LITTLE CHAMPS ARE NOT TERRIFIED

LITTLE CHAMPS ARE NOT TERRIFIED

by Fazal Rahman on Sunday, April 29, 2012 at 6:39pm ·

          Fear is a grown-ups’ disease.
         They don’t freeze at anything:
          the little champs.


Beautiful.  Angelic.  Six months old. On a visit to his neighbors' in the arms of his beautiful mother.  My beautiful niece, short of ten by two-three years, stretches her arms to get him. But the little fellow would none of it.  Instead he kicks his legs against his mother, eying me. Stretches his little arms to me.  I am amazed at his sense of beauty, ‘excellent taste!’ as it were. You will have to wait, honey, I make aside to my niece, to reckon with him, and your charms playing on him; it’s just a matter of timing.

Chubby fingers explore the rugged contours of a face. Fiddling. His mother, herself barely out of her teens, blushes. Makes a shy excuse: “He thinks it’s (my) father...!” Possibly so. Her father, my friend, the little man's grandfather, too has of late begun to sport a beard. Little squeals, god's own language, two bright tiny stars in clear eyes.  Droplets of honey dew saliva soaking my shirt shoulders.  He has a jolly good time.

My wife finds some ice cubes to prepare soft drinks. I offer the tray to the little fellow. Chubby hands approach the tray. One touch and he pulls back, horror in face. We wait. Was it our laughing?  Or was it the elemental curiosity?  The young man brings his right hand closer to the tray again. Again the same reaction.  Repeat. This time the reaction is a little slow. A few more trials and he is home.  With both hands.

Nothing terrifies little champs for long.

He is on his way to make an important discovery. A sensation new to him. Of course he might not store it in his memory yet.  He wouldn’t name it either right now.  That would come some other time.

I recollect that immortal opening line: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice!”

My wife reprimands me: “Silly, he is not going to face anything like that!”

I know. This little champ here won't ever have to face the firing squad as such. But he too will have to face the firing squads of daily existence... in time.