Colours Of Life

The angst of Gen X, Y et al lies in the realms of GG- generation gap. The super cool kids cannot see eye to eye with antiquated adults. It does not matter if the elder is only a few years older than them. They beg to differ on almost everything because they live in different times and circumstances. Their mentality seems to be justified. After all, didn’t all of us “older people” go through this phase when we were younger?

Yet, if one scratches the surface, it is easy to see nothing much has changed. It is just a case of Old wine in new bottles. It has made sense to me in various contexts. Yet it gained a haloed status when I observed how a couple of children responded to situations much in the same way across time and space.

Once, I was assigned the responsibility of babysitting a couple of eight and nine-year-olds for a while. I planned to let them play and keep an eye on them. So, I asked them, whether they enjoyed playing games outside of school. They smiled in assent. Then I asked them whether they enjoyed indoor games or the outdoor variety. Pat came to the answer, “That depends on the weather aunty”. So I plied them with another query regarding their favourite game. This time around, they answered animatedly. I gathered that they enjoyed different versions of play stations and online games while at home and enjoyed “gaming” outdoors preferably at a gaming station. They did play cricket on the streets occasionally during Bandhs and at cricket camps in summer besides going out for about of bowling or so. It was clear that they were completely innocent of creative fun games that involved the mind and body which cost next to nothing.

I asked them gingerly if they would care to play a game which we played at their age. They nodded politely. I explained a game called, “Fairy, May I cross the golden river?” to them. In this game, the youngest one would be chosen to be a fairy and he or she would be made to stand in the center of the ground with two lines drawn about ten feet away on either side representing the banks of the golden river. The other young people would stand on one bank of the river and would ask “Fairy, May I cross the golden river?” and the fairy would reply in the negative. Then the little ones would ask “Why?” and the fairy would say, “Because you must have a certain colour!” and the children would chime together in chorus, “Which colour?” for which the fairy would look carefully at the brood and name a colour which none of them seemed to possess. If at all a kid had the colour he or she would have a safe passage to the other bank. If not, the fairy would turn into a crocodile and catch the kids who tried to rush to the other bank. The unfortunate one who gets caught would be crowned as the next Fairy!

 The young ones got the hang of the game and the ball set rolling. I observed that the colour palette of the fairy had exotic colours that ranged from beige, mauve to cyan et al. The children furtively checked the inside of their pockets and even the hems of their underwear to claim a safe passage across the golden river before they tried to scoot across. Just the way we did all those decades ago!

After a couple of rounds of the game, they decided to take a brief break and disappeared into the house. Post break, some of them looked particularly colourful wearing multi-hued scarves, hair bands and bracelets, completely armed to stride across the river without apprehension.

 I could not help reminiscing how some of us would whip out dozens of colourful bangles and wear them on either wrist like some kind of an amulet to please the fairy. The boys would carry different coloured yarns in their pockets to cross the river without incident. Once the game reached this saturation point, the fun would cease and it would no longer interest us. I could see the waning attention in these kids too!

I remembered how one enterprising teacher suggested that the fairy could conduct a quiz of sorts. The ones who gave the right answers could cross the golden river without incident. In the event of a wrong answer, then --- you know the drill. We kids accepted the idea and played for a while, till it proved to be tedious. Besides the new rules of the game would lead to a lot of conflicts and we had to rush to the encyclopedia or some well-versed adult who could clear our doubts and sort out our squabbles. We gave up playing the game after the initial charm was lost. Nevertheless, I suggested the subsequent sequel to the kids and history repeated itself. We parted ways, but I learned that the kids passed on the game to novices at their schools and birthday parties. The game invariably took the same predictable turns and met the same end, but it has never failed to inspire players to pass the legacy on.

What is true of the game is true of many aspects of life. Times have changed, so have people and their mindsets which is in tune with the progress mankind has made. Yet in a given situation, our reactions and responses are more or less likely to be the same for we seem to go through the same motions of life albeit in different times.

When white light is passed through a prism it diverges into rainbow colours. The converse is also true. The philosophy of this experiment reveals that all colours are components of white light and vice versa. If it is the principle of Nature how can a man be an exception?