Outline:
Childhood days, the most blissful days
Personal experience
The memory of school days
Free from the harshness of the world Happy those early days when I Shin’d in my Angel-infancy. Thus sang the mystic poet, Henry Vaughan. Words worth dwells on his childhood days in his great ‘Ode on Intimations of Immortality’ thus:
There was a time when meadow, grove and stream
The earth and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light
The glory and the freshness of dream
It is not now as it hath been of yore
Turn where so’er I may
By night or day
The things, which I have seen, I now can see no more
This is Wordsworth, who is filled with remorse, because the visionary gleam, the glory and the dream have fled from his life. We may realize it not; but one thing is certain that the days of childhood are the most blissful days in the life of man. Often when grown up, and faced with the grim reality of life, a person remembers his childhood days. They are so sweet and charming. One lives surrounded by the light of innocence.
[the_ad id=”17141″]There are some people whose childhood has been sent in unadulterated bliss there are others whose childhood has not been happy. In my case my childhood has been partly happy and partly unhappy. It was happy in the sense that I had not to worry about my expenses. I have the kindest father one can have. He was not very ambitious about me. He wanted me to be moderately educated. Parents generally cannot think what sort of adult a man is going to be. They have their own ambitions regarding their children. I was born in a village, a delightful village, where people loved each other. I always longed to be in the village. The sky there was not blue, people happy and contented. The most delightful thing was that there was plenty to eat. At the age of five I was admitted to a school in Lahore. The schoolteacher who taught us was an old man who liked the schoolmaster of Dickens always fought with the boy. They made a lot of noise and the teacher had to resort to in discriminate beating in order to restore order. Then I was promoted to the second class. Here teacher was always complaining about the strained relations with the Headmaster. This master also beat the boys mercilessly. Throughout my school career I was always under the fear of punishment though I did not get it very often. The walls of the schoolroom were dark and dreary, the whole atmosphere foul and unwholesome. I would greatly welcome the period of vacation when I would be sent back to my time for returning to the town came my heart sank within me, I could not forget the delights of the village. The only redeeming feature of my boyhood was that I was very good at studies and had an affectionate father, a loving mother. I never took part in any game because I had a scholastic bent of mind. Moreover, the facilities for playing games were very scanty. Happy are those people whose childhood is spent in happiness but I believe that very few people in our country can fall back upon happy memories of their boyhood.
