Curious…but won’t be Amazed!

When I was a kid, someone at home or any elder one would say, “Do you want to see a deer?” and then pull my ears, grab the back of my neck, and lift me up. They would keep me like that until my ear hurt, saying, “Did you see it or not?”

At that time, I never thought about how a deer could show up in the house or the colony. But out of curiosity and wonder, I would always say yes.

There were many questions like that, such as: How do in a movie, the hero and heroine change clothes three or four times in a single song? How do they grow up from a kid to an elderly and sometimes old in just 2-3 hours? How do they do double roles?

While watching mythology serials Mahabharat, Ramayan, or Chandrakanta, how did people suddenly disappear? Watching horror movies with special effects used to scare me, and I would wonder, “How is all this possible?” The only answer used to be, “It’s the magic of the camera.”

There was always a deep curiosity. This was a time before the internet, mobile phones, and such.

Today, if we ask kids, “Do you want to see a deer?” without taking their eyes off their mobile, they’d say, “What nonsense are you talking about? How is a deer even possible here?” and they’d make us look foolish.

While watching a sci-fi movie today, we too have come to understand that all this is possible with computer programming, AI, graphics, special effects etc.

My grandpa (Bapu) once told me that when the first train ran in India during the British era, people were genuinely shocked. There was a song that became popular, saying, “The sahib has done wonders, made a cart run without bulls!”

There was a time that whenever someone talked about something extraordinary, people would quickly dismiss them as crazy.

But now, nothing feels impossible. There’s still curiosity, but nothing feels beyond reach.

A person on one side of the earth can see and talk to someone on the other side in an instant. Forget that, we’ve moved past the moon and are now thinking about settling on Mars.

“Nothing is impossible”, literally seems true these days.

I think the only thing that seems impossible is “a dead person coming back to life”—for now, at least.

In short, there is curiosity, but no amazement.