By Kratika Sharma
I remember the time when my mother had to get my hair cut only because it became difficult for her to maintain the hair I muddied everyday. I remember the time I did not have cable in my TV and used to live off Shaktimaan and Disney hour. I remember the time when I used to play bat-ball( plastic ones) with my brother in the little veranda. The time when I used to play hide and seek till late at night and only used to return home when dragged by my father. I remember the time I got a bicycle and how I got awfully tanned because I used to ride on it all day long. I remember the time I used to read Chacha Chowdhary, Pinky and Billu like my Grandma reads Bhagwat Gita. I didn’t really have a lot of resources like a car or an AC or a computer but I always had 5 rupees in my pocket to treat myself with a kismi bar or an orange bar.
These were the times when life was a lot simpler. Technology had not laid its feet. Ah! Great times. Happy times.
And now, I own a cell phone which apparently, is not difficult to handle( as some people say) yet I end up calling people to help me sort out it technicalities every second day. I see people longing for tablets saying that it makes life easy and comfortable. Well, I dare you to hand me one. In my defence, I come from a family where both, my mother and my father are not techno-freaks and I thank God for making me like them. Saves us a lot of money, if you ask me.
By saying all of the above I do not want to come out as a cynical person hating development but just as a person who is obsessed with her childhood. And I have my reasons. My childhood had innocence; I learned the right things at the right time. I loved outdoor games more than any wired gadget that made my eyes burn. I loved roaming around like a stray dog more than staying inside glued to my TV screen. I loved sleeping on a mattress that my mother used to spread on the roof when the weather was awesome. Beats the body-freezing sleep I now experience because of my AC. I actually liked the whole after dinner chat that the neighbours used to have and now I don’t even know the first names of the people who live next door.
I do not want to have children; ever. And not because of the fact that they are a sheer pain in the neck or because they destroy your body or because there is a devil behind those cute faces; only because this world is unfit for them to live in now. I am afraid but by the time they are born the paradigm of gifts would change, they would be bombarded with gadgets and freaky technology. They might never know how much fun you get out of making mountains of mud. They might never read comics on actual paper. They might never know of a social life beyond Facebook. And when I think of all this, it just makes me sad.
About: A Journalism student from Delhi University. Simple. Happy.
