Neverland

 

I saw the movie Peter Pan

For the first time just today,

One of those childhood memories,

The best that I must say

 

A lovely book was all I had

And what joy for me it brought –

To sail away to Neverland,

With Wendy and the lot

 

Like children all, I too had dreamt

Of pirates in the bay,

Mermaids in the green lagoon,

And Injuns far away

 

To fight the nasty pirates all

With the lost boys by your side,

And in the end, in pixie dust

A flying ship to ride

 

To get a book was treasure all

For the kids in back our age,

No TV, but your mind was all -

And the world grew in a page

 

The memories came back all today

On a weekend evening,

My little one had to see something

And Pan came ‘pon the screen

 

 The pages from my childhood days,

Sprung back to life anew,

Tinker, Tiger, Darlings all,

Were not the only ones who flew

 

Yet, deep within, I felt the truth

The melancholy that came,

The fault for leaving Neverland,

For it was no longer same

 

Decades done, the world had changed

It was just a fairy-tale,

The pixie dust had disappeared

The magic ship had sailed

 

We’d grown up all, that was the way

No magic left to see,

All ‘lost’ perhaps in a different way

Beyond the Hangman’s tree

 

But my pensive thoughts, they came to halt,

When my daughter’s eyes I saw,

Those colours same of childhood days

Filled with dreamy awe  

 

The same glimmer of hope and joy,

That which childhood brings,

Who was I to stop her faith,

In elves and pirate kings?

 

I smiled and sang of Peter Pan,

He’ll come tonight if he must,

For ain’t the world all made of faith

And trust and pixie dust?

 

And in that split, I saw within

A little bit left in me,

Of the lost boys who had never grown

In a faraway Hangman’s tree…

 

9^th July 2022

 

Growing up in the 90s, with no access to the yet-to-be-omniscient internet, no smartphones or Netflix, books were all we had! I still remember my first foray to the kingdom of books, College Street when I was 5 years old. I had discovered a copy of Disney books – Bambi and Peter Pan, and my obsession with cartoons, illustrations, Disney and its associated magic had begun.

For weeks, and months, and years, I would pore through the few pages rich with illustrations from the animated movies and I would read, reread and replay the entire story in my head. Peter prevailed over the cervine story – which little kid would not get enamoured of pixies and pirates, mermaids and magic? And I would draw each page into my copy and colour them hoping to imbibe in me a bit of the stories and the tales – the magic culminated in huge volumes of illustrations that perhaps crafted my foundations as an artist, along with a hefty collection of Disney books. Yet Peter Pan and Bambi would remain my favourites, even to this day (I still have those books) because they embodied not just the stories, and not just my discovery of this magical world, but perhaps they became synonymous with that formative stage of growing up when you still believe in the magical childhood dreams that you could change the world just like your worshipped heroes in your fairy-tales.

Time passes by, and magic gets replaced with money and mortgages. Growing up repaints your world in hues you didn’t know existed. But that old cinder rekindles when you see a young child imbibing in that same euphoria of discovery, enchantment and charm. But instead of correcting them through the melancholy of your eyes, you return to your own visions from decades back and cheer them on, to reinforce their beliefs and in turn, restore your faith, and in that moment realise that if this is not magic, what is…