A Child's Wonder

Can you imagine yourself as a child again? Imagine yourself back in a simpler time when going to school early in the morning was the biggest of your problems and playtime was the best part of the day. Imagine yourself barely being able to reach to reach the door handle a few months ago and reveling in success when you’re able to turn it open now. You enter a room filled with wonder. A toy train loops around your feet as you walk towards your cupboard and pull out your favourite t-shirt. It’s a relief to be able to change out of the itchy school uniform. You toss it on the bed beside you as soon as it comes off. You vaguely hear the pitter-patter of the rain and glance outside to see the raindrops racing down the glass of the balcony door. You walk around the bed and closer to the doors beyond which lies a balcony. The balcony has a lovely seat built into it that your elder sister loves to sit on. You don’t like it much because your feet still don’t reach the floor when you sit there. Instead, you focus on observing two raindrops competing with each other, silently rooting for one of them and being disheartened when it doesn’t win. You know there are more fun games and toys waiting for you. Your room is not the same as your parents. The roof is much farther away from you when you lie on their bed. Your bed on the other hand seems cozier. The ceiling above looks like the block puzzles you play with sometimes. You often like to imagine the other patterns that the squares on the ceiling could be arranged in. Playing with blocks seems like a good idea for the time being. Instead of heading out to the play area though, you head up to it. The house has a staircase to come up from the ground floor but your room has its own mini-staircase, in the form of a ladder that takes you up to the mezzanine play area. In your excitement, you run up the ladder almost missing a step. Your mother often asks you to slow down on the ladder but you always forget in your hurry to get to the toys. As you step onto the mezzanine your toy chest comes into sight. Beyond it you can see the tree that you wish to climb someday, when your father agrees that you’re big enough for it. The toys lying around are tempting but you’ve changed your mind now. You’d rather just lay around on the hammock that goes all the way from the edge of the mezzanine floor to the wall, playing tetris. The friends who come over to play with you for the first time always step onto the hammock gingerly but you  just jump onto it now. Can you imagine having a hammock in your room and not making the most of it? Can you imagine having a room like this?

I for one couldn’t have up until the point that I visited one of our sites under construction. This was the first time that I had seen a mezzanine floor under a sloping roof used as a design in a children’s bedroom. Instantly I wished that I could’ve had a room exactly like this. Maybe not me but somewhere, someone will definitely get to experience the childhood that I missed out on all thanks to the team at Sandarbh.  

-Mannat