Innocence - II

Elsa is rolling all over the divan - heedless to both strict rebukes, and indulgent pleas - when she accidentally happens to drop a pillow! She occasionally has these fits of playfulness; but even through countless such intense episodes, she had never managed to drop a single pillow off the bed!! Without anyone telling her anything; she is startled by her own "never before" act. She now stares down intently at the dropped pillow, stuck by the full enormity of her realization; then quickly jumps off the divan to run for cover. She has clearly crossed the limits hitherto known to herself, and committed some "terrible", "unforgivable" offence just now. :)

Dogs, they say, have the mind of a 4-5 year old kid. Children, even older, react in much the same way in the face of a new/uncertain outcome that they had neither expected, nor know the "implications" of. When their own simple, trivial fun turns out to be quite different from what they had intended, and starts appearing "non-trivial"; they can unnecessarily go through some torturously tense moments over mere trivialities that adults can only laugh their hearts out on. They may not reach out, but they are in need of immediate assurance that things are OK.

Reminds me of two of Chekhov's [Home, A Trifle From Life] wonderfully insightful short stories on a child's state of consciousness. (Somehow, I strongly recall the titles as being "At Home", and "A Trivia" instead, from my hard-bound collection by Vostok Press). Happy reading!