Children and Heaven

Jesus bequeathed heaven to children.  “Let little children come to me,” he said, “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  If he meant the heaven that awaits the faithful after death, that place must be quite vacant.  

Childhood itself is the heaven.  Did Jesus mean that?  I don’t know.  I’d like to think so.  To expect adults to retain childlike innocence is mere wishful thinking.  Even a god cannot afford to be so impractical. 

The child’s innocence is quite ruthless.  A four year-old boy was waiting for his father the other day in my school after classes.  I went and sat near him as I was waiting for my wife who teaches in the same school.  During the innocent, casual conversation I struck with him, the boy stared at my hair and asked, “Why is your hair so white-white?”

“Time has dyed it white,” I said naughtily, “Isn’t it stylish?”

“No,” he said emphatically without a moment’s hesitation.  His body language, a vigorous shirk of the shoulders and the nod of the head with closed eyes, reinforced the emphasis of his protest quite ruthlessly. 

Such brutal honesty is part of what constitutes children’s heaven.  Only a child possesses the honesty to blurt out that the King is naked.

The child will grow up and the heaven will be lost.  The adult world of diplomacy and deceit, jealousy and greed, spite and malice awaits the child.  Inescapably. 

PS. Tomorrow is Children’s Day in India, the birthday of the country’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.  In one of his letters to his daughter written from the prison, Nehru wrote, “You know sweetheart how I dislike sermonising and doling out good advice.  I have always thought that the best way to find out what is right and what is not right, what should be done and what should not be done, is not by giving a sermon, but by talking and discussing, and out of discussion sometimes a little bit of truth comes out.  I have liked my talks with you and we have discussed many things, but the world is wide and beyond our world lie other wonderful and mysterious worlds.”

Indira Gandhi had a wonderful father.  But Indira too had to grow up into the inevitable adult world.  On this Children’s Day, I wish all children a healthy growing-up into the adult world.