Death of Innocence

Death of Innocence

Re written by Vibhuti Kanitkar

Children as many say are by far the best creation man is capable of making. Their naivety and innocence take u by the breath and leaves u teary eyed. Through the ages children have grown up being teachers of innocence. They are like blooming flowers. No perversion and not a corrupt thought. What they have is originality and pureness.

 What I mean is that they know nothing bout the right and the wrong. Children till about the age of ten are as innocent as one can get. After that they become men and women. Get their wisdom teeth, hit their puberty and often, fall prey to peer pressure.

 Watching cartoons, going out and playing. Running across the field and rolling over grass hills. The immense joy in doing little things. Eating candy or eating ice-cream, the more it was denied the more it was wanted and crying for silly demands that’s were replied to with a ‘No’.

However over the last few years, children have matured faster. Their pace of physical and mental growth has no balance. They grow up before they can truly enjoy childhood. Exposure to media and cheap humor being used even in cartoons has changed their way of thinking. Children don’t play on the fields ne more. They play videogames on T.V where they learn to fight, racecars and shoot zombies. This short incident or experience in my life will explain further by what exactly I mean.

 One day, as I was babysitting my neighbors daughters age 6 and 9 I left them playing with their toys. I was working on a school paper in the same room on my laptop, when I heard them talk. They spoke bout their friends and the boys! Their friends crush and to be real they were gossiping. At first I was amused then I realized what their age was. It shocked me to think that they spoke like such grown up people about – wait was I hearing it right? - ‘Relationships’.

Post their homework I told them they could watch T.V before going to bed. They watched cartoon network. It was a brief minute where I thought at least children still watched the same channels, till I realized even that had re transformed. They weren’t even cartoons It was a pop American singers life story. How all the good clothes and fancy things in life were so important. The elder one was chatting on face book and watching you tube videos.

It has all changed the way children look at things. They have a perverted meaning to every tool in their pencil box and instead of mixing and playing around. Ever since then I realize that innocence of childhood has blurred out over the ages and down the generations to only the infancy and post infancy duration.

However, the truth still remains that at the end of the day Honoré de Balzac rightly says- we are still the ones who want to, watch these infants playing, prettily and innocently, with slippers; above all the ones with the household utensils, leaving that which displeases them, crying after that which pleases them, munching the sweets and confectionery in the house, nibbling at the stores, and always laughing as soon as their teeth are cut, and you will agree with me that they are in every way lovable; besides which they are flower and fruit—the fruit of love, the flower of life. Only time changes this. So no matter how times have changed the situation children are born as innocent as earlier. They are and will always remain the purest creations till the innocence is killed.