Where have all the years gone?
‘We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.’ — George Eliot.
I contributed an autobiographical account of my early years to The Nation, national English daily, in December 2007. I had planned to write more about the good old days than what was actually published but I had to curtail my article as the editor wanted my write up at the earliest. A decade on, the child in me is again fervently kicking at the barrier of time to break the glass and re-enter the paradise of his early days. You are never too old to become young. Life is a roller coaster ride. Enjoy it as there is no return ticket and what could be more delightful than one’s childhood memories?
An autobiography is a journey through a world within us, making us feel stepping back in time. When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves. The day we fret about the future, we leave our childhood behind. Childhood means simplicity. There is a garden in every childhood where colours are brighter; air softer and mornings more fragrant than ever again. Look at the world with a child’s eye; it is very beautiful, eager and brimful at all levels.
An autobiography promises feats worthy of records, and charting my way through all the highways I have traversed in my life, I come up with a hefty scoop of reminiscences to light up my world with fond recollections enriching the intellectual landscapes of many an uninformed onlooker. It is like re-discovering a paradise, one thought one had lost forever.
Some memories of my toddler days may have faded with time but in spite of these selective lapses of memory, revisiting my past strikes a nostalgic chord that connects the winding streets of my yester years. The irony of life is that it is half spent before we know what it is and unfortunately it is our childhood that forms the bulk of that half. So we should follow the adage, ‘don’t go through life, grow through life’. My childhood may have long gone but, like vacationing, re-visiting it in adult years offers escape, the elemental pleasure of being somewhere wild and recluse, especially when bad (old age) memories or sorrows rear their ugly head.
One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life, I think, is to have a happy childhood. Unhappy is he to who the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness. My childhood wasn’t bad. It helped me grow up. The most important influence in my childhood was my father who inculcated in me the love for literature and sports, right from the word go. Early childhood education is the key to the betterment of the society and it were my parents who taught me the difference between right and wrong. Everything you go through in your formative years helps build character and give inner strength.
Lack of resources was never a problem in our childhood games. Shift a few pieces of furniture around the living room and you have yourself a fort. Play is the work of childhood and our golden days’ major pastime was sports with physical involvement. We could never imagine games with a sedentary style. The only time we were physically inactive was when it was time to read story books. ‘Treasure Island’, Robinson Crusoe, ‘Alice in the Wonder Land’ and Ibne Safi detective novels was the reading material that fascinated me the most and still haunts my memory. Making pen friends in Pakistan and abroad was another productive hobby that helped increase my writing prowess besides broadening my vision about the distant, unseen lands. Writing gives me the opportunity to explore ideas, play with language, solve problems and use my imagination to draw on my childhood. It is of utmost importance to keep your childhood alive because when childhood dies, its corpses are called adults. No wonder I am obsessed with my childhood.
My father, being in a government job, was transferred from place to place and that made me experience somewhat of a nomadic childhood. This frequent shifting made me observe different environments with new friends and variant neighborhoods. As I have said earlier my schooling started in the dry arid area of Southern Punjab and to make up for that handicap I had to depend upon my imagination that travelled places like lightening. My imaginary bed room had a wall paper printed with clouds and rainbows. Childhood is the most beautiful of life’s seasons and its memories are the dreams that stay with you after you woke. What one loves in childhood stays in the heart forever. I have an ingrained love for nature.
In childhood the world moved at a slower but more rational pace than the bustling cities where I had ultimately resided my adult life. Now when I write about my childhood, I say to myself ‘Oh! My God, how did I ever get from there to here’? Not that any great thing has happened to me but I felt so tiny, so lost. I spent my whole childhood wishing I were older and now I am spending my adulthood wishing I were younger. It is also a fact that if you carry your childhood with you, you never become old. There are many things that take us back to our younger days; chocolates, for example, have a way of transporting us back to our childhood. Now we need to cut down on candies and chocolates to lose weight while during that wonderful time called childhood all we needed to lose weight was taking a bath. I wonder why we resisted a shower!
Truth exists, only lies are invented and childhood is a truth. In childhood we press our nose to the pane, looking out. In memories of childhood we press our nose to the pane, looking in. There can’t be anything more bona fide than this.
Written by Dr. Shahid Qayyum
Published by Alisha Khuram
