My 9 month old niece is playing in front of me. It is a riveting sight, one which I cannot take my eyes off. She has just started walking a couple of weeks back, only with some support though. But you have to see the fascination in her eyes when she does walk. I think it is more than how fascinated a grown up person would be when he is doing something as radical as lets say bungee jumping. As she makes her way through the house from one corner to the other, she is at times lost as to where should she go next. There are places where she cannot walk as there is no wall to support her, so she sits down patiently then turns on her stomach and clambers her way to the nearest wall and on having reached there, the expression on her face is one of pure joy and victory. On the way she finds something unusual (usual for us elders, unusual for her) like lets say a mirror or a telephone set, and she is cutely engrossed in her new find. Very proudly she shows it off to me that she has “discovered” something new. She falls not less than 10 times within an hour of this walking exercise and every time she does bring down the house with her cries; the cries are loud but at the same time are so short spanned that she starts laughing on seeing a new sight, even before her tears have dried off. Off she goes to her next destination, the incident of her having fallen just a few seconds back disappearing into thin air. I see her and initially one might be tempted to get into intellectual masturbation coming up with things like “enjoy the present” or “the journey matters and not the destination”. But I see her again and I let go of this crappy intellect and start enjoying the “new” world again, freely and innocently, through her eyes!
