Growing up is a slow process of degradation- of principles, morals and confidence. As a kid I always identified myself with the knight in the shining armor or the do-gooder of the fairy tales. I was never the damsel in distress who always spends the best part of the story locked up in a tower or sleeping. (I lost faith in fairy tales very soon. But that’s a different story). Now a days I find myself at times, identifying with the bollywood heroine who sneezed out her miniscule brain through her nostril while dancing around the tree. Is that not proof enough to say growing up degrades you? 

For the sake of argument, you may say a kid’s life is so much easier? Really? For kids deadlines are for real. I don’t remember ever having missed a deadline to finish some assignment or submit some form. But now I am busy concocting excuses to explain the schedule slippage even before the dead line is made. Kids are expected to remember everything. Forgetting to bring a text book to school could land you in trouble where as now as an adult you have the freedom to forget and misplace anything- ID card, driving license, tickets. There are always work-arounds and it is not even looked upon as a lapse on your part. It is “just natural”. The challenges are sure different but the pressure is just the same and yet a kid manages to preserve the goodness.

 

Growing up is about redefining the right and the wrong. It is about crossing that line between sin and fun. Things that were hitherto sin becomes fun weekend activities. Apart from an occasional guilt trip, we are unfazed and often proud of the changes in us. Sometimes in the small interval of sanity and sense between the last smoke and the next sip of alcohol, I berate the death of the purist in me- the child who looked down upon smoking and boozing. What happened to that child who could empathize with the less fortunate? Today I would without a second thought step on someone to hoist myself up a step or two on the corporate ladder. Anything for that ever elusive promotion!

But as they say change is inevitable. But could we not grow up without killing the kid in us?Probably it is all a due to a law of conservation. At any point of time the ‘bigness’ in you is a constant. Mathematically speaking the product of the ‘bigness’ of heart and ‘bigness’ of stature is a constant. Consequentially as you grow old you degrade in morals and principles. Sigh!!! I wish I could ungrow myself. If only wishes were horses, i would saddle this horse and ride away from the throbbing head ache that accompanies my hang over. Do I need to mention that the wish only lasts as long as my hang over?