Grow Up Than Growing Old

Sitting at the veranda taking sips from my hot cup of coffee, I continued gazing at the infinite sky, the playground, the ambience to find that nothing has changed. The surroundings are still the same as years before. Soon, I was lost into watching the children play the game of seven piles; my favorite game since childhood. Mesmerized, I kept looking at the kids. I looked around the whole playground to find it full of life, enthusiasm and energy. Few young boys were playing cricket, few kids playing “kit-kit” on the side of the road, few girls playing “Shoe” and “Letter” and few kids playing the “hide and seek”.  Lost, I could have kept gazing like that for hours had I not felt immense heat in my hands.

Ouch, I screamed.

You better start holding the steel cups properly or start using other coffee mugs, warned my mother seeing my right palm go red because of the heat it was subjected to.

That’s my favorite cup mom; I used to drink milk …. Unable to complete the sentence, I stared at the coffee in it.  I never knew, I never noticed how and when the evening milk got substituted by coffee.

Unable to speak anymore, I continued staring from the veranda. The playground is the same where I used to play as a kid but I could not recollect the day when I last played there. It was perhaps years ago, before my tenth boards. The road that connects our colony to the main road is the same, perhaps a little more maintained. The birds chirped merrily the same way they used to while returning to their homes, the sun set on the same time, the trees were still there as they have been since times immemorial, nothing changed but the ingredient in my cup. 

From being at the other side of veranda playing with my friends; seeing my mother sitting and knitting sweaters, I never noticed when I sat beside mother for the first time. I never paid attention to the day when Complan and Bournvita changed to Nescafe and Bru forever. I never noticed when begging mother to let us play for some more time changed to hope to leave office early.

I turned around and looked at my mother sitting beside. I could see the little wrinkles on her face, her chapped cheeks, discolored nails and immense sore feet. 

What are evenings to you mummy, I asked.
Preparing for the dinner, she gave an honest and blunt reply.

And with this I got lost again into the world of thoughts I belong to. One day, my evenings too would be the same, “preparing for dinner”, I laughed at myself.

I noticed my grandma sitting below the idol of the Goddess Durga chanting some hymns continuously.
‘Grandma only keeps chanting hymns at evening’; I used to tell my friends at school.

Alas, how foolish I was. Today, when I looked at Grandma I found the kids playing on the playground in her face, I found myself, I found mother before I could see again the Grandma she is. 

I remembered how Grandpa used to sit on the same veranda and curse himself for not accomplishing all his dreams. He lamented not giving the best to his kids.  I remembered how Dad would sometimes sit with this feeling of emptiness on the weekend evenings. 

It was still 6 p.m. and I had the nothing to do for the evening. I opened Readers’ Digest trying hard to read, but these thoughts would not go away. You are growing old, said my heart.  No, screamed my mind. It rebuked saying I am just a fresher who started working, a bachelor who has a whole life ahead before sitting at the place of Grandma.

If you are not old, why don’t you go and play my heart whispered.
I do play badminton at the sports complex, the mind said.
But you still like the seven piles most.
It’s not my age to play that.
See, I told, you have not grown up, rather you are growing old.
And with that the evening guilt sinks in again.

At school, evenings were games; at college evenings were friends, but now at job evenings is my desk. After a long time, I was alone at home this evening.  As I tried hard concentrating on the article looking at the pictures, I saw my life flashing in front of my eyes. I remembered the good days as well as the bad ones. Times when I have rejoiced and times when I failed at relations. All that guilt of committing wrong, all that tears of being wronged; I now got scared of this evening.
What would mother and Grandma say, I said to myself trying hard to stop that urge of letting the tears flow, to stop the memories flashing by of the good and the bad times.

Cry screamed my heart, like you did when you were a kid. You weren't ashamed of what people would say that time, you would ask for what you want, cry to get over things even for toys.
Because then I was a kid, shouted the mind.
So you agree, you are not growing up rather growing old.

That moment, I had enough. I ran towards the playground and played my favorite game, the seven piles. I even got few scratches, some on my face too while I fell down, but I did not mind.

I came back and found all the things troubling me are not inside me anymore.

I hugged my old teddy bear, with which I have stopped playing long before.  When, I was a kid I wanted to grow up to buy myself a huge teddy bear. When I grew up, I forgot to buy one, because instead of growing up, I started growing old.

Today, I feel alive, perhaps after a long time, buddy. See, how different these words are, growing up and growing old.  As a grownup I played seven piles better today, but I left playing it when I was growing old.
So let all the tension go, scream your heart out, cry and shout because you are still not old enough. Someone rightly said, you will find more happiness growing into a child than growing old.

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery:  He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.  ~G.K. Chesterton