“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”
Childhood is a wondrous journey infused with learning and curiosity. A carefree and opinionated experience; it embodies the notion of happiness and a tranquil mind. We present to you, a series of pictures that strikes a chord with everyone. We attempt to take you to a simpler time, filled with innocence - childhood. This collection of photographs will evoke a reverie of nostalgia through different interpretations of “Childhood - a thoughtless age”.
It is so amazing how simple things can mean so much to children. Childhood is a stage of life where we can enjoy the part of life that we cannot get back to however we want. Our future is totally dependent and built on the basis of our childhood. Childhood memories stay with us throughout our lifetime. They bring happiness anytime in our life when we are down. The innocence and careless days of childhood can never be forgotten as they are the golden moments.
1. “All the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow”
"The rediscovered path, where were left the traces of childhood's
lost steps."
A child-parent relationship is always a sacred one, and the loss of one child’s childhood is a profound wound for all, one that can only be resolved by the reunion. The photograph illustrates the picture of a little girl child walking into the uncertainties of her life. She is seen to be walking into the boulevard of time carrying an innocent soul, body and mind within herself.
The child in the photograph is walking towards the tunnel of life. The tunnel is the uncertainty of life, it has an unclear and blurry part which isn't showing what is beyond the tunnel.“Don’t worry Alice”, said the rabbit, “Wonderland is better when you are completely lost”. The child looks as lost as Alice in Wonderland. Before passing into the tunnel she is just a pure soul who hasn't seen nor experienced the harsh uncertain realities of life. By the time she comes out of the tunnel, her heart and mind are wounded with the harsh reality. She is left with scars, the kind of scars that can never be removed or ignored just like the realities in life which we can never escape from.
Thousands of children in India are living in a shadow. To make a living, they had to give up their childhood, youth and adolescence as they are either orphans or have a family who are unable to make ends meet. These street urchins mature far faster than their peers and learn to fend for themselves at a young age. They lack the carefree attitude and effervescence of childhood. The vibrant colours around the little girl disappear into just black and white as she walks into the tunnel. The longer she walks into the deep tunnel the higher are the chances of the colours disappearing. . Childhood is not that phase in life which teaches us to stop the rising tides but rather it is that phase which prepares you to overthrow every other stronger tides that are yet to come i.e., it is the starting point to the upcoming events in your life. It is true that stars can't shine without darkness and just like that we will not be able to find the light of life without experiencing the darkest harsh realities of life.
2. "Sometimes the smallest things take up the most space in your heart"
“The best way to make children good is to make them happy.”
As we grow older, we tend to replace the old, rusty things in our lives with objects that are "new" and "better". It's something we do several times over in our lives. What once was a child's most treasured possession loses its value in an instant. We replace our cradles for houses, our cycles for bikes and cars. At the end of the day, nothing's changed. The cycle still exists, there's just no one there to acknowledge it. Adults are just children who have grown up and completely forgotten they were once kids.
Yes, they have forgotten those days when they cried day and night for weeks and months in front of their parents to get a bicycle of their own. They were the days of innocence, of naivety. To once again struggle hard to get onto that bicycle taller than our height and paddle it with all the striving efforts. To feel the refreshing air flowing by gently touching us with our pace increasing at every push of the paddle. To count the trees that we left behind and to have that special lemonade in our favourite glass after a tiring sunny afternoon with our bicycle. Doesn’t it seem like the story of just our last summer vacations! Or do we even remember when we had our last vacations which were true vacations with no work? So, did time just fly or did we grow up too early and bury our childhood under the weight of the responsibilities life throws at us.
The photograph perfectly encapsulated the essence of simplicity and innocence of childhood. It brings nostalgia to the minds of the people who view it. The rusted and used up bicycle perfectly illustrates the distant memory that is childhood. The Black and white colour scheme of the image adds to this nostalgia and helps us connect with our past childhood. This is a symbol, a love letter to our childhood with the most appropriate object in the limelight, a bicycle.
So much of memory comes from the beginning of our lives when we know the world for the first time with a kind of clarity. It is that discovery of the past in the present on which a writer depends again and again as if our lost childhoods, like the surprising cyclamen plant, are forever opening new blossoms.
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