Trading Memories

Remember those days, when you were walking back home, drenched in the rain, cold and shivering, just waiting for your mother to start giving you the “I told you not to go out and play in the rain during exams” line. What made it all worth it was the way she toweled your hair, shoved you into those warm clothes and gave you a hot cup of chocolate afterwards. Ah! Life was good. And no matter what problems I face in my life in the future I know that I can always go back to those memories and feel warm again. And so can you.

What if you never had those memories? What if you never had a chance to live that life? What if, instead, you were drenched in the rain delivering newspapers early in the morning and came back home, not to change your clothes but to wake up your siblings on the way to your next day job?

We take a lot of things for granted. All the strengths we possess, all the luxuries we enjoy, all the knowledge we make use of and all the support we bank on. But we don’t realize that whatever we assume we have a right over is not accessible by most of the children around us. If you do not agree to the fact that it is “most” of the children then you do not see them, or rather, you choose not to.

I beg you, look not in the malls you flock to, but the roads you travel on to get there; see not the LEVIS or the NIKE’s but the chaat-walas and the dhabas; engage not with the concierges and the DJs, but that drenched newspaper delivery boy and you WILL find them, you WILL see them and you WILL feel for them.

For, if you still don’t feel for them, then you must be willing to let your children go through such circumstances and fend for themselves. You must be willing to trade all those warm memories you had as a child. After, all if you could trade your memories then that poor little child would definitely buy it for a tad of conscience.

So what can you change? What can you do about this? The magic of it all is that- YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING. Open your eyes and choose to see these things. The rest, my friend, will come to you automatically.

Chandrasekhar Venugopal

This piece was chosen as one of the top three entries at the blog competition at the CRY stall at IIM-C's campus event- Mandi.