What The Little Prince Taught Me...

I have always believed that learning knows no age. Every person who crosses our path has the power to teach us a valuable lesson or two if only we remain receptive and open to the learning process. A lot of adults around give me a quizzical expression when I tell them that grownups can learn so many things from children. Their sense of disbelief transports me to the pages of a book titled The Little Prince which charmingly illuminates the gap between children and grownups. It was quite by chance that I happened to stumble upon this particular book but it is one that I would recommend everyone to read.

Written by Antoine De Saint-Exupery (originally in French), the deceptively simple story of a pilot's encounter with a small boy from another planet actually offers a wealth of insight to an adult who chooses to pay attention to the hidden meanings behind the written text.

 The narrator mentions how, with age, we seem to lose interest in what is really important in life. We are only interested in how things appear at the surface-level without bothering to dig beneath.

Recently, a friend and I were discussing how, as we grow old, we lose our sense of wonder. A friend of mine keeps getting exasperated at my childlike exclamations of "Wow!" each time I find something that fascinates me. I do not blame her. As we start ageing, the way in which we see the world changes. According to me, as we grow up, we stop engaging with the world. It's not that we cannot do it. We just choose not to.Not every individual is able to uphold the sense of amazement or of the sheer enjoyment of life. As we grow up, we lose sight of the endless possibilities that life has to offer which was so apparent to our younger selves. Wisdom may involve being more in command of our thoughts, faculties and desires but I believe that the very experience which helps us become successful threatens to limit our imagination and our sense of the possible.

As a child, it is acceptable to believe that anything and everything is possible. Setbacks in life make us more aware of our limitations. But what is wrong in being a dreamer? In The Little Prince, the author mentions how grownups are only interested in figures when, in fact, for those "who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference". He goes on to explain how grownups are never interested in asking "questions about essential matters" - for example, when their child makes a new friend, instead of wanting to know about his hobbies and interests, they are more interested in knowing his age and his father's income. I couldn't help but chuckle while reading that part - it reminded me of the time when I had been given the responsibility of selecting candidates for an interview based on the resumes they had mailed. I had found myself wondering, "How in the world can I possibly select five from this lot which appears to have the same amount of qualifications and experience?"

I love the way in which Saint-Exupery turns the tables in his book and actually makes the adults appear as the absurd ones instead of the children. Some may argue that my appreciation for this book stems from the self-satisfaction gained from the reasoning that I am not one of the unimaginative grownups scorned in the story but I firmly believe that The Little Prince will inspire people to shift their attention from pointless or self-centered ambitions to things that make our life more meaningful and worthwhile.

Below are some lines from the book that struck a chord. I hope they inspire you enough to read the book, The Little Prince:

• Only with the heart can one see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.
• "What makes the desert beautiful," says the little prince, "is that somewhere it hides a well."
• "Then you shall judge yourself," the king answered. "That is the most difficult thing of all. It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom."
• Language is the source of misunderstandings.
• I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over again, "I am busy with matters of consequence!
• One only understands the things that one tames. Men have no more time to understanding anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship.
• It is such a secret place, the land of tears.

The Boy On The Plane

I recently came across this Parle-G advertisement reminding grownups that childhood is the most educative period of development for children and curiosity is their best teacher. I really liked the message because I believe it to be so true! I have worked and interacted with children in abundance; and as a counsellor and special educator I have found that children are, very often, discouraged for asking a lot of questions, and frowned upon when they try doing things out of the ordinary. As adults, we forget that children are still to learn the ways of the world and it is our job to allow their creativity to flow freely.

As an adult, I still feel we can learn a lot from children. The Boy On The Plane is an article I had written some time back and posted on my Facebook page. I am just re-posting it here and I hope you enjoy reading it. 

THE BOY ON THE PLANE

I am not a big fan of travelling by air. I find flight journeys to be rather tedious and boring...Had it not been the fastest means of reaching any destination, I don't think travelling by air would ever have been my first preference.
Although I always insist on sitting by the window-seat, there really isn't much of a view for the eyes to feast upon. Of course sitting on the window-seat has its advantages - one is not endlessly disturbed by the co-passengers who always seem to want to get up and go to the loo or to grab things out of their bag; and if some co-passenger is not interesting enough, one can always rest one's head against the edge of the plane and pretend to catch up on a few winks of sleep. The latter is sometimes applicable in my case for I've had my share of creepy co-passengers who've attempted to strike rather weird conversations with me!

Flying back to Mumbai from Kolkata, I wasn't in a very good mood. Not only was I leaving a day earlier than I had intended to (thanks to the proposed Bharat Bandh) but I hadn't really got the opportunity to enjoy my stay at home with my friends since all of them seemed busy preparing for exams!

Despite arriving late at the airport, I did succeed in getting hold of the last window-seat. Thank God for small mercies! I only prayed, now, that I did not get stuck with some creepy person sitting next to me. Once I boarded the aeroplane and was seated comfortably with a book to read for passing time, a flustered mother with her five-year old boy, came and occupied the two seats next to mine. The boy was sitting in the middle row while his mother occupied the seat closest to the aisle. He was extremely noisy and fidgeting a lot. "Oh no!" I groaned inside my head. I had no wish to get stuck with a young, talkative boy! Don't get me wrong - it's not that I hate children but I don't like having them around all the time!

He glanced at the book I was reading and blurted, "This book has no pictures! Why would you read something like this?" I sighed. I was reading Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. I wonder what meaning he would have made out of that young boy's statement, I mused. I did not know what to reply so I merely smiled at him. I think he mistook my smile to mean that I was willing to listen to him, unlike his mother who appeared to be rather bored and was scolding him constantly, asking him to behave himself. "Hello! My name is Deep...This is my first trip by plane! I am going to my maasi's house in Bombay. Are you going to Bombay too?"
"Deep, do not ask stupid questions! This plane is going to Bombay - so all of us on this plane are going to Bombay," his mother reprimanded him. "And do not disturb Didi...sit quietly." She, then, turned to me and apologized, "I am sorry. His name is Debashish..Deep is his daak-naam." I gave her a polite smile and assured her that her son was not disturbing me.

As the flight took off, Deep (or Debashish) started giggling. When his mother gave him dirty looks, he told her that he could feel something funny in his stomach as if things were tossing and turning inside! Despite myself, I grinned at his statement. Here I was fervently praying that the journey should end soon and this boy was savouring each and every moment!

Since I was sitting by the window, once the seat-belt sign was off, Deep unfastened his seat-belt and started staring at the clouds. He started visualizing objects out of the different shapes of the clouds and asked me to join him in 'discovering' more things! I was, at once, transported to my childhood days - I remember I used to sit on my terrace and do the same thing (I still do it sometimes!)...I joined him, and, together, we managed to identify a rabbit, an ice-cream, a triangle, a teddy bear and even Doraemon!

It was an evening flight and once the sun set, the blue canvas of the sky was strewn with beautiful splatters of pink, orange and purple hues. As Deep and I started admiring the view, he yelled at his mother, "These orange and pink shades are not there in my crayon-box...There are so many colours! You will have to get me a bigger box with all these colours!" He pestered me when I was not able to name all the different shades of colours that could be seen at that time (I now understand the plight of some of my friends who fail to understand what I mean when I say 'coral red' and 'delphinium blue') and although I was irritated with his constant questioning, I was awed by the wondrous Mother Nature and her beautiful creations.

As we were descending and the landscape was in aerial view, I pointed down to the rivers that could be seen below. "It is in the shape of a 'S'!" exclaimed Deep. "Yes, " I replied. "When you grow up, you shall learn that this S-shaped pattern of the river is called a meander," I continued. "Wow! Ma, did you know what a meander is?" Deep asked. His mother gave me a rather cross look. She did not seem happy about the fact that I was encouraging him to ask more questions! I was thoroughly enjoying myself so I ignored her expressions and I continued to show off a bit of my geographical knowledge as we saw hills and water-bodies.

It soon, grew dark and as we approached Mumbai, the City of Dreams, greeted us with its well-lit roads and we could make out the cars that were stuck in traffic on the road and some that were moving. Deep was very happy to see this view from the top and his face was glowing as if someone had installed a 1000 watt bulb inside him. When we landed, his face had the same delight it had had at the time of take-off. "Ma, this was brilliant! We shall only travel by planes from now on...Bye Didi!" These were his last words as we got off the plane...

I had enjoyed a flight journey thoroughly after a long time...Perhaps, it is better to see things from the eyes of a young child in order to view life with rose-coloured glasses. Only the young, innocent mind truly appreciates the wonders of the natural surroundings. As we grow up, we tend to start taking most things for granted...No matter how old one grows, one should never let the child in them fade away - That would lead to all of us having a mundane existence. Although I have never succeeded in becoming a prim and proper adult and there are times when I still am mesmerized by the things around me, I needed Deep to remind me to experience each and every moment with the same degree of amazement so that I can indeed live life to the fullest! I hope that through the narration of this incident, even you are inspired to just look out of your window, stare at the sky in front of you and just bask in the glory of the great world that lies in front of us always!

Happy Teachers' Day!

I know that I have been away from the blogging circuit for quite some time now...I have been up to a lot of things and at present, I am spending some time with my family in my home-town, Kolkata.

Today is September 5th - all over India, this day is widely celebrated as Teachers' Day.

I am not very comfortable with the concept of assigning a particular day of the year to the celebration of a particular relationship. For instance, I find it really awkward when friends wish me 'A Very Happy Friendship Day' on the first Sunday of every August. I like being with friends and spending time with them but I do not feel it is necessary to celebrate that beautiful relationship on that one particular day. The creation of a day poses other problems before me - for example, there is a limit to the number of people that I can meet in a day; it is not possible for me to meet my entire bunch of friends on one Sunday just because it happens to be 'Friendship Day'. I also do not like being subjected to emotional blackmail by the use of sentences like, "You met her on Friendship Day but you could not find even half an hour to meet me!"

Teachers' Day, on the other hand, is a fairly simpler day. I just wish some teachers and thank them for all the things that I have learnt from them. This was the first time I got messages from my students and I was quite overwhelmed after reading some of the messages. It always feels good to know that you have made a difference in someone else's life in a positive manner. However, I realized one thing: while my students have learnt a lot of things from me, there are things that they have managed to teach me as well!

I feel I have learnt something from every person that I have met in life. Each interaction with a person has always taught me something new. I have learnt from the accolades of praise that I have got but I have also learnt from criticisms. I have learnt something from every emotional outburst and I have also learnt from something as simple as a personal opinion, which may have been very different from my own perspective of looking at the same thing. We are always in the process of learning things - we just do not realize it, and even if we do, we only tend to acknowledge the formal institutions of education. Learning is an ongoing lifelong process and on this day, I would like to raise a toast to cheer the teaching spirit that is present in each one of us.

To all the people whose blogs I read and to all the people who are reading this, I wish all of you A Happy Teachers' Day and I thank you profusely for all the knowledge you have consciously or unconsciously bestowed upon me.