Today morning when we woke up my three year old Soham was dancing around, “MUMMA susu, MUMMA susu!!” So we both rushed to the washroom where on the floor was lying a dead cockroach.

Seeing it Soham was reluctant to step in and said, “ yaha toh cockroach hai, hum kaise jayenge?” ( There is a cockroach here, how will we go in there) I told him, “it is dead and so it won’t move or do anything to us, let us quickly finish your susu business and then I will pick it up and throw it in the dustbin”. To assure him that it is really harmless lying dead on the floor I walked in first and then seeing me relaxed about it Soham walked in behind me.

When we were walking out of the washroom he asked me “aapko kaise pata ke vo marr gaya? Lagta hai vo behosh ho gaya hai mumma, Hume us par paani daalna chahiye fir vo uth jaaega aur theek ho jaega ! ” (how do you know for sure that it is dead? maybe it’s fainted and if we splash some water on it, it might gain consciousness and feel fine again!) I laughed as I wasn’t expecting that perspective of the situation. It amuses me as to how he always comes up with something like this !

It is true that the innocence of a three year old could make anyone experience ‘hope’ even in a situation like this one. Where an elder like me would quickly jump to the conclusion of the cockroach being dead with no other possibility, the eyes of a toddler saw the possibility of life ! After all ‘HOPE’ it is that helps one pull through the darkest of hour and make it through life no matter what it brings along. Hope is present in each one of us but somewhere in the process of growing up we become rigid with our opinions and judgments, where we think we know it all and that precisely is what limits us in the first place.

Soham’s talks usually make me think how simple life really is, how easy it is to believe in goodness, how strongly one can have belief and faith and how before jumping to a bad conclusion or getting stressed and panicky in any situation, we could probably pause and think that maybe the situation is not as bad as we make it in our own mind with our own thoughts.