A heart’s desire after 50 or so years on earth

Ravi Matah

I am neither a saint nor an author, but having travelled on the face of this earth for more than five decades, I have come across thousands of people, exchanged love and affection, and along the way created some hard feeling too. With the passage of time, I still don’t know why and how I piled on so many responsibilities, which keep increasing day by day,  with no relief in sight.

Now, I’ve had enough and want to be free of these daily chores in my life that have been deliberately thrust upon me. Life from the age of 5 to 8 years is simply superb. Your mama dresses you up, gives you a Tiffin, the driver drops you off at school and comes to pick you up. At that age you are totally free, having nothing much to do,  neither in school,  nor at home. There was an allotted period to go out and play. Thereafter, in school the class work increases, plus the home work, the teacher’s scolding in school and the parents’ cribbing at home – “Dont just play, go and study”  – all had to be withstood with patience.

I only wanted to play games like cricket, and table tennis. Ah! Table Tennis. One day, after class, I went to play TT in the school auditorium and was not allowed to play as I was junior to the boys already playing.  ‘You can play with us only when you enter Senior Section’. What egoistic dumb creatures, I was thinking.

Now I want to be relieved from these multifarious duties.

Just see the irony of fate, firstly, it was only studies, then the job searching phase in life, and when I got the job, I was booked for life with a grand lady who sired two beautiful kids. In addition to other chores, I had to get dresses for kids, pay their fees, buy school books, drop and pick them up from tuition and pay the tuition fees too.

All this was in addition to the onerous task of 10 hours of office duties 24x7x12. As if these were not enough, providence had it that I had to do all the household chores also, buy groceries etc., and pay the voluminous bills unheard of before. And in the evening I had to answer this question every day for 35 years ‘What will you have for dinner?’ I was about to answer, ‘You”, but I dare not spill it out. Harmony had to be maintained at all costs.

Now I have a strong desire to be an eight year old again, want my pa to hold my hand, take me to MacDonald’s for burgers, Starbucks for coffee and QFC for ice creams and chocolate cookies, Old Navy mall for clothes. I wish to play with a small paper boat in the Seattle lake. Then I desire to read comics and story books  like Cinderella and Red Riding Hood  sitting under a mango tree and sing Jack and Jill and Baba Black Sheep poems.

And further, I want this – as and when I open the newspaper – I should see the smiling pictures of Jawaharlal  Nehru, J. F .Kennedy with Jacqueline Kennedy and their other peace loving contemporaries all over the world. That was back in the 60s.

Just look at the newspapers now – absolute mayhem. Murders, dacoity, plane hijackings, bomb blasts, women disrespected, bank robberies, hundreds killed in Iraq, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Mynamar.  Opposition leaders put behind bars – ‘sorry we don’t have trials here’, they are belatedly told! Utter chaos everywhere.

Those were golden times – when people spoke the ultimate truth and could be trusted, gave and got back, love and affection.  They were always helpful. They were neither cunning nor calculative good-for-nothing creatures  like we have now. This world is altogether a different place today

So help me God. Let me go back to my childhood. I wish to donate everything I have, including responsibilities. Please let me go back to where I desire, at least once.

Ravi Matah lives in India and writes a blog about life’s little happenings here every week. Ravi is a story teller and his articles have been published in several magazines in India.

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Posted by News Editor on May 28 2009. Filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry