Wednesday, October 16, 2013

"Do Peacocks Exist?"

Posted by at 12:27 AM
The festive season is going on. And with the onset of the colorful mood of our glorious culture, we get a chance to get back to our roots, getting an opportunity to meet people we had forgotten to meet for the past one year and to be able to reconcile with our traditions.


I have got many cousins-a good lot of them. That's a good part of being an only child-teaming up gets only better, and sharing of opinions get fun at times. So one day, during the Durga Puja celebrations, one of them comes up with a question for me. Mind you, he is 6 years old. His question was-

" Dada, do peacocks exist?"


I answered his question with a casual "Yes indeed they do" at first, but then it got me thinking: what did he just ask? Does he believe that the existence of peacocks is merely inside that television and those magazines with colorful pages?

This got me thinking: What kind of a planet are we leaving for our future generations? Those species of flora and fauna that we used to come across quite normally as kids, are becoming objects of rare imagination these days. Maybe his scope of understanding and exploration was limited, but to think that we never asked this same question when we were of his age, negates that idea.

Seeing me pondering over his question, he came back to me and in an attempt to cheer me up, he said , "Don't worry Dada, even if the peacocks don't exist later, then they will come into the latest Angry Birds game (he meant an update) and then they will stay with us forever." I looked at him and couldn't do anything but smile back.

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