by Babra Wani
A chance encounter with a little girl makes an adult revisit childhood memories, forgive old hurts, and realise adulthood is far less perfect than it appears.
There are moments in life that last only a few seconds, yet somehow manage to take us years backwards. They arrive without warning, disguised as ordinary moments, and then suddenly something inside us shifts. A face, a smile, a familiar gesture, and we are no longer where we were. We are children again, looking at the world with the same curiosity we once carried so effortlessly.
This morning, that happened to me in an auto.
The driver’s little daughter was sitting there, playing a game on her phone. Now and then, she would look at me secretly. I caught her looking a few times. She passed a smile, and I smiled back. There was something almost mesmerising in the way she looked at me, with that innocent curiosity children have when they find someone interesting.
She probably thought very little of it.
I, however, realised that I had become a ‘badi didi’.
When I was little, I was fascinated by older girls. I would watch them closely: what they wore, how they did their make-up, how their hands looked, how confidently they spoke, how they greeted people, how they carried themselves. If I saw a particularly beautiful or well-dressed girl, I would think, “Oh my God, she is so smart. She is so confident. She is not even shy. I want to be friends with her.”
Sometimes I wanted to become her.
I had no idea what I was wishing for.
As children, adulthood appears almost magical because we only see its surface. We see the confidence, the clothes, the independence, the conversations, the freedom. We do not see the anxiety behind them. We do not see unpaid bills, family expectations, difficult relationships, questions about marriage, money, careers, ageing or the quiet fear that perhaps we are not achieving enough.
We simply see the ‘badi didi’.
And then, one day, without realising it, we become her.
Adulting is difficult, not just for women, but for anyone who has reached that stage where life begins asking things of you that you do not always feel ready to give. Sometimes, because I am the badi didi, I am expected to take on responsibilities I do not want to take on. There are conversations I am expected to participate in, decisions I am expected to understand and situations in which I am expected to know what to do, even when internally I am thinking, “I have absolutely no idea how I am going to handle this.”
But when I was a child, I never imagined that the big girls I admired felt that way too.
I remember one of my teachers particularly vividly. I was in Class 1 when I once complimented her dress. I told her that she had looked very nice in the dress she had worn the previous day. Instead of taking it as a compliment, she scolded me and said, rather sharply, that she could not keep wearing the same clothes simply because I liked them.
I remember feeling humiliated.
In my little mind, she had ridiculed me in front of the entire class. I decided that day that I would never forgive her.
For years, that was the story I carried.
Until today.
Thinking about that little girl in the auto, I suddenly remembered that teacher differently. Perhaps she had been tired. Perhaps she was dealing with something I knew nothing about. Perhaps she had simply had a difficult day. Perhaps adulting had already hit her, too.
And suddenly, I forgave her.
It is strange how growing older gives us the ability to reinterpret our childhood memories. Things that once felt enormous begin to look different when we acquire the context of adulthood.
I also thought about the older girls I used to follow around. Sometimes I wanted to talk to them, know their secrets, sit with them. Sometimes they would simply get up and leave.
As a child, I wondered why. Today, I think I understand.
Perhaps they had their own things to discuss. Perhaps they needed a space where they did not have to be the older sister, the responsible cousin, the sensible daughter. Perhaps they, too, sometimes wanted to escape the eyes of the younger ones who thought they were so perfect.
I understand that now because I see my younger cousins doing the same thing with me.
They follow me around. They call me ‘didi’. They want to talk to me. They want to be around me. Sometimes they ask questions; sometimes they simply sit nearby. And I realise that, in their eyes, I am probably one of those people I once looked at with fascination.
But I am not the person they imagine.
I am sometimes confident and warm. Sometimes I am impatient. Sometimes I am the badi didi who talks to everyone, laughs with everyone and makes younger ones feel welcome. And sometimes I am the badi didi who is tired, irritated and does not want to talk.
Perhaps that is adulthood, becoming the person your younger self once admired while discovering that the people you admired were never as uncomplicated as they appeared.
We see people in moments.
That is all.
When I looked at those older girls as a child, I saw one moment of their lives. When that little girl looked at me this morning, she saw one moment of mine.
She could not see the worries that were running through my head.
She could not see the questions about money, marriage, relationships, growing older, career, achievement and the constant feeling that there is still so much left to figure out. She could not see the fear that time is moving faster than I am ready for. She could not see how often adulthood makes me wonder whether I am doing enough.
She simply saw me.
And perhaps that is why her gaze affected me so much.
For a few minutes, I forgot all of it.
I asked her, ‘How are you?’
She answered with such excitement, almost as though I had given her something simply by speaking to her.
And that tiny exchange made me realise that I had become the very person I once spent my childhood observing.
The irony is that when I was little, I desperately wanted to grow up. Now that I have grown up, I sometimes desperately want to be little again.
Because I know what comes next. More responsibilities. More expectations. More things that change. There may come a time when the body begins to tire, when the mind becomes exhausted, when responsibilities become so overwhelming that we forget who we were before we became responsible for everyone and everything around us.
Perhaps this is why growing up feels so bittersweet.
We spend our childhood wishing to become adults, without understanding what we are asking for. And when we finally reach that stage, we look backwards and realise that the little person who was in such a hurry to grow up was actually living through one of the freest versions of life.
Maybe we did not really want adulthood.
Maybe we simply wanted to know what it felt like to be older.
And perhaps that is what happens when life comes full circle. A little girl looks at you with the same wonder with which you once looked at older girls, and suddenly you realise that you have arrived at a place you once dreamed about.
Except now you know the truth about that place.
The ‘badi didi’ was never perfect. She was only human.
She was struggling, worrying, hoping, failing, trying and sometimes simply trying to get through the day.
Just like me.
And as that little girl looked at me with her bright eyes this morning, I realised something else.
Maybe being the badi didi is not about having all the answers.
Maybe it is simply about being someone a little girl can look at and think, “I want to be like her one day.”
And if, for even a few seconds, I can make her believe that growing up might be beautiful, perhaps all the difficult parts of adulting are worth it.
Even if, secretly, the badi didi herself sometimes wishes she could go back and be that little girl again.
(The author is the Coordinating Editor at Kashmir Life. Ideas are personal.)
