dropped the trophy. His smile vanished, his eyes narrowed down to the stick, target locked! This kid attempted again to pick up the stick and the moment he tried to taste it, his mother pushed it out of his hands and picked him up. He forgot his stick and began to play with the flower in his mother’s hair. The mother carried him away from my view. Version 1001.000 seemed to be ever hungry for new objects, learning, wanting and willing to let go after going through them. How in life, we are sometimes unable to try things, sometimes fearing to try for something, sometimes holding on tight to somethings, fearing of dropping it and how easily version 1001.000 did all of it and managed to giggle and be happy while doing all of it. Version 1001.000 I thought, must have gone through a lot to become what he is today and hence the version number! Ever trying, ever testing, ever improving!

There is no dearth of kids in any of these ceremonies. In fact if you observe, the ones that enjoy these occasions the most are the little kids. Be it the little girls wearing flowers heavier than their very heads or the little boys wearing traditional little clothes or some ‘elder’ little sister busy policing her brother or sister. Fake raising her voice from time to time and pulling her very precious siblings away from dangers of life. Or the bigger brother playing a spoiler in his younger brother’s games!

A sweet lullaby…

One such little girl was given the duty to ‘look after’ her little sister. The ‘big’ sister wasn’t really a lot bigger than her little sister. They both wore identical clothes- greenish frocks with the younger one’s hair left untied. The little sister was trying to invent games for the sake of humanity, while the elder one kept on directing her younger self. There came a point when both of them giggled in unison. I, who was observing from a distance, like I was planning a kidnap. Apologies for the digression, but I could very much kidnap those two adorable ones and myself pay the ransom to their parents! Yeah, so I was observing their games and I could not figure out what was the root cause of their giggling. Not that kids need any reason to be happy. Little children of all creatures are the only beings in this universe that can be really happy, jumpingly happy without any sensible reason. I wonder if growing up snatches it away from us or grown-ups do!

The game was a simple one, to sing a lullaby to a baby sleeping in a cradle and the rule was to do so without dropping the baby. The game required building a sleeping baby in a hammock, using just a handkerchief! The two girls swung the sleeping babies, and shushed each other so that they did not wake up the handkerchief babies. The same pieces of clothes slowly turned into hats and they wore them and giggled more. The simple pieces of cloth got so many shapes and I simply couldn’t stop marveling at these girls’ creativity!

And the moral of the story is…

How in life, we have to make the most of the simple things tossed at us. These kids happened to know the value of their possessions. We, adults complain endlessly despite our endless acquisitions. This must be a real challenge for us, how do we manage to stay so ungrateful? If these little kids could spend hours with nothing, yet creating happiness for themselves and whoever cared to notice them, it is a wonder that we can spend hours, days, months, ages without appreciating that which is! I guess we all need these magical ‘hanky’s to transform our lives into whatever we think is precious. But really, the key here is that the creator is precious than the creation. Hence were the kids; so are we! As I observed more and more little kids, and tried to extract the lessons they were trying to teach me, my boring afternoon turned into a very exciting one. There were kids racing, some winning, others losing. They changed their games and they were on the track again. As if it all never mattered. And as if all the pain and anger and resentment was injected in our systems somehow and somehow these kids were devoid of any of it. As if all that mattered was NOW. I saw them as free beings, chattering nonsense but making a lot of sense (more than our talks at least). Their motto seemed to be “you don’t take care of us, we take care of you” and it seemed perfect to me.

Our world can be divided into a lot of sections and kids are the only thing common between all the types of people that can be found. While the entire world crumbles in front of our eyes, these little lanterns guide us. They urge us to keep renewing ourselves, keep moving ourselves. They teach us not to wait for any reason to be happy!  Amidst all the high thoughts, I eyed at the empty tables set up for the lunch. I also saw a kid fighting with the cook’s staff for an ice cream even before the lunch was being served! That made me really hungry myself. Well, and yeah, they teach us to be frank…