Innocent straightforwardness of a child

There are some incidents which keep coming to you again and again.One such incident, small but significant and having much impact on my mind, occured last year in my life.When I sit alone and peep into my memory lane, it reflects in my mind.

Last year I was at my son's residence in Bangalore. One day when I was in a hospital recuperating after my angioplasty operation, my son along with his mother went to residence after spending a hectic day at the hospital. My daughter-in-law back at residence had to manage two kids - her son [3 years 9 months] and daughter [1 year]- single handedly and was a bit vexed. So when her husband reached, she gave her daughter to him to manage as she was crying.Out of affection for her son, my wife took the baby in her arm so that her son could take some rest.This hurt my daughter-in-law as she perhaps thought that my wife was worried only about her son's comforts and not hers.This led to some discussion and my daughter-in-law fell down unconscious as she often did when she was in a stong emotional turmoil.My grandson silently sat down beside his mother with tears welling up in his eyes.He kept sitting there in a deep melancholy - a perfect example of how things could be said without uttering a word which oceans of words could not say.

Next day , when my grandson talked to me over cellphone, his first question was 'why did you not go back to Varanasi ? ' When I explained that I had undergone a heart operation and I was bed-ridden , he said softly that I should go back immediately.

I pondered over as to why a child of just 3 years and 9 months reacted the way he reacted. I was sad to think that his soft mind must have suffered enormously.There was also a lesson for the adults that nothing should be said or done before a child which could hurt his feeling. His sixth sense helped him identify the root cause of the incident.It underlined the child's innocence of thinking and how free and frank he could be in expressing his feeling so honestly. Really, only a child can have a godlike innocence and honesty!