T O Y S

T O Y S

            Toys are in the news today (31^st August 2020). The point being made is that according to the philosophy of Atmanirbhar Bharat (Self-dependent India), our country should become a hub for toys production.

The global toy industry is over seven lakh crore rupees but India’s share is very small and we shall have to work to increase on it. However, the toys to be made in India should encourage the creativity of children and the motivational slogan should be Come, let us play.’’ 

            Interestingly, another news item on the same day said foreign demand for handcrafted products has taken a Covid-hit. This included the heavy fall in the export of Karnataka’s toy-town production of Channapatna wooden toys. Unlike in the past around this time , this year there was no demand from European nations and other countries.

            I am no longer a child but I do remember that several parents did not encourage a child’s engagement with toys. They regarded it as wastage of time and money, as the toys were brittle and consumed a lot of study time. Quite often disobedience in this matter invited parents’ wrath and the child was either scolded mercilessly or hit physically.   

            Given below in this context is a very famous poem ‘THE TOYS’ written by an English poet of the Victorian age Coventry Patmore (23.7.1823---26.11.1896). He was the son of Henry Patmore who was himself a prominent literary figure.

            Patmore produced a lot of good poetry, had several admirers, but was denied a front rank, given to Matthew Arnold and others, because of his angelic themes.

Two of his best loved poems are The Angel In The House and The Toys. Given below is the text of ‘The Toys’. 

Its keynote is that quite like children adults, too, play with toys.  In fact, they play with them throughout their life. The difference lies only in the forms of the toys and the nature of their emotional gratification.

So, like parents with children, God, too, can feel offended with defaulting adults, but He does not and simply exclaims: “I will be sorry for their childishness.”

                                                THE TOYS    

“My little Son, who look’d from thoughtful eyes

And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,

Having my law the seventh time disobey’d,

I struck him, and dismiss’d

With hard words and unkiss’d,

------His Mother, who was patient, being dead.

Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,

I visited his bed,

But found him slumbering deep,

With darken’d eyelids, and their lashes yet

From his late sobbing wet.

And I, with moan,

Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;

For, on a table drawn beside his head,

He had put, within his reach,

A box of counters and a red-vein’d stone,

A piece of glass abraded by the beach,

And six or seven shells,

A bottle with bluebells,

And two French copper coins, ranged t here with careful art,

To comfort his sad heart.

So when that night I pray’d

To God, I wept, and said:

Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,

Not vexing Thee in death,

And Thou rememberest of what toys

We made our joys,

How weakly understood

Thy great commanded good,

Then, fatherly not less

Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,

Thou’lt leave Thy wrath. and say,

“I will be sorry for their childishness.”

                                                            ------

31^st August 2020                                                         G. R. KANWAL