Of Childhood

What peaceful hours I enjoy'd

How sweet their mem'ry still!
(WILLIAM COWPER)

Sweet memories, especially those of childhood, never forsake us. Only diamonds are forever, but childhood memories too are. The latter contribute towards letting us stay a kid at heart for the whole of our life. The nostalgic aura of the cherubic childhood adds a touch of blitheness to the otherwise lacklustre and monotonous adulthood in this mechanical modern world. The modern day loneliness is gone with the wind as one reminisces the days 'when God was in his heaven and all was well with the world' (Robert Browning).
It is in the childhood that the foundations of a future are laid. We have to construct the palaces of our dreams on these very foundations, so they have to be really solid. Moreover, the base of anything cannot be separated from the real thing. No matter how high a building we might construct, we can’t detach it from its root foundations. So always carry the child within you, no matter where you go, no matter how old you are. He will always come to your rescue – will save you from lots of tensions and worries. Being childish and carrying a tinge of your childhood with you are two entirely different things. Being mature doesn’t mean that you cannot enjoy the little pleasures of life, you cannot laugh your heart out when you feel like; it does not entail leading a monotonous, dull and a drab life.
Even otherwise, the child in you controls the speed with which you move in the process of aging. How wonderfully has Tom Stoppard has remarked, “If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.” A real, natural and a more effective formula than all the wrinkle control cosmetics! Isn’t it worth trying?

Children's Day in India

On the occasion of Children’s Day (celebrated in India on 14 November every year). Jawahar Lal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, was born on 14 November, 1889. Children’s Day is celebrated every year to mark his birth anniversary as he was very close to children.
Milton remarks in ‘Paradise Regained’:

The childhood shows the man,

As morning shows the day.
(Book IV, lines 220-21)

It is indeed in childhood that the qualities are manifested and are exhibited in the child personality. The characteristics of personality can noticed right from the early childhood. Rightly has Wordsworth has expressed the same views when he says, “Child is the father of man”. Childhood is the formative period of a person’s life. The habits developed at this time cast a shadow throughout the life. This makes it all the more important that the negative traits exhibited by a child should not at all be ignored, otherwise they may become a habit and incorrigible later on.

The period of childhood has been glorified in English poetry – this also hints at the important place occupied by this period in our life. Childhood is just like the base of a building; the stronger the base, the stronger the construction. A child has been said to be close to God as Wordsworth says in his Ode to ‘Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’. He says:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Carl Sandburg has said, “A child is God’s opinion that world should go on”. Every child is special in his own way. So let’s pledge on this day that we would stop child abuse and all forms of exploitation.