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Sunday, August 22, 2010

A retrospection about my boyhood life...

Have you ever paused for few minutes to think about how your experience in the world has turned you into a matured person? I tried to do it few (may be several) years back; although the story I have is old, I just had the time to pen down it. When I retrospect my life, as a boy growing into an adult, I could point out a couple of differences in my maturity level that helped me understanding the world, the way it is.

[For those of you, who don’t know me, I grew up in India. Hence the stories I am telling may not be relevant in your country.]

I remember, on watching a popular Indian tooth paste ad during my boyhood days, I was tempted to write to the company pointing out the mistake that had happened to be in its ad. The ad did say that it had 20 ingredients, whereas it displayed around 23 ingredients in its visual form. I also bought the paste to confirm that there were only 20 ingredients and I did win! Afterwards, I was more certain that in their visual, by mistake they had added the extra 3 ingredients. But the day never came for me to write them a letter describing, what they had missed in their ad. In my mind, I was sure; if I had written such a letter, then I would have received some gifts, as a token of appreciation. As a boy, I was happy that I was able to spot out such mistakes on a leading brand; until the knowledge of world experience, which had taught me the truth that the visual form of the ad was on purpose to show the extra 3 ingredients. Although, I could not confirm with the company about the same, I could certainly tell with my experience (now growing) that the 3 ingredients were there to make the ad watchers feel that there are much more goodness in the paste, than it is in reality. As they say, “a picture is worth, a thousand words!” I could now see, why the company decided to deliberately mislead the audience. My experience taught me that how ethics is not all that important, when it comes to capturing people’s mind. Oops…business that’s a much better word for the last couple of words in the previous sentence. I told you, I am learning…Ok let’s go to the next now.

When i was young, seeing a rickshaw man working hard; sweating every day under the hot sun was really painful to me. For my age, I was quite a down to earth boy; I didn't like the idea of people sitting on rickshaws; pulled by the rickshaw men with all their muscle power. Ok, don’t imagine the rickshaw men to be strong, when I say 'muscle power!' I remember, most of the rickshaw men were skinny that they were barely grounded to earth, by the virtue of gravity! And that was a terrible scene for me to witness, “a man much thinner than the load, (literally the passengers here…)pulling the rickshaw” It was not until, I obtained a sense of maturity in life, I realized that in order for a man to live his life, he needs to earn money and money never comes for free. So, I reinstated my thoughts that hiring rickshaws is not all that bad; in fact, it would be better to give a struggling man, some business. Certainly at a young age, I was more worried about a fellow human’s struggle in pulling the rickshaw than the importance of money to lead one’s livelihood.

Anyways, I just wanted to leave you here with my stories; I could see the world imparting me the knowledge of how things work and not, how I (we) perceive things! Certainly, this is not the end, as I know that I would be learning, every second in my life, so as you! Seldom, we stop our clocks to think about all this stuff; I am happy that I did it… Hope you enjoyed my retrospection from boyhood to adulthood. Now, it's your turn!

3 comments:

@VELU said...

Good one!

Hetal said...

Your childhood memories made me retrospect into mine. when I try to recap those episodes of rickshaw man, I guess all of us at some point must have thought about not utilizing the service of a skinny rikshawala bhaiya. Now, we think we are mature, we think that we are giving them business....hmmmm... Not really sure whether Our thoughts are mature now or were we mature then! Your blog to me is indeed thought provoking. Hetal

Ram said...

@Hetal : Sure I like your point, "Not really sure whether Our thoughts are mature now or were we mature then!"

I can't tell either...unfortunately the world is not kind enough :(