Fading Childhood
Childhood in Dhaka was drastically different when I was growing up in the early 80's. There were morning cartoons yes, even video games and movies, but there were also neighbourhoods where children would come out to play hopscotch or tag and all the games only children's imagination could invent. Every day I would wait impatiently to go outside and play. I doubt children growing up now in the increasingly concrete landscape that is Dhaka. Now the outside is something that takes them away from their games, cable TV, toys and regimented study sessions. There is school and then the confining, protective walls of their homes. But who could blame them or their parents? The 'outside' of Dhaka has become a very real threat to personal safety. Unless these children are very lucky and get to visit their village homes and get a little taste of the rural and the tamed wild, the only world they get to see is painfully plastic.
In my minds eye, the neighbourhood of my early years was huge, but in reality it was and still is rather unremarkable in its size. On one end of what was really a modest lane between rows of mostly three-storey apartment buildings were independent houses with gardens protected by high walls that gave away to a small street leading to the main road, gardens that might as well have been forbidden pieces of paradise in my head. The other end was marked by a moss covered wall and if one peeked over it one would be gazing at a calm serene pond. To me, at the age of five that pond might as well have been a land-bound green ocean teeming with mermaids and monsters. The best part of being a child is inexperience from all things that limits us as adults. Money and social standing or propriety holds little value to a child, except maybe the former's utility in the acquisition of toys and candy. I remember my closest friend lived in a much smaller one bedroom construct, even smaller than the two bedroom apartment my family resided in. It didn't matter who she really was, or who any of my childhood playmates were, they were companions in adventure and discovery. We were all comrades bound by the single minded desire for unsullied and innocent fun.
Entire afternoons were spent collecting flowers or climbing walls to spy on the forbidden gardens, until we would get chased away by the owners. I remember an old mouldy concrete spiral staircase that seemed to be going up into the heavens that I would climb and climb, terrified and hypnotised with happiness all at the same time, anticipating the giant who might be awaiting me at the end, much like Jack and his Beanstalk. We would go around plundering and haranguing workers at nearby constructions sites for 'charas', little pieces of tiles and marbles to play hopscotch or four-square with. One of my bespectacled friend, whom I can only think of now as 'Harry Potter' had the best collection of 'charas', it was the stuff of legend and rumour in our rag-tag team of sun beam chasing little brats. I would envision the little patch of overgrown trees and shrubs at the back of our apartment was really a deep dark forest to be explored with crudely fashioned 'torches' made of sticks, or the guard who lived at the end of the lane was really a warlock. Even the simple game of running up and down the lane carrying a 'balloon' created out of a bit of string and polythene bag gave birth to imagination and wonder in our little brain, much more than any gadget-- no matter how sophisticated--ever could. Not that we were immune to the attractions of Tom and Jerry, but we did not have instant access to channels dedicated to airing cartoons and shows at all hours of the day and night.
Children living in Dhaka now seem to be unknowingly trapped in what might as well be cages not homes, have no such sources of inspiration that might one day light their way to the path of a deeper understanding of the wonders of a world that goes far beyond the deceptive safety of the modern urban sprawl. The rectangular, claustrophobic bounds of the television screen, no matter how big or pixilated, no matter how informative can never teach a child anything more than conformity to commercial and social slavery.
Our city offers shops crammed with toys flooding in from China, cramped play areas bound in plastic inside over-priced junk food joints that are now all the rage over parks. These children will have no memory of collecting wild-flowers or chasing clouds, no idea of that special magical time before sunset when the world would transform into a huge playground and the sheer tragedy of the sunset that would signal the end of play-time. They will never understand the value of acquiring that one special piece of worn out tile or clay that's somehow lucky and allows one to play hopscotch with tremendous success. Their memories will be a blur of screens, fast food shops, malls and theme-parks. We live side by side with masses of humanity crippled by gut-wrenching poverty and hardship that has lead to the ultimate form of desensitisation that will be passed on to these very children.
Comments