Hide and Seek — And the Joy of Getting Caught
Okay, let me be honest with you.
I was probably the worst hide and seek player in my entire neighbourhood. Every single time without fail — I would squeeze behind a door, curl beneath a staircase, hide inside some old cupboard that smelled of dust and forgotten things — absolutely convinced that this time, nobody would find me.
And every single time? Within minutes — tap on the shoulder. "Got you."
And here is the thing that still makes me smile: even after getting caught, every single time, I enjoyed it completely. The running. The hiding. The laughter that burst out the second someone found you. The kind of laughing where your stomach hurts and you cannot breathe properly and you do not even care.
We played until the sky turned orange. Until our mothers called us home — once, twice, and then that third time with that particular voice that meant right now, no arguments. We went to school together, sat in tuition classes (extra coaching after school) side by side, and spent half our school day waiting for the tiffin break (lunch break) — not for the food, but for the twenty minutes of sitting together, swapping snacks from each other's dabba (lunchbox), laughing over nothing.
Every ordinary afternoon from those days still feels alive inside me today. Not like a distant memory — like something warm sitting quietly in my chest.
A beautiful bachpan (childhood). A childhood that belonged entirely to us.
Ohhh — wait a minute.
You must be wondering why I jumped straight into the story without any introduction. No cup of tea. No garden. No warm opening. Just — childhood memories, suddenly, out of nowhere.
You are right. And I owe you an explanation.
This time, I am not in my garden.
Today I am sitting somewhere in the hills, my diary open on my lap, pen between my fingers, on a quiet Sunday morning — 17th May 2026, around 7:11 AM. I came up here looking for fresh air. But without planning it, without even realising it was happening, I ended up sitting face to face with my own childhood memories instead.
And slowly, those memories started turning themselves into this blog.
Usually in May, places like Hoshiarpur (a city in Punjab, North India) burn under thirty-five to forty-five degrees. But today the sky is cloudy, the wind is soft, and for once the heat has stepped politely aside. So I packed my diary, my pen, and — without meaning to — I also carried my bachpan wali yaadein (childhood memories) up here with me.
As William Wordsworth once wrote:
"The Child is father of the Man."
Somewhere, he was absolutely right. The child we once were does not disappear. It just grows quieter. It waits inside us — patiently — for mornings exactly like this one.
The Golden Days That Cannot Be Recreated
I did not come here with a plan of what to write. I never really do.
I just wanted to write about something we all secretly carry — those childhood memories that cannot be recreated no matter how hard you try. Memories that travel with us through every season of life, quietly, like an old song you did not know you still remembered until it starts playing again.
Kho-kho (a traditional Indian chasing sport), pakdam-pakdai (a game of tag — catch me if you can), stapu (hopscotch) on dusty school playgrounds during recess. Stories we told each other that were half imaginary, half nonsense, and completely magical. Kite flying from rooftops. Cricket in lanes so narrow that a big hit meant a broken window and a very fast run. Marbles (kancha) — played with the dead seriousness of someone whose reputation depended entirely on this one shot.
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| Childhood Memories That Still Make Us Smile | Adhure Jazbaat |
Life was simple. Life was ours. Life felt like it had no ceiling.
As Charles Dickens once said:
"There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor."
And childhood was exactly that — laughter without reason, happiness without a price tag, joy that did not need permission from anyone.
Maybe while reading this, something stirred inside you too. A cricket match in a narrow lane. Paper boats floating in a monsoon puddle. Your dadi (grandmother) telling you a kahaani (story) in the dark before you fell asleep. The smell of chalk dust and steel lunch boxes on a Monday morning. That specific excitement of the school bell ringing for break time.
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| Beautiful Indian Childhood Memories Before Mobile Phones Took Over Life |
If a memory visited you just now — hold it close. Sometimes memories are the only places where older, lighter versions of ourselves still exist.
Those school corridors, those ringing bells, sharpened pencils, unfinished homework, tiny dreams that felt enormous — all of it still shines somewhere inside us, like small fairy lights that never completely go out, no matter how many years pass.
Even the scolding teachers feel precious in memory now. Even the punishments feel strangely warm. Because life was still innocent then. Getting caught did not cost you anything that truly mattered.
The Butterfly and the Moment Everything Made Sense
While sitting here, lost completely inside all these memories, I suddenly noticed butterflies drifting nearby in the morning air.
I put my pen down. I did not move. I just watched them.
And then a thought arrived — quietly, the way all honest thoughts do. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just gently, like a door opening in a room you had forgotten was there.
Life has become exactly like those butterflies.
During childhood we used to chase them — arms wide open, breathless, laughing, absolutely certain we would catch one this time. But sitting here today with my diary, I finally understand something I could not have understood back then:
Life was never about catching the butterfly.
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| Life was never about catching the butterfly. |
It was about watching those beautiful moments before they quietly flew away. Time moves the same way. And once it passes, it never comes back with the same light, the same people, the same feeling of complete safety.
We never realise we are living the best days. Not while we are inside them.
The Boy by the Food Stall
While writing all of this, something nearby made my pen stop completely mid-sentence.
A boy. Working near a roadside food stall. Maybe twelve years old, maybe sixteen — when life places adult weight on a child's shoulders too early, age becomes difficult to read. He moved quickly, efficiently, quietly. The way someone moves when they have already learned that there is no time left to stand still.
My pen stopped. My thoughts stopped. Everything stopped.
I kept watching him and asked myself, in the silence of my own heart:
What will his childhood look like when he tries to remember it twenty years from now?
Did he ever get to play during recess the way we did? Did he ever hide behind a wall, pressing himself flat against the cold stone, biting his lip so he would not laugh and give himself away?
Did he ever laugh so loudly — completely without worrying about tomorrow — that tears came to his eyes for no reason at all?
Or did life knock on his door too early and say: "Sorry, beta (son), there is no time for that"?
At that moment, it felt as if my pen itself wanted to write his story on the pages of Adhure Jazbaat (Unfinished Feelings). As if every blank page was waiting to hold childhoods that never got to be fully lived.
"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." — E.E. Cummings
What the Wind Said When I Asked My Pen
I looked down at my diary and whispered, almost to no one: "What are you really trying to say?"
Right at that moment, a cold wind swept through the hills. Some pages of my diary turned on their own — slowly, one by one — as if even the wind had something to confess. As if the hills had been waiting for someone to finally ask.
Questions rose inside me like smoke from a fire that has been burning quietly for a very long time:
What about those children whose childhoods were filled with pressure instead of play?
What about the children whose parents could only express love through examination marks — warmth when grades were high, silence when they were not?
What about the children who stood outside their own front doors after school, afraid to ring the bell, because they already knew what kind of evening was waiting inside?
These are not small questions. These are the ones an entire generation has been carrying silently — without ever finding a safe place to put them down.
"Where did you go, my lovely? Where did the years take you? I searched in every autumn leaf — You were always there, just out of reach." — Inspired by Gulzar (one of India's most beloved poets)
The Letter That Still Hurts
Last Friday, I was scrolling through reels during some free time — the kind of mindless scrolling we all do without really meaning to — when a post stopped me completely.
A girl. Around fifteen or sixteen. She had scored somewhere around ninety-two percent in her exams. A number that most of the world would read and immediately say: brilliant. Well done. You should be proud.
But she had expected above ninety-six. And somewhere along the way, she had been taught — quietly, consistently, without anyone realising the weight of it — that anything less than that expectation meant she had failed the people she loved.
In the letter she left behind, she wrote:
"I failed Mom and Dad."
That line stayed with me for a long time after I put my phone down. It is still with me now, sitting here in these hills, pen in hand.
She did not fail anyone. She was the one who was failed.
Not because her parents were bad people — most parents who push their children this hard do it out of love, out of fear, out of their own pressures and hopes. But somewhere in all that love and pressure, nobody stopped to tell her clearly enough: "You are more than this number. You are more than any percentage. A report card can measure a result — it cannot measure a human being."
Nobody reminded her that she was allowed to be imperfect. That she was allowed to fall short. That being loved was not something she had to earn every semester.
My pen felt heavy after writing that. The words no longer looked like ink on paper. They felt like something much heavier. Something that does not erase.
Click to watch the video below and spread awareness, not pressure. 💔
Smiling Faces, Invisible Storms
And the truth is — her story is not rare. That is the part that truly hurts.
There are so many children walking through their days looking completely fine from the outside. Schoolbags on their backs, phones in their hands, laughter on their lips — while something inside them quietly keeps breaking under pressure they were never supposed to carry alone.
Children who are slowly losing their bachpan (childhood) while trying to become perfect. Trying to become the version of themselves that satisfies someone else's dream. Trying to earn a love that should have been unconditional from the very first day — no conditions attached, no marks required.
Here is something I believe: childhood should be the one time in a human life when love is completely free. When a child is allowed to fail an exam, fall off a bicycle, come home crying after a terrible day — and simply be held. No lecture at the door. No disappointed silence. No "what will people think."
Just: I am here. You are safe. You are loved, no matter what.
There are so many Adhure Jazbaat (unfinished feelings) living silently inside children who were never given a safe space to feel them. Feelings that had nowhere to go, so they went inward. And what lives inward too long, without light, without air, becomes very difficult to carry.
"Sometimes the simplest thing — being seen, being held, being told you are enough — is all a child ever truly needed."
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| image source google image This blog is dedicated to every student silently fighting pressure, anxiety, loneliness, and the weight of expectations — especially those struggling with the stress of exams like NEET and other competitive education systems. Your marks do not define your worth. Your life matters far more than any result. |
The Empty Pages I Left Intentionally
When I came back to my notebook that afternoon, I did something I had never done before in all my years of writing.
I left several pages completely blank.
Not because I had run out of words — I had plenty. But because I understood something for the first time: not every feeling can be written. Not every grief fits neatly into sentences. Some emotions are too wide for language, too raw for paragraphs, too deeply human for ink.
Those empty pages were for every child whose story was never told. For every laugh that ended too soon. For every tear that fell quietly behind a locked door so nobody outside would hear.
And on the very next page, after all that silence, I wrote only this:
"Some emotions can never be fully written. That is why they remain… Adhure Jazbaat (Unfinished Feelings)."
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| A Journey Through Nature, Memories & Unspoken Emotions |
Then I closed my notebook. Placed my pen inside it like a bookmark in an unfinished story. And I went for a walk.
Nothing Is Permanent — And That Is Both the Wound and the Wisdom
Somewhere deep inside, I think I already knew — one day even these pages will yellow. This diary, with all its weight and unfinished feelings, will be forgotten inside some old drawer beneath other books that were also once important.
Because nothing in this world is permanent. Not sorrow. Not joy. Not childhood. Not even the ache of losing it.
But still — I hope.
I hope every child gets to experience the same sunshine, the same careless laughter, the same magical bachpan (childhood) that many of us were lucky enough to live.
I hope every child hears these words — at least once, clearly, with warmth behind them — "You are enough. Exactly as you are. Right now."
Because childhood is not just a phase we pass through. It is the soil in which every future adult is quietly grown. And when that soil is tended with love, with patience, with the simple freedom to just be a child — those roots hold. Through everything. For a lifetime.
"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Childhood Never Truly Leaves Us
On my way back from those hills, as the light turned golden and the wind finally went still, something settled inside me.
Childhood never truly leaves us.
It does not pack its things and disappear the morning we turn eighteen. It simply goes quiet. It hides — inside the smell of old books, inside rain falling on a tin roof, inside the strange small happiness of finding an old coin in a forgotten jacket pocket. Inside the way we still look up at the sky during a storm. Inside the way old film songs can suddenly make our eyes wet without warning.
It lives inside us — in old memories, in unfinished emotions, in the innocent smiles we still search for in this busy, hurried world that never seems to slow down for anyone.
We are all still that child somewhere inside. Still running after the butterfly. Still reaching. Still hoping — quietly, stubbornly — that life will slow down for just a moment.
Maybe it never will.
But maybe the reaching is enough.
Maybe the running was always the whole point.
And maybe that is why some feelings are never fully written. Why some stories are never completely told. Why some emotions stay with us — softly, quietly, and forever — as Adhure Jazbaat.
(Unfinished Feelings.)
Written with love, with longing, and with a pen that sometimes feels too heavy to lift — and too important to ever put down.
— Adhure Jazbaat Sunday, 17th May 2026 | The Hills of Hoshiarpur, Punjab
If this touched something inside you — a memory, a feeling, a face you almost forgot — share it with someone who needed to read it today.
And if you are a parent, a teacher, or simply someone who holds a child's world in your hands: please remember — your words slowly become their inner voice. Make it a kind one.
What is your favourite childhood memory? Drop it in the comments below. Let us remember together — because some things are simply more beautiful when they are shared. 💛
© Adhure Jazbaat, Written by Karandeep Singh. All rights reserved. No part of this content may be reproduced without permission.
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