He was a lovely kid. Looked like a cherub and talked like a totapakhi,repeating every word that he heard.I loved his sky-blue eyes wide open in unceasing wonder and the untainted innocent light in them.
Now five years down the line, he's only six and it wrenches my heart to see that his child-like innocence is fast-depleting, or shall I say it's being snatched away from him forcefully.And poor him! He doesn't even understand the value of what he is losing! His eyebrows now remain raised not in wonder but in cynicism.

The horror shows that still manage to haunt me[I should, however, admit that I am a scaredy-cat] leave him non-plussed and nonchalant. He gallantly declares them to be ostentatious gimmicks constructed by computers. He dismisses the super-human power the protagonist inherits from Ma Durga to defeat the macabre bhoot in one such serial in a very grown-up manner.He refuses to fold his hands in prayer before an idol mouthing words like-the true worshipper of God is one who does his work sincerely or something to that effect. For goodness's sake those are his mentor's words that have been imposed on his naive lips. Does he understand the significance? Five years down the line he's still a totapakhi and in danger of forever being so.

His words affect me much more seriously and in a worse manner than those mind-less horror shows do. His matter-of-factness, his 'Realness' scares me. He's only six ,for God's sake. He is being made to act as an insufferable know-it all!!! He has been taught not to believe in magic, in God ,in fairies, ghosts and anything his mentor considers unreal. He has been taught not to imagine. The key to the fantasyland has been jerked away from his grip. He has been instructed to do away with faith, and very sadly, very wrongly he has not been taught to have faith in himself. His mentor has forgotten to tell him that to not have faith in anything else one needs to have faith in himself. And I shudder to think of the rootless heartless soulless ideal machine that he might grow into, ostracised from under the tender influence of magic and faith.

Alarming as it may sound, he isn't the only kid in this century to lose his innocence. Many of his little friends are on the same precariously balanced boat as him. These logical little ones will grow up one day to be logical grown-ups who shall be driven only by the force of neccessity. For them flowers shall bloom to be dissected, clouds shall dissolve into rain for watering the crops that satiate their hunger. For them the moon shall provide another home away from the over-crowded earth. Literature will in all probability be an obsolete word. Love affection and humanity shall be vague memories of unintelligible words that they heard in their short-lived childhood days. Irrational imaginations or fantasisings shall not cloud their 'survival of the fittest' days.

And then perhaps one day magic will happen once again!!!And faith shall hold it's reins.

p.s.- This is not a diatribe against his ill-informed misguided mentor, who i hold solely responsible for and guilty of depriving him of his childhood.