When the heart is full of purity, the eyes become blind to the cruel world!!!

I happened to experience this feeling very recently. This is about my five-year-old daughter, Smaira. She’s been a shy girl and takes time to open. After having moved back from London to India, it took her some time to adjust to the surroundings, the way the people talk, how kids behave and interact, but steadily she’s been able to make a mark in her very own little world. She’s made friends in our society, at school and has started communicating in the local language as well; however, the innocence just doesn’t go away!!!

Recently, I took her to the common play area in our society where all her friends (almost 10) of varying ages were playing together. While Smaira was cycling with a couple of girls, others were busy running around, playing hide-n-seek and other games of the “kids’ kingdom”!!! After a while, one of the girls, got a packet of bursting pops (trick noise makers with 50 crackers in each packet) which you throw on the ground and they burst making a loud sound. All the kids got excited and formed a circle around this kid stretching out arms & palms waiting for her to distribute couple of pops to each of them. And, Smaira was no different, waiting patiently in the circle to be given one. The excitement and jubilation to see these crackers was evident on every kids’ face.

While this kid distributed these crackers to all the other boys & girls, I happened to witness the entire incident from very close. It was about two minutes gone by when almost all the kids finished their first round of pop bursting, come back and started asking for more while my daughter was still awaiting to make a debut. But the sincerity and tenacity didn’t fretter away so easily. With a smiling face, she kept her hands out and waited while a new circle was formed again. But to my utter surprise, the girl started distributing the second round to all the other kids.

This was the moment I started to witness two set of emotions, one within me of sadness and pity and the other outside of love and innocence. My daughter kept a smiling face and with her hands stretched out, she continued waiting. At the same time, she also started enjoying how all the kids were popping them all over the ground. Finally, the girl distributing the same announced that she’s distributed all she can, and few are left for her to pop and started moving away from the crowd. Smaira, happened to move along with this girl, no longer with her hands stretched out, and still smiling seeing all the other kids asking for more, bursting crackers and having a gala time. Then I saw her trying to find the unburst pops on the ground that she could use to pop and be a part of the fun. I felt sad seeing this and the feeling made me cringe within. While I was sad, and made promises to self to get her, her very own packet of pops next time; Smaira comes up to me and says (with a face with widest smile possible and an excitement of having seen something new in life), “Papa, I got to see so many pops being burst, it was so much fun, can I go cycling for some more time please?”. This was the time I felt her innocence and purity in soul makes even a grown up like me to unwind from the materialistic world and get closer to the God. Truly, it is very well said by social activist, Henry Ward Beecher, “Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven!!!”