Children's Day Rekhta Shayari blog

Taking You Back In The Memory Lane

Urdu shayari presenting moods and shades of childhood.

Poetry has many genres. Each genre presupposes a certain type of readership. So does poetry for children. Interestingly, they are as relevant for children as they are for the adults. Here are a few examples that will make the point.

Cow is one of the most innocent animals. Too full of the milk of human kindness! A mother, a keeper, a sustainer for a child as much as an old man:

gaay ko di kya achchhi surat khoobi ki hai goya murat daana dunka bhusi chokar kha leti hai sab KHush ho kar

A school is a house of innocence. We all have been there. Alas, one cannot be there for all times in that abode as life beckons us for many more challenging endeavors to take:

jitni buri kahi jati hai utni buri nahin hai duniya bachchon ke school mein shayad tum se mili nahin hai duniya

Fairies are not realities but they are in many ways whom we can’t really ever see or touch. And yet, they are a part of our nostalgia that have been handed down to us through our grandmothers and mothers:

mujh ko yaqin hai sach kahti thin jo bhi ammi kahti thin jab mere bachpan ke din the chaand mein pariyan rahti thin

Down the memory lanes, we shake hands with moments and images real and unreal. The moments of the past make way for the future and the future reverts to past. And that is how we live on and on:

kya bachche suljhe hote hain jab gend se uljhe hote hain wo is liye mujh ko bhaate hain din beete yaad dilaate hain

It is said that child is the father of the man. How true! One wants to go back in time and space to romanticize and to realize the aim that life puts before us. Living in two times and two spaces is indeed living in the two zones of dream and reality:

wo galiyon mein barish wo gulnar chehre tamannaon ke wo bhanwar gahre gahre bhari dhup mein wo patangen pakaDna “wo baaton hi baaton mein laDna jhagaDna” koi kash mujh par ye ehsan kar de ki bachpan ke kuchh pal mere nam kar de

Birds embody children. Both sustain themselves through imagining a space beyond a given space. Can human beings incarnate themselves in some other beings? One surely can for no existence is complete unto itself unless it joins the other:

udne do parindon ko abhi shokh hawa mein phir laut ke bachpan ke zamane nahin aate

Of all the seven stages of man’s life, childhood is the first and the desired last. Poets who imagine and re-imagine the stages of life seek sustenance for us. The best period is surely the earliest phase of life which we miss each day as we grow year after year.