CHILD IS THE FATHER OF MAN

 From Sampath's Desk:

CHILD IS THE FATHER OF MAN!

                                                                                                                          

“Child is the father of man”, said William Wordsworth. Children are gift of God, asset to parents, family and society, and above all, fountainhead to prosperity and posterity. Tiny tots are ‘living Gods’ and ‘natural cynosure’ for discerning eyes and minds.

 

Mother is creator of life who sustains the human-race. The marvel and miracle of creation takes place in the womb of mother taking her flesh and blood, who gives birth to her offspring after nursing it for 10 months.

 

Child is a miracle of love, a treasured gift from above. While child is a visual delight and feast, its lisp is music to ears! Cherubic face, infectious social smiles, naive appearance, curious look, innocence, innocuousness, instant boisterous laughter, exclaiming mindset, inquisitive mind/querying, scientific temperament, non-selective mingling, non-discriminatory interactions, playful attitude, gullible character, never-quenchable knowledge quest, positive future dreaming, naughty dispositions, yearning, and craving for love and affection, fertile/lively imaginations, limitless merry-making, perennial thoughtfulness and other typical puerile dispensations are different dimensions of the intrinsic and built-in beauty and effervescent characteristics of a growing child sure to evoke more than a cursory glance in onlookers. The young ones are always ready and willing to discover the world through seeing, touching, hearing, smelling and tasting. For them, ‘seeing is only believing’! Child-gazing would fill one’s mind with a lot of joy. Babies, cutie pies, and tiny tots and their activities provide us a visual treat.

 

A child has no inhibitions while making merry. Victor Hugo, a French Literary Genius observed thus, “even the saddest face gets brightened up with joy at the very sight of a child.” And if one looks at the world through a child’s eyes and mind, he/she can see how tension and stress make their way out, and how human mind gets excited, electrified and energized with bubbling enthusiasm.

 

The family of one of my nieces relocated from Bombay (now Mumbai) to Chennai in the 1990’s and lived in our house for some months. My 10-month-old niece was shy moving with us initially. She would only allow her mother (my sister) to feed her milk through the feeding bottle and would refuse to be fed by anybody else. Of course after weeks, she became friendly with all of us. As a 2-3 year child, she would take away the dolls from the lower steps of the ‘Kolu’ lisping thus, “I need these mommai’s (meaning ‘Bommais’ in Tamil and ‘dolls’ in English) to play with”, refusing to give them back. She also refused alternative dolls offered. Only after lot of convincing we could retrieve the dolls from her and restore them on the Kolu giving her other attractive pieces!

 

My nephew, when he was 3-year-old, was fond of imitating a bus driver. He would take a plastic bucket, reverse and place it on the floor upside down, and have a ring ball on it as ‘steering wheel’. He would install a stick at a convenient make-shift point near the bucket to move it for ‘gear changing’. Sitting on his small chair he would do his ‘bus-driving’ making appropriate sounds of a bus in motion much to the amusement of all of us at home.

 

Another niece, at age 3, would make an inspection of things here and there whenever she visited our house. She would collect things that attracted her in our house in a bag. Once, important household things were missing. I told my family members, “Don’t bother, you can find and retrieve them from her bag”. When I was proved right, there was belly-aching laughter all around!

 

Even though they are now grown-ups, these and other pleasant memories connected with their childhood days would still transport me into nostalgia and a pinnacle of joy.

 

Toddlers are great explorers! They love to touch, squeeze, poke and rub to find out what a toy, doll, or whatever item they put their hands on is all about besides researching the texture. Sensory experiences are wondrous to a baby learning what the world and things around look like, or how to handle and play with them in its own way with lot of self-joy?

 

Playing is children’s work. I always used to spare some time with small children. You can swim in a pond of enjoyment while playing with them. By engaging and interacting with active tiny tots, one can have pretty moments of amusement and excitement that could reverse even the most sagging moods and transform mundane of tasks into a beaming smile or roaring of a laughter. Children sometimes help you see things in new perspectives, whole and fresh. When children love, they love profusely and without any inhibitions that can warm up and melt even frozen hearts. Child represents Godliness! Children are great at speaking their true and blatant thoughts. They have neither any secret plans nor hidden agenda. 

 

As our former President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam had said, “Every child is a budding scientist”, my nephew and nieces, during their childhood, would question the answers more than trying to answer the questions! I had enjoyed a lot with them around.

 

Such is the wonderland of children a tryst with whom is always a pleasant experience; isn’t?

 

R.SAMPATH

24/4/2020