Children

Nine months full of dreams and anticipations… then they arrive, tiny bundles of joy. Every thing about them is just fabulous. Tiny feet, tiny hands, tiny toes.. they are just perfect!

Then what goes wrong? Why do parent start to give more importance to their career than the children themselves? I have often seen parents crazy about their children’s performance, hurting them, abusing them to no end. Making their life a nightmare.

They try to make their 3 year old memorise all the poems in the book because they have to prove that she is smart, she must know the answer to all the questions of her book and if possible some more. These small ones drag their days from school to tution and back home for some more studies.

Its true that in today’s competitive environment studying is important, but trying to make Einstein out of Master X is too much. And when Master X comes to know that he cant meet his parents ever increasing demands he starts to lie, to save himself, slowly it becomes habit. Some times this pressure makes the life of these children so miserable that they take wrong decisions like ending their life or run away, which often results ending up in the hand of traffickers.

The only question which arises in my mind is, is the career bigger than the child you have brought into the earth? You were so eagerly waiting for his or her arrival, dreaming, loving him or her before she came to the earth. Then when did the paper became more important than the live being God has placed in your hand as Her greatest gift, those tiny hands which reach out at you thinking you are next to God? If every one was Einstein, then no one would have remembered him. Just like that, every one does not have the capacity of becoming megastars. So, why don’t these parents treat their children as human beings and give them their best, instead of expecting the best from them?

Children are wonderful … they are universally wonderful. A child is never born bad, it’s the way he/she is brought up determines his life’s path. Fault lies in the parents, not in children.

I personally feel that people who have a child in their life, a child they can love, cherish and bring up are extremely lucky. So they should not waste this chance of showering their affection by chasing the golden deer, the golden deer of realizing their dreams through some one who might not have the capacities or inclination for realising that dream. Whenever they will think that their child is inferior than some prodigy, they should think about people who never had a child.

They should bring up these little angels with tenderness and affection. They should be shown the path which they are capable of following and handling, guided not goaded.

A lifetime experience

Six years earlier I was a small town resident, all who had her share of monsoon misery was getting wet on the road that too occasionally. Never had any other problem, because once after hitting home we knew we were warm and safe.

Things changed after shifting to kolkata, in 2005 I was in Khardaha, outer Calcutta. That year gave me first hint about kolkata’s rainy day blues. I was informed after a downpour of two days that the trainlines are submerged, all I did that took a leave for three days. Last year and this year showed me the hell people of some areas in Calcutta go through year after year. No, its not a single year story, when Calcutta has faced abnormal rainfall. Its their every year story, even when the monsoon is normal. They know that they will have to wake up in the middle of night to see that their rooms are filled up with water.

Let me share my own experience to give a little view about their suffering, we changed our accomodations in 2006, when we landed in that house, no body told us any thing about horrible water logging which is that area’s monsoon woe. The agent was only interested in his commission, and the landlady and her family were sweet talking devils, I am yet to see another family so cunning, so corrupted, yet so sweet talking. Hence they too did not bothered about giving us the least hint. One fine night I woke up at midnight for a glass of water and when I stepped in the passage I felt water touching my feet, I turned on the light to see atleast 4 inches of water. And my adjoining room where my brother sleeps was six inches under water. My room was spared because it’s a little higher.

Next year, water logging started with the very first spell. Every day when I went back from office I used to see the rooms filled up with water which I had to drain out with buckets, no cooperation from landlords, who simply pointed their finger at their invisible mother/mother in law, (who was at that time living in Khardaha with her sister, quite a coincidence but we never saw them before landing in their clutches).

Then when I used to wake up in the morning I used to get welcomed by the rooms which I have cleaned up the earlier night filled up with water. Lovely way of passing time after returning home working entire day, was not it? And that too after paying 3000 rupees per month as rent, which is quite high as per kolkata.

Added pleasure was my office area was also infamous for water logging. Now when I am in a proper house I look back at that time with a light heart, but at that time Phew!!!

In gist I used to come out of the office and walk kilometres to reach bus, in knee deep water, praying to God for my dear life. Then travel through a packed bus for almost two hours and again land in knee deep water wade another few hundred meters and voila!! A house under six inches water waiting for me.

This says how polite people are always abused. If it would have happened anywhere outside kolkata, it would have happened only once.. one year.