Gold, now is old.

Once upon a time my parents too were children.

My mother and her friends went to school alone ever since they were in the 5th/6th standard or even earlier. It was a daily routine of hanging out of a packed tin-box-on-wheels and then walking a good kilometre to school. Returning home would just mean retracing the path along with many others - some returning from school or college, rest from work. It could mean reaching home several hours late - either the buses were too crowded to hang from or there weren’t any due to strike or a heavy shower. In fact, when it poured and streets were flooded it was quite fun to wade through knee deep water. It was an unique concoction from rain and drain! Some of her class mates even swam in it!

I am sure their parents were concerned and anxious but could not really do much about it. Those days owning a car was rare. There was no concept of a cell phone to give a hurdle-by-hurdle update. So it wasn't really possible to ensure their safety and security by today’s velvet-glove standards. Parents were concerned but not paranoid of their well being. They could not literally afford to be! Interestingly, most of my mom's classmates whose parents had cars and even chauffeurs, travelled just like she did.

Daily life offered the work-out of today's gym. Naturally most of them were skinny. Obesity was an uncommon word found only in English dictionary. They had to become independent, understand and work through problems of the real world. She quickly learnt that people are generally good but some are not. She learnt that some had this obsessive need to wade through the packed bus and position themselves where ladies were. For some reason they would quite often get shouted at by the women around. Some other had an unusual tendency to be physically friendly with kids (She learnt the word paedophile lot later - till then they were just bad people). Then there were a few who seemed to have the undying spirit to laugh, joke and animatedly discuss sports or politics. They generally have a good time even while sweating to stand straight amongst the tip-toe crowd. All of these were part of life - even during exams. Each day was a lesson - an on-the-job-training on life skills.

By the time they returned from school there was hardly any time to play. But they did. There were no gated communities with Mexican grass lawns, tennis courts, swimming pools and winding jogging tracks. They had their entire neighbourhood streets and by-lanes to play any game that was the flavour of the season or whatever they could conjure up. It was fun to put up make-shift goal posts or wickets on the streets with slippers or bricks. Then there would be cars that would pass causing temporary hold-up and sometimes shift of the bricks for 'lagori'! After annual exams were over they had summer vacation. They would find a patch of land in someones backyard to put up their very own badminton court/lagori site. It needed skill to keep the shuttle on the court with poorly strung rackets and breeze that seemed to appear from nowhere. They used to play for pure fun and joy. There were no games lessons to be taken. They werent sent to soccer, tennis, cricket, painting or violin lessons. No preconditions of studs or snickers or jerseys. They weren't affordable. Games had to end when the sun went down and street lights came on. They ran home from wherever they were as the conch-shells sounded for the evening puja's at households. Life was not guarded by the walls of a gated community. Parents just could not afford to be so 'concerned' or 'caring'. They still had a blast. Absence of Xbox, PS3s and Nintendos or even cable TV meant children had no option other than inventing their own games and past times. But still mom and her friends hardly had a dull moment.

Friends' birthdays, visits to the cousins' were the special events. Annual picnic to the zoo was super special - preceded by weeks of excited preparation. A vacation out of the city was a mega event that came once in a couple of years. With so much fun who needed dining out? There were a handful of eateries anyway, rest were either too shabby or too expensive.

Not everything seemed to be fun. As a child She always wanted a bicycle. There wasn't one. As a teenager She still wanted a bicycle. Still there wasn't one. Hiring one was an option but at 60 paisa an hour it was an expensive proposition. So cycle remained a morning dream. Stealing a ride from friends, acquaintances and even strangers was a momentary joy but with a bit of shameful undertone. The intensity of want was nearly physical. The reality of not affording one was as stark. But looking back it seems that it is one of the biggest lessons of life - to want something so badly that not having - gives you a hunger that drives you to strive. Her son,(Jd) in fact, many sons and daughters of today will never know of it.

Decades have passed since. Increasing affluence has transformed the wonder years.

There is enough disposable affordability to make their/our children so safe and secure that they do not even know what the real world is like. Money is something that comes out of a wish-box called ATM, beggars are people who not have debit cards. Children do not get time to exercise their imagination. There is no need to invent since there is hardly a need that is unfulfilled. Where is the need to think of new games when Funskool is inventing them and our parents are ever-ready to buy? Where is the need to play imaginary cop and police games when we can have preprogrammed realism of 3D graphics? Where is the fun of simply playing when there are schools to give us lessons from soccer to elocution and our parents have enough money to send us to most? Our parents want their children to be so safe, so secure, so healthy, so happy that they(children/we) do not know how to cope outside the gates of the community. Their stomachs cannot take regular water. They cannot accept not getting what they want. Will today's children ever know what fun lies in the attics of their own imagination - joys that are beyond the realm of pre-loaded games? I wonder if they will ever know the bitter sweet sensations of longing - the never-ending wait for fulfilment, the intense pain of un-attainment and the lessons from its aftermath.

We think we can afford and hence we should. We should give our progeny a blemishless world. We should give them what our grandparents ventured not to our parents. We should shower them with the best since we can. In our affluent concern parents forget that they can afford because their parents could not.

What they can afford is within reach, what they cannot - compels them to reach out. What we have means for - shapes our children to face the familiar. What we do not, shapes them to face the unknown. Let's deny them some of what we can afford. Let's give them the chance to become.

I am very indebted to my beautiful mother to have brought me up the best way.
She is singularly responsible for the way I think today, for the way I smile today.

Happy Mother's Day to my mom!