Thursday, February 28, 2013

On being a toddler again


How would have been my days as a toddler?
I called up my mom to ask her how I was as a toddler.
Did I put my left on the floor first? Or was it my right?
My mother couldn't recollect. As she brushed off my stupid question, I shot the second.
Did she ask me to step forward or did I do it myself? I could her the TV volume go high.. My mom said that it was time for her favorite serial and I sat in the hostel thinking what would have happened the day I toddled first. I wanted to call my back and ask her a few more questions. But I didn't.

I asked myself.. Was I bare footed or did I wear something on my then tender feet?
Was my mom a proud mother as the lovely mom who drops the phone in the Johnson's Baby oil advertisement? How old was I when I started toddling?
One of the kids who has been very close to me and I observed was my Anna's naughty little angel... She used to swing only her left arm while she walks and would carefully take a deviation when something was there on her way. Did I swing both my arms or was it only one? Did I walk consciously like her?
Was I scared to walk?
Did I walk alone? Did I hold my dad's hands?
Did I balance my feet? or did I manage on one?
Did I have the support of a walker?
Did I bother if somebody saw me walk unsteadily? Did I cry when I fell down? Did I want somebody to assure that everything was fine?
God would somebody not give me an answer to all these questions.

As I sat immersed in deep thoughts, my mobile starting vibrating and brought me back to my senses.
It was my mother. And she started "it was a scare for me from the moment you started walking. I had to ensure that you were always under my supervision. It was big botheration for I didn't know where you would go. In a jiffy you would vanish and settle inside a tub of water in the bathroom, bring down clothes from the cupboard or the all the vessels from the kitchen. If let to walk in a provisional store, the shopkeeper's day was at your mercy."
It was my mother's mistake to have kept everything within my reach and to have left the bathroom door open for me to sneak in.

And so my mother continued her complains about how I walked to get vegetables in the shopping center at the age of 3 leaving everybody in panic.
It was my mother's mistake to have left me on the floors to walk and carried my elder sister. She said I enjoyed strolling and the little plump I was a little more than what my mother could manage carrying. Wish my mother had a pram to take me out,

And finally why all this contemplation after years since all toddling got over?
It was a day for being a toddler again. There was somebody beside to tell me how to put my foot forward,
how I need to grip the bars to gain balance. The person again asked me to see straight and have my spine straight. It struck my mind, for I was being instructed on how to do something that I've been doing for years.
There I was trying to ignore the fact that there were too many on lookers and was conscious not to make a show of my incapacity I felt.
There with so many instruction felt my feet shiver, and sweat running from my forehead and was unable to walk. Wanted to ask for help.
My feet wouldn't do all it was doing all these years. Why?.. Just wanted somebody to assure, you are okay. No everybody was occupied with their work. and there I walking alone.
Wondering what all this is all about.. That was my first day at the gym on the treadmill.



2 comments:

  1. Ha ha ha ha ha ha........
    While reading the story I thought it was abt something else and never expected that it will end with THREADMIL......
    Good one....

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  2. :-)

    A couple of weeks back, my parents, me and my two year old nephew were at our ancestral house. And towards one corner of the plot was a large well, with its sides caved in . I wanted to see it because I knew that at 2 years of age, my mother found me peeking into this very well, leaning onto its broken walls! It was then, when my mother told me, "You almost died at least a couple of times during your childhood days!"

    Now, whenever my little nephew does something naughty, everyone chimes in "Just like his uncle!"

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