Let me tell you what happened

Some moments in life do not fit inside photo frames. But when memory becomes the only archive, real magic begins.

It all started with a workplace email:

“Happy Men’s Day celebration. All employees are requested to bring a childhood photo and write a message to their child-self. A simple request. Nothing unusual. But I knew I would struggle to find one.

I tried anyway. Called home. Asked my mother if she remembers if any old school or college photos were lying somewhere. Asked my siblings if they could check any old boxes.

I even went through my old files — the certificates and papers I carried with me when I moved to a new city 30 years ago.

But nothing. No childhood photo at all.

For a moment, it felt strange — almost uncomfortable — not having any photos from those years. And then it struck me: I didn’t need a photo to prove anything. The child within me had never left — still alive, still present.

And now, five decades later, the best message I can offer my child-self is not advice, not a lecture, not a warning — just a gentle truth whispered across time.

Dear my child-self, Let me tell you what happened.

First, you should know this — your playfulness and curiosity are still here with me. The shyness is mostly gone, but the silliness never did; it still shows up particularly when I try too hard to be an “adult.”

Life didn’t turn out the way you imagined.

Remember those school days when you were a good football player? Then, when India lifted the Cricket World Cup first time, the world seemed to shift overnight. Suddenly, every boy in every lane became a “batsman.” Football quietly faded and you simply flowed with the tide.

Then, came the high school Board exams — the first time life measured you with a number.

You passed in the second division.

And with a single result, father’s quiet dream of seeing his son studying science and becoming an engineer faded away. A government college wouldn’t take you. A private college was impossible — your siblings were studying, and the family’s finances had already stretched thin.

And then, a door you never noticed quietly opened.

Commerce.

A subject no one in our circle talked about. A path no one recommended. But that was the road that welcomed you.

You took it — not out of passion, but practicality. Lower middle-class survival is built on practical choices. You studied. You graduated.

And then life delivered its biggest blow. We lost our father. Dreams stepped aside. Survival stepped forward. The path to higher studies closed, leaving law as the only door still open.

So instead of becoming an engineering graduate, you became a law graduate.

This is how life works: the dreams we chase fade, and the ones we never consider become ours.

Instead… you moved to Mumbai — that faraway planet you’d only seen in films. A place where people walked fast and didn’t look back. Where trains had their own attitude. Where life didn’t stop for anyone.

You live there now. And that childhood wish of sitting in an aeroplane once? Well… now you fly so often that it no longer feels like a dream to be fulfilled.

Back home, and your friends, everyone found their own path.

All your siblings are doing well. Mother is still with us. And our small house was rebuilt. Bigger, brighter, with proper rooms. Perhaps this is where your dreams finally found their way.

Your school friends also drifted into their own worlds. And there’s something you should know with a heavy heart: your best friend, Rajan, is no more.

The world changed faster than any of us imagined.

Today’s kids aren’t the way we were. They call themselves Gen Z — born into possibilities we couldn’t even imagine. Remember that calculator your rich friend once brought to school? That evolved into a mobile phone. And that mobile phone evolved into a world.

Children don’t play outside anymore. They play inside screens. Friends don’t come home after school; they come online. Arguments, gossip, relationships — everything happens on devices thinner than your old compass box. And now the same device has become the camera and the photo album. But hardly anyone takes photo prints.

And somewhere through all these changing times, you found yourself becoming a father of two. And life quietly moved in directions you never imagined. Some dreams broke. Some changed shape. Some arrived without announcement. And some — the most important ones — found you when you weren’t even looking.

Through all of this, I’m grateful you stayed in me — curious, playful, foolish, hopeful. It’s not that I outgrew you. I grew with you.

And one last thing before I stop: though I couldn’t preserve you in a photo, don’t you think that what lives in the mind and body is often more vivid, more alive, more real than any photograph could ever be?

Let’s keep this journey going , together. Happy Men’s Day.

P.S. Dear reader — Be an adult but never lose the child in you. Thank You.

Read The Nine days