Dania

“Di, here’s RM10. Could you please go to Pak Ayek’s shop and buy me some Coca-Cola?” asked my eldest brother. I smiled at him and said, “Yeah, sure.” So I went up to my room, put on my shorts and ran down the stairs. My 4 year old niece, Dania Maisarah was drawing on the whiteboard. “Dania, come follow Anjang to the shop,” I asked her. She looked at me and stopped drawing, placed the marker down and went to me and I smiled at her, she didn’t smile back but she did answer, “O.K”.

After putting on her slippers and I put on mine, we both walked out of the gate and went on our journey to the shop. Dania is a smart, beautiful girl whose mind is beyond her age. She talks like an adult and is a tad spoilt but is still tolerable (and adorable). She has the most amazing laugh and every time she laughs, I can’t help but smile and laugh along.

“How’s school Dania?”

“It’s O.K.”

“Did you make any new friends?”

“I did.”

“Are there any handsome boys there at your school?”

“Oh, no. There are no handsome boys in my school. They are all short and ugly except this one baby. He’s white.” She said while we were walking to the shop. I giggled a little.

“How bout the girls? Are there any pretty girls?”

“Oh there are pretty girls.”

We reached the shop and the first thing Dania saw were the gumball-like machines which dispenses the eggs containing toys in them. While she was enchanted by those, I went to the freezer to take a few cans of Coca-Cola, 100Plus for myself and a grape drink for my mum. I called out to her and she came over. I asked her what she wanted and she pointed at the ice-cream box. I lifted her up and she pointed towards the ice-cream she liked. After paying, we walked back home.

“Dania, keep the change in the pocket,” I said to her.

“But later it will get lost if I put it in my pocket,” she replied.

“Haha, it’s o.k. I will remind you bout the coins in your pocket.”

She faithfully placed the coins, one by one, into her shorts pockets. “Hold my hand Dania,” and a car swiftly drove past us. “See what I mean. You can get hit that’s why you have to hold my hand.” Our walk back home was quiet. She didn’t say a word. When we reached the turning to my house, Dania spotted a small hole on the road. She picked up a pebble and threw it inside the hole. She then walked to me and took my hand again. “You know Dania, Anjang used to do that too,” I said to her. “Oh Dania likes to do it too,” she replied. “I like to throw small stones and big stones inside the hole.” “You think a rock that big can fit into the hole?” I pointed to a giant rubble of a rock to Dania. She kept quiet. I smiled. We reached home.

The trip to the shop with Dania made me realize how much things have changed around me and how much I have changed too. But most importantly, the trip made me realize how wonderful and beautiful it is to be a child. Dania’s carelessness gives her freedom, something that, as we grow older, we tend to lose. Her deep black blank eyes show no signs of worry about the world, no stress about financial status and yet they also show a deep but basic understanding of how things work around her. Holding her hand evoked in me this feeling of longing for something that I know I couldn’t have: innocence. Dania enables me to reflect about time, how fast it has moved and how cruel and selfish it can be and yet, how beautifully powerful and controlling it can be as well. The shop we went to also showed signs of change. Dania’s point of view of the shop is not the same as mine but we will both, I know, have memories of walking to this shop buying canned drinks and chips and sweets. The road I used to walk on as a child to the shop may not be as dusty and busy as the road is now, but it’s still the same path that me and her, people of different generations, use to get to the same destination. Dania makes me realize that being a child is priceless. There’s little to worry, so much to discover and life is all about learning and having fun. In all her child-like innocence and ignorance, little did Dania realize how much things I have learnt from her on this short trip to the shop.

p.s: growing older.