Wither innocence?

By Nasira Jabeen Though contradictory to common sense, it is true and, in fact, a paradox: ‘The child is father of the man’. The traits and habits predominant in children often foreshadow their later days except in cases where the reverse happens and promising childhood entails disappointing manhood. The truth of the statement will evidently be borne out by the lives of today’s children too. These being particularly much before their time summon implications verging both on the favorable and unfavourable consequences. Where children’s prematurity is celebrated and savoured there it leaves one bemused and dumbfounded, nay in utter predicament finding no shades of innocence intact and their integral part still. Wiped away are the days from the myriad of faces of the world today when children were sighted in their care free romping, in their exultant indifference of situation and changes however grave around; when they were spotted in their own made little houses engrossed and actively busy in their pretentious hospitality to render thus their mock house holding the more effective; when the leisure laughter and the happy cries of theirs’ in the various plays they played went clamouring up the hills and echoed back and filled the surrounding; when they were up before it was broad day (when at home on Sundays) to early start their recreations with all the happy contemporaries and with as untiring a verve and enthusiasm as to make their day all sunshine throughout. These engagements of the children were a scene in themselves for the lonely groaners of creatures, (themselves weary of their plaintive cry) for the weather–beaten workers, for the pensive strollers, for the sorrow-stricken to urge them pause to divert the course of their thoughts and be haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, of regrets, of longing… In the midst of their much perturbed existence ensuing further trepidation, it were a vision of these little trifling of the little ones that lightened the burden of their hearts and helped raising their drooping head from the weight of recollections and kindled a soothing and gentle hope that the world is not yet cleared of innocuous joys and freedom; that they too were like them once and if Heaven ordains can see bright days again. As if their spirits were heightened with the feeling as with Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops at all.” As the world grows even grimmer and lend even more miseries on the older inhabitants occasioned by causes additional to feelings of personal capacity, like countries’ precarious status quo, security challenges, deficient budgetary resources, limitations, urgent needs of the people and manifold other giving but only bleak prospects; the world of the happy ignorant bleating lambs (the children), tightening and vibrating the loose and mute string of the unhappy ones’ hearts, grows the more faint. With their advanced intellect and mature air they have undoubtedly nestled strongly at the minds and perception of the long grown-ups and have themselves acknowledged and in fact have spared their parents many of the discomforts of life. But their ripen look as though they have lived whole of their lives and have re come on earth and their outwardly cheerfulness, striving against depression of responsibilities, of competition, of imprinting impression, of meeting goals, of keeping pace, of excelling out, in short against depression from all possible corners of their association, has left them “a piteous spectacle of abject frustration”. In their countenance can be seen the view of life as a thing to get along with and to bear with and to dominate it, with no sign of the early generation’s zeal for existence on it. Unless one has inherited the native simplicity or has it intuitively, their majority is far from developing a taste for it. Delicacies and sophistication of life are more liked by them now. There seem to be nothing that they don’t know of; no avenue that they have not explored, no mystery or myth that they have not unraveled; no expression of their mother tongue that they have not unveiled, no ways left they have in turn not employed to articulate the same and in no less better a manner than the old practitioners. Thomas Hardy in his novel ‘The Return of the Native’ says, “What the Greeks only suspected we know well, what their Aeschylus imagined our nursery children feel.” This was back in the Victorian Age (second half of the 19th assumed half genuine of those nursery children, it would be only a too prismatic reflection of today’s children and youth alike. They might never be so positively hectic, so detesting trifling occupation, so audacious, so unproportioned (due to the brain nerves carrying too much information) and so seemingly in a royal mess, as the present. Some of the attributes mentioned are indeed commendable, for who will bear to see their children derailed from today’s advancing path, or to see them staggering behind. As the succeeding eras evolve as modified, coloured, modern and computerized picture from afore ones, each succeeding generation evolves too likewise and is naturally restricted in surmounting its prevailing influences upon themselves. The custom of time (as it unfolds new experiences, novel approaches, fresh zest, wholesome envy and their ilk) frame the mind and shape their attitude which they cannot help but get along with even if it goes for earning the name , ‘talking and moving machines’ for themselves. Helpless victims!) But, nonetheless, all these are well for the mechanically bend minds. There is nothing amiss, nothing has gone to pot, everything follows, without deviation, its inevitable course, no need even of endeavoring to adjust oneself to get accustomed to the mainstream flow, things are as they are to be, need only to not highlight them by giving them undue attention but to let them pass too as life passes. The rather sensitive must have observed the ‘loss’, if we may so express it. The serene look, with the soothing influence, the more cheerful, amiable and honest demeanour of the children of yore; all accumulating to present them the more bright and beautiful, the more spirit inspiring, the more happiness causing; the unagitated natures, the indulgence in plain employments; their innocuous ignorant faces, their simple unquestioning faith as if it were a bliss, except in faces or few, are things of the past now. The cup is sour to the brim, but for these few to have a semblance of the sweet.  ]]>