Where have all the youthful years gone?
View(s):Call me weird. But I like to take a jaunt, now and then. To the streets where I lived, in the days of old, in the days of my youth. Where we knew what the great outdoors was, back then. When the world was young, the spirit was willing, and the flesh could still have its heart and knees scraped clambering down the same spreading tree.
But some of the old neighbourhoods are not there any more. Those houses have been torn down to make room for towering office buildings, swanky leisure or entertainment centres, modern condominium complexes. Home may have been where the heart once was, but growth and development and progress have all but erased the building blocks of memory.
If childhood did ever exist, it hasn’t left any clues behind in most cases. There are memories which have no foundation any more and the mind can play tricks as the sun lengthens the shadows towards forgetfulness.
Even nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
When this kind of maudlin fancy taps me on the shoulder, I take consolation in the fact that a whole new lost generation today will never have the privilege of not being able to locate their happy hunting grounds of childhood’s end. It’s a pious and piteous consolation. But it is true.
How many young people in their twenties and thirties today can recall a time when they played ‘French cricket’ down the road with a bunch of toughs from the wrong side of town? How many kids even know what tinkaedeema (‘the breaking of tins with a ball’) and batta (hopscotch) are? How many ambitious young men fashioned a makeshift Raft of the Medusa and braved the waves, down by the sandy golden monsoon-lashed beach with their nautical misadventures? Much to their chagrin as it sank and more to the amusement of the local fishermen who shook their heads in merriment…
If only the old still could! If only the young knew how!
Today’s kids are trapped. Not so much in a time warp as in a time machine. The school-going crowd spend their regular academic hours as we once did and our elders and betters before us. But then, no sooner the last bell peals, they are snatched up by a dizzying round of sports or a gamut of other scholarly pursuits that sometimes last until well after sundown. Would they give their eye-teeth for the after-school snooze we regularly enjoyed?
Do they know what they’re missing in the movie taken in with comrades-in-arms and the ‘Chinese treat’ in that dilapidated restaurant down Colpetty’s old Galle Road? Can they break the monotony of computer games long enough to look forward to a sunset or sunrise with a few of their more athletic chums? Even if they could muster the courage to break ranks with tyrannical tuition classes, one doubts very much that they should delight in any out of the ordinary pursuit beyond iPads, iPods, and iPhones. iYo!
Between the desire and the performance, falls the shadow…
After primary and secondary education are done with, the grind does not cease for most young people these days. Where once school-leavers pondered a wide panoply of careers, post their halcyon days in alma maters fondly remembered and hardly parted company with, today’s scholars are spoiled for choice. A plethora of tertiary opportunities beckon, and it takes all the high-flyers’ wit and wisdom to select from a gamut of bondages. Work. Work and then study. Work while studying. Study this or that. Study this and that. Work and work more and study this and that and work all the more while studying still some more.
My wife and I have the privilege of mentoring a small group of young people. Our attempts to gather our brood for a preliminary meeting often meets with frustration on both sides.
- “Can you come on Friday evening after work?”
- “Er, I finish work around eleven clock!”
- “Okay then, Saturday?”
- “Can’t, uncle. Classes.”
- “What time, child? Come after, will you!”
- “Can’t no, aunty, have from seven in the morning to six at night.”
- “And after that?”
- “He has to drop in at a work project until midnight. She has homework to finish.”
- “Looks like Sunday, then…”
- “Can’t, guys! Last minute they said classes the whole day!”
- “What, men! Funny thing, no. So when CAN we meet?”
- “Poya day bit free. How about five thirty in the morning? Have about half an hour before special extra classes. After have to go for a meeting – boss suddenly told…”
Sorry dears, include me out! If someone wants to know, I’ll be away at that time, looking for my lost childhood and your fleeting youthful years!
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