Saturday, July 27, 2013

Magic Clay

Its not that we never saw beautiful dolls, that was made for rich parents children only. Of course, I did played with good looking dolls too, when I was growing up child in Bal Mandir. Oh, forgive me If I sound bit misleading to you here; because those dolls used to be in such conditions, they needed major operation on almost all parts of the body, with some exception. However, no need to worry, as it was only doll and needed no hospitals, if they had their body parts separated and lying on different parts in different area of the room. But, what can you expect when there were almost 50 girl children to play. A perfect toy that would not break, was a distant dream unless its made with wood or so.

What is interesting to learn now is that not having, does not necessarily mean, that we did not play with dolls. We have liberty to use our brain at the very young age to make our own dolls and then play with it. I would not go into the details of it as playing dolls was not something my favorite things. Okay, I am not telling that it was of best quality but it was  good enough for us to play or even pass time with something we created for ourselves. What I can remember was playing with dolls just could not hold me for long and I did stopped playing with it, you sure can imagine that the dolls I used to make was worse in the group perhaps to entertain me or to hold on me to it.

But that was not much of a problem. If I don't like dolls to play with, I don't have to force myself to it. There were plenty of other children like me to pass time and there was even play room for us.

Maybe I could have been younger than ten years at that time just cant remember my exact age then; but, there was one thing in that toy room, that hard to forget even today. It was a non-sticky magic clay.

I was not the much of an artist to make good art out of that clay or to make something worthwhile from it, that was not expected as we were just a learning child. But the good thing about that clay was we could make anything out of it, and then dismantle it at the end of the day and then next day we still could make something totally new item out of that same clay.

Another good thing about that clay was that it never made our hand dirty, it was a clean clay and and it did not stick in our hand, while we work on that clay.

There is no doubt that like so many things during my childhood, this magic clay was also a donation from rich nation. This perhaps is one of the best toy I have ever played in my life that has lasting impact in my mind. We could be as creative as we wanted, we  could be as messy as we wanted and unlike making doll from rags, I did not have to see it for days with its horrible and scary look, staring at me even at nights from the pace we keep it. The dolls we made used to be our own property and we could keep it with us. But the toys we used to play in the toy room was something, we have to leave in the toy room once the playtime was over.

Its been more than two years, I have been writing. Writing is kind of that easy like playing with that magic clay. Freedom to use words and then again deleting whole line or paragraph or at times pages and then finding other words to make another line that forms a paragraph instantly that makes more sense has something to remind me of that magic clay. You can mold it anyway you want and any story you can tell.

The same words can be used to form another story and then other article and then other book. Even then, no one is going to tell you that you have used the same words to tell us this story too. To tell a story, to the whole world all you need is words and mold it as you wish. Freedom to mold words in a story could be that easy, was something I could have never thought of when I was playing with that magic clay. As I write, If not always then most of the time that magic clay keep coming in my mind, that used to be our toy as I was growing up. Never knew not even in my wildest imagination that small thing can have this kind of impact in my mind and one day mold my own path of life.



2 comments:

  1. Oh yes ! Magic clay brings fond memories of my school days.
    It,s always nice to read your posts.
    Tc

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  2. Good to know that. It feels good to read nice comments and know that it touch life.

    ReplyDelete