Celebrating Children’s Day 2010 Virtually

I remember celebrating this day with gusto when I was a kid. Every year this day would be celebrated in school with snacks (popcorn, wafers, glucose biscuits and candies), some balloons, gifts, games and same boring speech by our principle.

Every year we would hear the same story that November 14 is celebrated as Children's Day across India to mark the birthday of India's first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlala Nehru. He loved children very much and was popularly known as 'Chacha Nehru' (Uncle Nehru)!

Every year I would hear our teachers say “Children are the future of tomorrow, you must grow up to be good citizens” and I would anxiously wait for the future when I would be fully grown up.

But I never grew.

The child in me refused to grow up. (what to do?) I am still excited by the rainbow on a cloudy day (yayaya!!). I will still run after a colorful butterfly. (Yipeee!) I still laugh heartily at a good/bad joke (Hahhaaha). I still get annoyed when people ignore me(eeewww). I will still cry/sob when I am sad.(sniff! sniff!)

This year, children’s day was on a Sunday. Normally, my virtual world is closed on Sundays.

Sunday is the family time and I try to avoid going online as much as possible, (although not always successful). There are moments when I peep into my smart phone for a while, stealing some moments from the family time. And with BB within my reach, it is easy to do that. Actually I don’t do it but that child in me does it. (So not my fault at all)

Thus, at the end of the day, when I finally went online on my desk-top (the proper proffessional way), I saw that I had missed a great party.

The great party was at twitter board.

People had tweeted about various things they did #wheniwasakid and (I had missed it, but noworries) I was happy to tweet on this hash even though I knew none of my friends were there online.

#whenIwasakid I would steal baby milk powder and eat it secretly when aunt would be asleep

#whenIwasakid i never knew how to swim or went for any extra class

#whenIwasakid I always worried abt fan falling off from ceiling n crushing me

#whenIwasakid I was afraid of every person in uniform, be it police or a nurse or even a nun

#whenIwasakid I was terribly afraid of earthquake and had tied mom's pallu to my little finger n followed her wherever she went

People had chatted about the things they did in their childhood at #bachhpan too and had posted their childhood pics. It was interesting to read all those tweets. My friend saw me online and asked me to post my childhood picture.

I didn’t have any.

Perhaps my family was not very rich or maybe I was not that pretty enough for my parents to invest money on camera or maybe- both. I don’t have any childhood pictures. There are few pictures clicked by rich uncles and aunts who must have visited my family during that time, but there is none of me alone. But since my friend wanted me to upload my profile picture, I stole one from baby wall-papers on net and posted at a collage titled twitter #bachpan 2010.


I was happy to see my picture in that collage

When I visited google to search for a picture of babies, the picture on the google page was a pleasant surprise created by 14 year old kid from Mangalore-Akshay Raj who won the second Doodle4Google India 2010 competition!

His logo was up on Google India's homepage throughout the day. He named it as 'My dream for India in 2030'. I must appreciate his thoughts as it clearly speaks of his dream, his maturity at such a young age. The logo simply sums up every aspect of growing India

Last hour of the children’s day was spend reading about my friends childhood memories and having a good laugh, and like every other day, I need a midnight feast, walked to my kitchen to extract a box of sweets , thus ended the day with a bite of cold sweet laddoo – sinfully

Find me at twitter at pushpz