Ever since I was a child, I was always curious about what it would feel like to be an adult. I had the weirdest conclusions one can draw from nothing. I thought that adults saw things in a different way. They were tall. So, I thought they always had a superior feeling that they were taller and everything appeared tiny for them (including me). I wondered how the top view of a short person’s head appeared to them and how they felt when they saw everything around them to be so smaller when compared to them. Like I was afraid of heights (not now though), I thought they too had a constant fear of falling down. Just because they were taller, I assumed they had a natural fear of heights!

    These are just some. I had many more assumptions. Another was that their wish was the command for shorter people. They could get things done their way. It seemed so wonderful!

     And so, I always wanted to grow up as fast as I can. I too wanted to be an adult. I wanted the world to treat me like an adult. Sometimes in school, when my friends would talk about their year of birth and I too happened to be a part of that chatting group, I would just increase my age by 2-3 years to show that I was elder to them. Sometimes I even threatened my shorter friends and urged them to call me “Dada” (big brother)!

     Then came a day when I was gifted a younger brother and I became a REAL “Dada”. I felt proud for having at least someone who would call me that. I was really “bigger” than him; even though I myself was a kid then (4-5 years old). But I always hated it when someone called me a kid. It seemed like an understatement to me. I have always wanted to be an adult and in my own world, I was already an adult.

    And now when I am in my early twenties, I have realized how silly I was. How silly a kid’s world can be! Filled with vivid imaginations, a kid’s thoughts has no limits. Childhood is indeed the best time of one’s life. No work, no studies, no worries…almost nothing that can bring in unhappiness, except for the weird assumptions that a child makes. And no one knows what that assumptions are. Every kid has his own unique set of assumptions. I guess every child wants to be an adult as soon as possible. Every kid wants to see the world like he has assumed it to be. And with the passage of time, he realizes how funny he could think, gradually proving the child wrong, as he begins to see the world through the eyes of the adult he has been longing for…

© Barnadhya Rwitam Sharma

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