Little lives ...

No sane person would enjoy reading the newspapers these days. And I punish myself twice each morning since I get two sets daily. Its normally amusing for me to see the wide disparities between the facts as presented in one paper compared to the next. There was nothing funny about today’s news however. A host of tragic stories – all to do with children. How many ways will we find to neglect and abuse our children I wonder? Abrupt endings to lives just beginning are so much more painful to contemplate – that’s why such stories haunt me for days.

The first story was one of those that will give any mother nightmares. A young mother was feeding her eighteen-month old son near open windows in a ninth-floor apartment. According to one account, the bowl of food slipped from her hand – she instinctively tried to catch it and loosened the grip of her arm around the little boy and he fell to his death. Was it a completely idiotic thing to attempt to feed a squirming child near an open window in a high-rise? Of course it was. Why was there no grill or some such protective mechanism? When builders cut corners, they don’t think twice about something as trivial as children’s safety. The buyers don’t seem to care or think ahead either. Despite all the immediate reaction to cast blame and wonder at how people could be so thoughtless, the overwhelming emotion is that of empathy with a mother who lost a child in the most careless fashion possible. How on earth will she live with herself? When I had two very young kids vying for my attention, I used to lose it with myself and the kids often enough so its easy to understand why she wanted to just get done with feeding the baby and on to the million other things vying for her attention. But it still doesn’t change the fact that the loss of her child was completely senseless and tragically avoidable.

The second story was something I should be used to by now but somehow never can get inured to. A guy grabbed his newborn daughter and threw her on the ground in an attempt to end her life because the combination of her undesirable sex and accursed clubfeet was simply too much for his manly pride to handle. After all he had apparently forced a promise out of his wife that she would only deliver a son – how dare the useless woman go back on her word and produce a freakish specimen instead? The last update mentioned the baby was still alive and struggling for life – every being wants to live, sex and club feet notwithstanding.

The third story is also tragic, perhaps excessively so because it shines a spotlight on how a society such as ours allows young children to be influenced in the most bizarre ways imaginable. A ten year old boy and his siblings were playing by themselves at home. Both parents were away at work. The children decided that they would try to see whether hanging was actually possible or not. They had seen countless movies where forlorn lovers attempted it and were saved at the last minute. They had read enough stories about children hanging themselves from the nearest object after getting a dressing-down from their parents on anything ranging from poor marks to a badly chosen partner to undesirable behaviour. The temptation was therefore present and so was curiosity. So the little guy was egged on to hang himself from the window curtains. Imagine his surprise when he actually succeeded. The other kids raised a hue and cry and neighbours whisked him away to a hospital where he is reported to be in a critical condition. Go ahead – leave kids who know no better by themselves – expose them to the most ludicrous movies and news stories and then expect them to have the judgement to make a sensible choice.

How many ways will we find to let down our children? In India, the answer would be – in countless new and innovative ways. Tomorrow we will end up far poorer for the choice we make today to neglect these young lives. When will this country wake up and take notice? I am simply lost trying to find an answer...

Sleeping children

I look at the little faces lost in sleep or perhaps in dreams of another world. How still they are now as opposed to the restless energy that seems to possess them when they are awake! They are so alike and yet so different. They smell wonderful – not the special mixture of mother’s milk and Johnson’s baby powder like they used to when they were infants but clean and light – they still smell of innocence.

I don’t watch them sleeping very often because the love that catches me by surprise always tends to be overwhelming and I do not want to feel this much love for fear something will happen to detract from it. I usually look at them for a few minutes in the morning before I wake them up for the crazy round of brushing, bathing and breakfasting before school that never seems to finish on time.

Today I notice how beautiful the shapes of my son’s eyes are. He has lashes that any actress would kill for. His head is a perfect round, his nose is just right and he has little cupid’s bow shaped lips – such a cute face and yet whenever I see him my heart fills with anxiety at what the future holds for a child who will never belong with others. Maybe he will surprise me. For now I just look at him and let the sight take my breath away.

The little one has grown so much the past year. She is all tanned gangly limbs like a colt. Even while still you can see her grace and fluidity. Her face is still small and she still looks like a baby to me when asleep. Her features are like her brother’s in many ways but she has a very determined expression even while dreaming. I am sure her dreams are of flying. Her feet never touch the ground – my little colt has wings.

In a few moments the morning frenzy will start. I will go nuts and yell at them to hurry, hurry and hurry some more. I will not hear the stories Mahi wants to tell me about the girl whose jacket got exchanged with hers. I won’t notice the cat on the backyard wall as the distraction that prevents Appu from finishing his breakfast. I will heave a sigh of relief when they are bundled off and then immediately I regret not being softer, gentler more patient. And then I will think of them when they are asleep and smile – what a blessing these two are and how little I deserve them. But I too shall learn to grow as a parent and one day I shall be worthy of these two...

Again...

The headlines are mile-high. The pictures are unspeakably horrific. The words are all the right ones. Anger. Shock. Outrage. Fear. Panic. Every one of these emotions is captured well. There is also an unbelievable sense of frustration. The bile rises in my throat as I read about the latest series of bomb blasts in Mumbai. I cannot swallow past the acrid taste. There is no room for feeling anything other than real disgust that I am the citizen of a country that cares nothing for its people. And of course an overwhelming sense of déjà vu...

For the question in everyone’s mind is “When is the next one going to hit us?”. We all know there is going to be a next one and one after that as well. There’s no comfort in numbers or in knowing that perhaps by mere chance one might not lose a loved one in the next set of blasts. India, being the eternal soft state seeks neither revenge nor retribution like some other countries – indeed this erstwhile centre of spirituality does not even seek to teach those responsible any sort of lesson but instead chooses to assume that all things will even out in the next world. Those who died in the most gruesome manner were after all victims of their own past-life karma. The wheel turns and life goes on. Forgive. Forget. Never ever take steps to see that this doesn’t happen again. There are enough of us so that a few more dozen such incidents will not matter.

And we are to raise children in this kind of a set-up. We are to leave them be and hope that they go out of homes and come back eventually. We are to let them go in trains and buses to schools and colleges or to friends’ homes with a constant prayer on our lips and a dull throbbing fear that the almighty may not spare our children from the fate of countless others in a country that cares less for its children than roadside garbage.

How can one reconcile oneself to such a fate? To live in eternal fear? To not know closure for the deaths already caused. To get up in the morning and see pictures splashed in the newspapers cruelly depicting the bodies of young and old missing limbs and bathed in gore and mired in trash. Nothing can take away the horror or the pain. No one can soothe away the hurt. But if we had a government with some sense of responsibility or even commitment to the cause of protecting the very people who put them in positions of power, we wouldn’t have to live so. India today should be ashamed of itself for in India, tomorrow, who knows what will happen? All I know is that if its something bad, we still will not be prepared for it. People will die, speeches will be made, the spirit of a city will be lauded and then all will be forgotten. The spots marked by the blood of innocents will become mere tourist attractions. Their deaths will be as inconsequential as a series of summer rains. And it will happen again.

Of friends...

What makes me like someone at first glance? Is that sort of liking far more assured of permanence than a liking developed slowly over time? Have I ever liked someone later if I disliked them right at the beginning? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. There are people I have liked simply by speaking once over the phone and then the friendship continues strong to this day. There are people whom I have disliked intensely at first glance and never gotten over it. There are people whom I have instantly gotten along with and continued to love even when they were not very nice to me. Its really quite hard to explain why people just like some other people.

There are also some special people in my life whom I have learnt to love very slowly – so slowly in fact that I was not even aware of it. That sort of love grows continually over time – its what I feel for my husband. I had friends in college whom I didn’t dislike intensely at first but didn’t overwhelmingly like either – I later found that they were indeed a lot more worthy of respect than I first thought. So knowing a person takes time – its like peeling the layers of an onion one by one – what may appear dry and forbidding at first turns out to be rather palatable inside. With others you just know you are going to like them – like that wonderfully ripe mango you know will be sweet as heaven.

Then there are the others – the ones you don’t notice at all – whom you merely see out of the corner of your eye and whose presence registers not a whit. Then some accidental meeting or chance remark makes you look at the same person in a completely different light. You now see so much to like – so much to admire – so perfect a friend hidden within the trappings of former superficial disinterest. And then you go from casual acquaintance to good friend with the speed of light surprising even you and leaving you slightly breathless. To anyone who observes this, it only seems as if you lack judgment and can make friends with the first person who crosses your path but that’s not true.

Yes I have made mistakes galore in my choice of friends but I have been lucky a lot more than I have been otherwise. My friends are true ones - who have stood the test of time and adversity - who would help me in the space of a heartbeat without thinking twice about the trouble it would cause them personally. So due to a fear of having lost my judgment or perhaps as the result of ignoring my gut and only going by what society dictates, my few mistakes have been fairly large ones but then one has to go through a whole lot of dross to get at the good stuff. I count myself fortunate in my friends and blessed as well that no matter how low I feel, there’s someone to say just the right words but a phone call away.