I Still Love the Beautiful World of Childhood


I have always loved childhood. Perhaps there is still a little girl living somewhere inside me, a girl who finds happiness in the laughter of children, feels a deep affection for animals and smiles at the sight of a little paper boat floating in rainwater.

As a woman, I have experienced how life gradually changes us. Responsibilities make us stronger, experiences make us wiser, and circumstances sometimes teach us to hide our emotions behind a composed face. Yet, despite everything life has taught me, I have never wanted to lose the innocence that makes childhood so beautiful.

I love watching children play. Their laughter is spontaneous, their imagination limitless, and their happiness wonderfully uncomplicated. They can turn an ordinary afternoon into an adventure and transform the simplest things into treasures.

Even today, the sight of children making paper boats on a rainy day fills my heart with a special kind of happiness. I remember how a simple sheet of paper, carefully folded into a little boat, could become the centre of our world. We would place it in the flowing rainwater and follow its journey with excitement, hoping it would sail a little further.

Those tiny boats carried no expensive decorations, yet they were filled with our enormous dreams.

I also have a special place in my heart for animals. Their innocence touches me deeply. An animal does not care about a person’s status, appearance or possessions. It responds to kindness with a purity that is becoming increasingly rare in our complicated world.

Whenever I see a child gently feeding a stray dog or lovingly stroking a little kitten, I feel that tenderness is one of the most beautiful qualities a human being can possess. Such moments remind me that compassion is not a weakness; it is a quiet form of greatness.

Perhaps this is what I love most about childhood: the heart has not yet learnt to calculate affection or measure relationships in terms of personal gain.

As women, we often spend so much of our lives caring for others. We become daughters, wives, mothers and the emotional strength of our families. We learn to put our own wishes aside, to remain strong when circumstances are difficult and to keep moving forward even when our hearts are tired.

But somewhere along this journey, I believe every woman deserves to reconnect with the little girl she once was—the girl who could laugh freely, dream fearlessly and find happiness in the smallest things.

I do not believe that growing older means we must abandon that part of ourselves. On the contrary, I feel that the more life we experience, the more precious innocence becomes.

I want to grow older in years, wiser in thought and richer in experience, but I never want to grow so old that I forget how to be a child at heart.

Even today, a child’s laughter can brighten my day, an animal’s affection can soften my heart, and a paper boat floating in the rain can take me back to a world where happiness was simple and life felt full of possibilities.

Perhaps the little girl I once was has never really left me. She is still there, quietly reminding me that the beauty of life lies not merely in what we achieve, but in what we continue to feel.

And if there is one thing I would like to preserve until my last breath, it is this beautiful ability to remain innocent in my feelings, compassionate in my heart and childlike in my appreciation of life’s smallest joys.

Anju Bansal

Article by Dr. Harvinder Mankkar


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