The world will tell you that nothing can overpower hunger, before you learn that hunger is no match for a heavy heart.
Yet even before this, you were born with the suppressed understanding that a fully occupied mind obliterates hunger pangs from being felt.
Ranging in size from Scrawny; Bony; Emaciated; Stunted to Tiny, there were five of them in all.
They did not know how old they were, looking at them one could only hazard a guess.
However looking at them felt like a hazard, so no one cared to look long enough to guess.
They lived in a structure, which proudly considered itself, to be one notch above living on the street.
It served as a house amongst other things.
It was closed enough to shelter from the villains of nature, but too open to protect from those of man.
They were the participants in of a prolonged involuntary diet.
They did not know when they got food, or what, or how much.
Somehow they got fed from time to time, and managed to survive all this while.
Though not having much food was OK.
They were at the age when not having food, is better than not having anything to do.
The age when the stomach can compromise, living on lesser and lesser, or even wither and eat itself.
But the mind at that age is a trick.
It must be fed.
It incessantly asks and demands to be fed.
It cannot come to an accord with the situation that, the conditions do not permit it to be engaged or absorbed.
They were raised on the rule that, each of them had to spend their time looking after the newest sibling.
Though after Tiny, the births seemed to stop.
And once Tiny learnt how to talk and walk, there was nothing left for them to do.
That was the source of their despair.
A despair they were not consciously, but intuitively aware of.
And in order to escape this despair, the five thought of going into the park adjoining their home.
It was a shapeless oval ground.
A wooded park for adults to walk in, with a small portion turned into a playground for children.
The playground looked like playgrounds usually do, brown dressed with mittens and mufflers of Green, along with Red slides, swings and sea-saws.
The playground was a natural place, cleared unnaturally, and arranged to look natural, in the most unnatural ways.
And children were brought there, so that they could experience nature and enhance their natural children'ness.
With the belief, that what they were supposed to do there was a natural thing, and would come to them naturally.
In nature nothing slides, swings, or sways up and down for non-survival reasons.
As a foetus in the womb or an infant, being slid, swung, and swayed is not fun but very close to terrifying.
Even in adult life one would not enjoy that, unless on a roller coaster, which is supposed to be fun, though not everyone agrees.
So when the children see the playground for the first time, in their sub conscious, a million years of evolution scream that it is not natural.
But from the expectation and encouragement of their guardians, the children get over the reluctance and thrust themselves enthusiastically into what seems to go on.
The enthusiasm coming from, having to overcompensate for the subconscious hesitation at the unnaturalness of it all.
And when the children return to their guardians, after doing what they were supposed to do, the guardians look satisfied and happy with them.
So the children think that, what they were doing was right and keep doing it.
The reason for the playground fights and sorrows is that, children have no idea of what to do in that natural environment, with all those natural things.
Each one imitates what they think the other children are doing, and plays along making up their rules while the game is in play.
That causes the fights - what comes first size or gender? whose unstated rules to follow? is everyone allowed to push and cut in or is it just me? Which is why children spend most of the time yelling and running around the objects in the playground, rather than using them, that is them making up the rules of what needs to be done.
Conversely that is also the reason why, when there is a guardian orchestrating natural play and explaining the rules, children spend the time using the objects as many times as they can, in near silence, and look up to the guardian if this is fun and the right approach to have it.
This is because slides, swings and sea-saws were not designed by children for children.
They were designed by adults, thinking that this is what children would want to do to have fun.
Projecting their own Citius, Altius, Fortius onto the children.
Seen carefully, all these objects seem to be designed to move a child about, which at a certain age the children become too heavy or the guardians are too tired to do.
Thus the happiness of the guardians, when the children return from playing, because they feel as if they had done their duty.
Due to budget cuts the park was no longer maintained and fell into ruin.
The guardians hoping that it would be restored kept visiting with the children, and disappointedly returning from it.
Till it was decided that, if there were no funds to maintain the whole park, only the playground would be done up, and opened on a pay for use basis.
And so the playground was restored.
The naturally growing grass was cut and better grass was planted.
The rusted old objects were removed, and shiny new ones were installed.
To protect the children, from seeing the horror of the unmaintained natural grass, shrubs and bushes surrounding the playground, a tall hedge was grown all around it, save for the entrance.
The hedge was thick and green, but in some places refused to come together.
So that if someone came up close and looked, they could see most of what was going on in the playground.
And it was from these gaps that they peered.
While wandering around the park, the five came across the playground, and heard the squeals and wails emanating from it.
To investigate, they first looked through the hedge and saw other the children running, sliding, swinging and swaying.
Then to find out as to why this seemed to be so much fun, they decided to go into the playground, and started walking towards the entrance.
The entrance of the playground was manned by a security guard cum toll collector.
Being seldom bathed, the five had acquired an aroma of stale cinnamon.
The strength of that fragrance, along with being dressed in clothes which refused to cover the body, always announced their arrival from afar.
Once this announcement reached the guard, he stopped picking his nose, and turned his face towards them.
They were not welcome in the playground.
And with one stern look from the security guard, they understood it.
So they turned around and ran back into park.
But after wandering for some time, their luck changed greatly.
They came across another playground in the park, and fortunately this one was deserted.
It reality, it was the place where the old rundown objects from the playground were abandoned.
Having discovered the secret playground, the five wanted to try out the things they had seen the other children do.
They were not sure how to play on the objects, but supposed that if the other children were doing so, it must be interesting.
First Scrawny and Tiny went to the sea-saw.
As they had seen the other children do, Tiny occupied the seat close to the ground, while Scrawny sat on the elevated seat.
Once Scrawny sat down Tiny's seat swung up.
But once up, Tiny did not have enough weight to bring his seat down.
So Tiny remained suspended above, with Scrawny seated near the ground looking up at Tiny.
After a bit Scrawny got fed up and slid off his seat.
This caused Tiny's seat to slap down, landing on the ground with a thud.
Upon impact Tiny was tossed off the seat and landed on his back.
Not knowing what happened, and who was to blame - Scrawny or the seat, Tiny started rubbing his back and wailing.
Undeterred, Scrawny and Stunted tried using the sea-saw next.
This time Scrawny changed tactics and stood straddled over the seat close to the ground, waiting for Stunted to occupy the elevated seat.
Stunted tried but could not reach the elevated seat.
So he tried jumping onto the seat, but missed and only managed to land on the seat horizontally.
This sudden weight on the other side, caused the seat close to the ground to swing up with a force.
It crashed into Scrawny and ensured that that he would be sterile for life.
Post impact Scrawny fell over crying, which caused a horizontally unbalanced Stunted's seat to bang down.
Stunted landed on his head, leading to another loud wailing noise.
Seeing this Bony moved away from the sea-saw and walked towards the swing.
As he had seen the other children do, Bony got on the seat and started swinging.
He swung a few small arcs, and then gained sufficient momentum to reach the foremost tip of the arc, at which point there was enough drag to topple over the swing.
Being abandoned the poles of the swing were not drilled into the ground.
The swing was just kept there.
When Bony got up from under the swing, he was too sad to cry.
He just walked about in pain, whimpering from deep within.
Emaciated having seen all this moved away from those two objects, and went towards the slide.
As he had seen the other children doing, he climbed the ladder to the top and sat down to slide.
He slid almost half way across the slide and then came to a stop.
Beyond that point, the slide was not smooth enough and caused too much friction, to continue sliding.
Emaciated sat there for a bit and then decided to climb back down the ladder.
Holding onto the sides he managed to turn around, and got a few feet back up the slide, crawling on his knees.
Then his knees slipped, and Emaciated fell off the slide, landing on his rear, adding to the wailing noises that were already in progress.
All of them sat about moping and rubbing their bruises for a while.
Each one felt blameless in what had happened.
And each one felt wronged by what had happened.
However children are small in size, but big in heart.
So with renewed optimism, they all tried again.
This time, all in new combinations.
Tiny blaming Scrawny for the previous incident, tried using the swing with a different partner.
The result was equally tragic.
Then Tiny believed the sea-saw was the culprit, and tried using the other two objects, further calamities ensued.
Similar tragedies repeated with the other four.
Every one of them tried various permutations and combinations, of partners and objects.
Every one of them ended in mishaps and blows.
They had received welts and whacks at home also.
However the reason for receiving those, rightly or wrongly, was always screamed at them.
But now there was no explanation, and they themselves could not tell as to who was to blame - the other four or the objects.
They knew themselves as having enough and some others as having more.
The fact that they were poor was unknown to them.
So they struggled to reach the truth that, their poverty was to blame for these disasters.
Tiny thought that it was all unfair, the way the other four coaxed him to into look through the hedge, the way the others behaved with him on the sea-saw, and the way the other two objects needlessly battered him.
He decided not to play with the others, not to play with objects and not to play in that park at all.
So he sat silent and still.
And once he sat calmly, Tiny seemed to be freed of all troubling thoughts.
Sensing this, one by one they all sat down calmly and their minds began to clear from the indignation and hurt which they had just suffered.
However, sitting with a calm mind, quickly caused a rumble in the stomach and a hunger in the eyes.
Intuitively the four started fussing over Tiny, like he was an infant.
At first Tiny tried protesting, but then found that letting himself be babied over, unlike sitting calm seemed to soothe his hunger.
And the other four felt the same, that babying Tiny seemed to douse their hunger more than sitting calm.
They had the unconscious epiphany, that they were better off playing their own games, than imitating those of the other children.
That is what gave them more happiness and satisfaction.
And realising that, with a quiet concern in their eyes, they instinctively looked in the direction of the playground.
As children have a greater connect to the universal consciousness, the five subconsciously perceived the plight of the other children.
The ones who did not know the epiphany, and had to imitate having fun the way their guardians wanted.
But then being kids, in a second the five snapped back and carried on with what was in front of them.