PAPER BOAT

Last week Jagjit Singh, who harmonised so many mesmerising gazals and other songs, passed away. One of his songs from a forgettable Hindi film has seized our consciousness to become unforgettable. The lyrics of ‘Kagaz ki kashti (paper boat) refer to the lament of a person who has earned wealth but lost connect with his child-like innocence.

A first verse is a plea to ‘take away my riches, my fame, even my youth... but in return give me the monsoon from my childhood, the paper boat and the drops of rain...” Childhood is when the simplest of things are triggers for great happiness. It is time to be happy with things around rather than the futile pursuit of happiness as a commodity.

Everyone craves for the simple pleasures of childhood. Yet so often, we choose to run the dash for complex materialism. As children, we could play with an empty box or a stone or a paper boat... But as adults we tire easily of everything and we chose to be perpetually dissatisfied with what we have and hope to be better at gathering further acquisitions.

The choice is simple. Stop lamenting and choose childhood attitudes... we need to be better at reclaiming our childlike innocence and fascination for life’s simple pleasures... these are found in contentment and connect with relationships and Mother nature... and this is best done by the playful attitude where we create and ride little paper boats in natural streams caused by the falling rain...

Make the paper boat, make time to share and play
Let’s BE BETTER at reclaiming the childhood way!

- Pravin K. Sabnis