Around a Bow and Arrow




Childhood for me is like the memories of a last love. Feels like an era bygone but the memories are persistent even today. I have been exploring more about childhood since I joined this creative writing class at St. Joseph’s. This set of images was made from our balcony while the neighbourhood kids were indulged in playing. With the Ramayana and Mahabharata fever catching up, A kind neighbor made some bows and arrows out of dried wood for his kid and his friends. The whole kid gang came alive with this new game. The kids spotted a big insect on the road and made a futile attempt of attacking the insect using their bows and arrows. One of the kids thought that his bow and arrow will be exactly like that shown on TV. He got disappointed with arrows that didn’t move two feet away from him even though he pulled the strings with all his might. So he threw them on the road and got his rubber aeroplane that at least covers a solid distance without much effort. The kid started to challenge other kids to beat his aeroplane’s distance with their bow and arrows. Some kids tried hard and some kids threw the arrow with all their strengths instead of releasing it from the tension of the strings. The children were super excited to try this new toy and immediately got disappointed with the failure because of lack of experience of using it. 

 The empty whiskey bottle was a rocket launcher, the straight branches of a flowering shrub which is common in the region became the source material for bows and arrows, a particular boulevard trees’ dried fruit becomes a boat in the monsoon, another trees’ fruit becomes an important resource to make home made cork balls, the stamen of a particular flower became the tools of a cock fight and how things around us generally became our toys is something to ponder on.

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