Through The Eyes Of A Child

Mom was so serious about my future way from the beginning. She never compromised on my studies and I struggled so much at that very young age to learn the things. My first teacher thought I was at a total loss and told me not to come again to her, that she couldn't teach me anymore... I didn't understand what she meant at that time... what does a 5-year-old understand about his tentative future at that point...? Mom should have been so sad, I think... so she took me to another one, who became my backbone and gave me the strength to become the school top... some people are like that... they will dig up the things, buried deep in our souls...

I never had a love. It seemed so strange to me like most of them at my age had a lover or had even more than one love story... and me, all I had was books... and books... I made my own world, with my own characters and all...It was way better... coz I never wanted to know the pain of the reality... since my parents didn't let me go out and play with other children, (well... I had no one my age in my neighborhood) I spent all my free time reading and drawing... drawing was an inherited trait from my dad and reading... it came along with my solitude... I drew a lot at that age... and read a lot of children's magazines and of course, my parents encouraged me a lot to do it, but now, they don't really appreciate the idea of spending time on those things, since my academics is getting more serious.

I never interacted with anyone... even with my parents. I didn't know how to talk freely with them. All the things I shared, as freely as a friend, were with my cousin, and still, she's the only one I have in my whole relative circle who can understand who I am...Everyone would ask why I am like this, why I'm not talking with anyone... why I'm shy... and mom would reply - "he's like his father.... he's more into himself..."

Mom is a very talkative person and my sister got that trait from her. Mom always says Dad started to interact with people after marrying her and before the marriage, he was just like me...Whenever I had holidays, mom would send me to grandma's and grandpa's homes. I never really liked going there since it was way too boring for that little me. At home I usually watch TV, but in their home, even though there was TV, Grandpa would have been the one always watching it and I would go to my room, and read something. And just because of that, I was more connected to my grandparents than my parents.

I don’t really remember what I used to do when I was in their home. I would read the same books I had again and again and again... it never made me feel bored... each time I read it, it felt like I was reading it for the first time. I would go sit near the river, looking at the fishes swimming in the clear water, and try to catch crabs from their holes. That was a fun thing I always loved. I would put a stick into their borrows and the tiny crab would hold it, thinking it's some prey. I would drag it out... and it goes back to its burrow. That was when I knew these tiny borrows were not those of snakes, which my grandma used to tell coz she was afraid of letting me go to the riverbank alone, but of those brick red, cute little crabs...

I am afraid of depth. I can't even watch documentaries about ocean and deep water bodies... it makes me so uncomfortable. But I loved to sit on the little boat my grandpa had and play with the water. I always made sure that the boat was attached to the bank so that I wouldn't get lost. I would loosen the rope a little bit so that I could row the boat for some distance. I would again come back and row...I never remembered any of these things. I never really had time to remember any of these... but now... it seems I had a wonderful time there... is that 10 years ago? I'm 18 now... Yeah... maybe 10 years. Time flies quickly... it goes on... like an unending dream... like Interstellar said -"Time is relative. It can stretch and it can squeeze, but... it can't run backward. Just can't..." Maybe that's why God gave us memories... which fly even faster than time...

I never really loved to play with my friends when I started to go to school... Maybe because It was a new experience for me... I rather liked to stay in the class or walk aimlessly through the ground. I was so attached to the new teacher who came into the kindergarten. I would go to her class, help her to do something, and talk with her. I don't know anything about her now... where she is or how she is doing... I was rather unable to find out about her.

I loved drawing things on the computer so I would go to the lab and draw things I liked... I read a lot of books and the teachers never really cared for me when they saw me going to the lab or library coz they knew I was not going to make a fuzz. I was school top at that time and so they cared about me and I believe I got extra privileges because of that. At that time all I knew of grasped from my parents was in the world of education, everyone is always competing and I can't step even a single foot back. Mom always got angry when my grades dropped. It happened only once that I got an A instead of an A but it is still there in my memories...

I loved that school...

I loved everything about that school...

We had a place on the corner where there were 2 large trees, their canopy covering the whole area. They stood like an old couple, leaning on each other. Our seniors never let us go there... they told us many stories which I can't remember now... maybe it was too childish... when we finally became seniors, which means 9 years old, we started going there... and we used to sit under the shade... talking so many things only we knew and we understood...

There was a house behind our school. It was an isolated, small, old house near a pond. Whenever we asked our seniors who lived there, they would say it was an old lady and her dog. They used to say it's a haunted house and never look at it when you are alone. We were so scared by hearing all this.

When thinking about all of it, it seems like a Fairy tale... as if reading a story... I never thought it would be like this. I never thought when looking back, everything would seem like magic and fantasy. Did that world really belong to me? But at that time... it was just my school... some trees... and a mysterious lady and her dog in a house... but now... it seems like so much more...

Am I still a child? Well... I think so... a 20-year-old one is still a child... and I like it...

- Khushi Kaul