Two Different Worlds

Is not small and big a difference?

As I was waiting in Thrissur Railway station, I closely observed a Mother and a child in the waiting room. I immediately took out my notepad and began to scribble....

Mother: Do not shout and go around wherever you wish to go. This is a public place - a railway station. We are in the waiting room, having a bit of rest before our train comes to the station.

(This was the Mother’s logic to the child, who appears to be one and half years old)

Child : Mother! Hai! So many people moving here and there. There is a long thing outside this waiting room. It was not moving. Now it seems to move. How wonderful this world is – Everything seems to move. Nothing is permanent. (This is truly an innocent probing – curiosity and wonder at it height)

Mother: I told you not to move around. Come and sleep by my side…. (mother sleeps off..)

Child: (trying to explore more… this time takes a bottle and beats the mother, the suitcase… still wanting to see more tries to come out.) The mother catches and scolds.. beats a little on the buts…. The child cries…. (The only way, mostly the used way, to stop an exploring child.)

The difference in their worlds is that both of them do not understand their worlds sufficiently. It’s no use saying that ‘I have gone through the same stage of life.’ So I understand whatever happens.

The child on the other hand might say….

            “Let me atleast reach the answerable questions before the unanswerable questions of life and death probes in. or before I grow up as an adult like you… Let me enjoy the moment, the innocence I am bestowed with, the maximum curiosity to explore… Let me live this moment well. Why should you bring to mind now that “we are all in chains?” ”

            ‘I am a ‘what.’ You too are a ‘what. St. Augustine liked to say. “I am a question unto myself”.

Mother’s World:

The mother might have become questionless before the unquestionable stifling circumstantial questions of life. She is ‘helpless’, caught up in the web of an unquestioned life. Is the child an answer to the ideal expectations from a married state of life? How confused is my life? Am I seeking a magical certainty? (all these are philosophical questions. Descartes tried to bring the element of certainty: “I doubt. Therefore I Exist.”