The amazing sense of Awe

That feeling of WoW which we felt when we were kids had the power to make us feel extremely joyful, make us curious and nudge us to dream.

We still vividly remember the first time of reading Alice in Wonderland. Even though it was not our favourite fiction book, one of us still spent the next few days looking for rabbit holes under trees and wondering if the children who lived in Britain near farms with easy access to rabbit holes under trees had better luck finding magical rabbits to follow. We will confess to one thing though – staring closely at big ornate mirrors wondering if the mirror would change into the looking glass and lead us into another world after being stared at long enough.

In the case of Suchitra, specifically – she used to clap every time she saw a train running on a bridge. she even wrote a poem about it. She still stands on the platform looking at the Vande Bharat train wondering what it would be like to travel by it. But this is not about what she would like to do. This is more about the sense of wonder that the children of today have.

When we were children, we watched animation movies convinced that there were a host of cartoon figures dancing behind the screen. Watching a cartoon movie with a bunch of kids today means conversations with them where they talk about the graphics involved and how bad the animation was. Or sometimes about the origin of the characters and how true the movie was to the original story.

It made us stop and wonder. Where did that sense of wonder and joy go? Today, kids go from activity to activity or from one video game to another with no respite or even time to breathe. And the age of the internet has ensured that anything you want to know and ask, you can get the information almost immediately. There is no sense of mystery left about anything anymore.

When we were children, we would wait for our favourite aunts and uncles who were perhaps readers or working in certain fields to tell us more about things that we wanted to know about their industry. It was a time when one would wait for a certain uncle to come and tell us mythological stories so we could hear more interesting stories about the Hindu Gods and Goddesses. And he would narrate the stories in such an interesting way that all the children would wait eagerly for his next visit and pester him for multiple stories in each visit.

Today’s children treat aunts and uncles like gift machines. Working parents who cannot spare the time to sit with their children and tell them stories use expensive toys and electronic devices to compensate for their presence and time. And most people of their generation follow suit. Today, people grumble when parents request that children not be given electronic devices or edibles as gifts for birthdays and other occasions. Bring books as gifts creates a conundrum for adults who are not readers themselves and do not know how to pick an age-appropriate book for children without help from the book shop assistant or another adult who is a reader.

What do you feel? What did you wonder at when you were a young child? And if you are a parent, does your child still manage to hold on to that sense of wonder? More importantly, are you able to do that?

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