Innocence

This rangoli graced the space outside my neighbor's apartment this weekend. A beautiful creation on the occasion of Pongal. We stopped to admire it and rang the doorbell to compliment the creator. My neighbor's son, a naughty three year-old promptly stepped out with his new toy, a slim and long airplane and promptly started using the rangoli as a runway to demonstrate. Both Aparna and the boy's mother were upset and asked him to not mess up the masterpiece. But the child kept on with his antics until we bid goodbye to them and moved away. If you look closely, you will see the tiny lines running across the colored spaces, marking the areas where the aircraft came into contact. But the rangoli is still as eye catching.

Aparna asked me why I had not stopped the boy. I told her a story that my mother had narrated to me years ago. Once upon a time a woman prayed to God. She asked him to send someone who would wipe off the kum kum from her forehead, someone who would eat the dryfruits that she offered each morning as prasad and someone who would erase her daily rangoli. People were shocked at these prayers since traditionally all of these constituted bad omens. Only the people who could look deeper into the words realized that she was asking God for a baby. For only a child would do all of the above with innocence, unaware of the connotations or significance of his/her impish actions.

As we grow up, we get caught into the idea of perfection, of maintaining our life, our figure, our routine within predictable confines, coloring within the lines so to speak. We are not even able to tolerate others doing something different, off the beaten track. Why stop the child from being true to himself for that small part of his life when he can be true? Yes, destruction of a large magnitude needs to be curtailed and limits of acceptable behavior need to be enforced. But just as we appreciate the creation of a beautiful rangoli, let us also celebrate the innocence of childhood when we see it in action.