Sunday, August 28, 2011

I'm so old fashioned!

And then there was this other piece today about ‘virtual parenting’. So working parents these days are resorting to CCTVs to keep track of what their children are upto? I don’t mean to sound critical or judgmental, I perfectly understand being busy and yet wanting to keep an eye on your child, but CCTVs? Really? Have these parents stopped to consider what effect this constant surveillance may have on the children? It’s the sort of thing you do to keep thieves out of the premises, not children out of mischief. Have they thought of the skewed idea of freedom that their children may grow up with. And of trust? Do they understand that they may be bringing up children who might never quite learn to be themselves because they are always being watched? Or who behave themselves only because they are being watched? The natural corollary to which would be the temptation to misuse freedom, that is bound to arise when they actually have the opportunity for it?
Whatever happened to the ‘sanskar’ that you are meant to pass on your children- a sense of discipline, that comes from within and doesn’t have its roots in a fear of being found out. I have always been opposed to the idea of inculcating values in children through a fear of punishment as opposed to the genuine desire to be good. As a result, I feel we end up raising kids who lack the ability to think for themselves. There is so much emphasis on absolutes- on the right ‘things’ to do, and not enough on building a moral compass so they can intuitively tell right from wrong.
It’s difficult I understand, bringing up children well, especially in today’s day and age where distractions and temptations abound. But to add to that such a dubious measure, with such long-term repercussions, is rather unfair to our future generations.

When we don't ask the right questions...

So this article in HT the other day, ‘Upset’ house help hurls 1-year-old from terrace', really bothered me. Check out the way it begins, ‘Byculla-based builder, Akhil Khakre, 47, brought home a girl to save her from a life on the streets. But he didn’t know that the girl would repay his kindness by trying to kill his one-year-old son.’ It goes on to say that the girl, all of 13, allegedly flung Khakre’s son from the terrace flat of a four story building because she was upset at being scolded for having broken a plate while washing utensils, an incident that had happened three days before.
So here it is then- a 13 year old picked up from the street and brought home, to be ‘educated’ and ‘assisting in domestic chores.’ While the incident is alarming in itself- people can just pick children up off the streets these days? Oh wait, who am I kidding, it happens all the time, doesn’t it?- what was equally shocking for me was the reportage. This stupid correspondent actually begins by attempting to paint a favourable picture of Khakre?!
The incident is distressing, I understand. And my heart does go out to the family, but that does not absolve Khakre in any way of having employed child labour. My heart goes out equally to the little girl, who may well have been abused, physically and mentally, for her to have taken such an extreme step. HT followed it up with another story that said ‘Byculla maid didn’t realise she would hurt the child: Cops.’ Huh? Which 13 year old does not understand that you can hurt a baby by throwing him around, let alone from the fourth floor?
This is seriously faulty reporting for all the questions that it fails to ask.

Random rainy morning conversation


The day began with a conversation with my two maids, both of who happened to land up at more or less the same time today. They’re friends and neighbours often looking out for each other- in fact I found one through the other. The conversation initiator was the rain. It has been raining incessantly for the last few days. Its like the monsoon decided to make a comeback with a vengeance. Not that I’m complaining. This city needs all the water it can get and more. As do the farmers tending to their fields, I suppose. Anyway, there was a fresh bout of furious rain in the morning right about the time that they turned up. Anita, the cook looked out of the window and commented on it. On how hard and relentlessly its been raining, and how the building compound, especially at the back, is waterlogged. I nodded absent-mindedly. My window opens out to the back of building compound, and the view is thankfully mostly green (and beautiful), and if you look down from the balcony or the window, you can see the empty brown patch that some residents use for parking. I’ve been noting the build up of the water in this small brown patch. It often turns into a tiny pond, as it did this morning, until the earth soaks up the water.
But I digress. All the romance of the rain went straight of the window when I heard what she said next. She mentioned how the water had come into their house and upto the ankles, wetting everything. Couldn’t sleep the whole night, she said, because everything is wet, you know, even the mattress, all the while smiling ear to ear. It never fails to amaze me. It’s not the first time that I’ve heard something like this of course, but it just seems so incredible that people can live like that and talk about it so nonchalantly, even happily. She spoke of the water seeping in from the ground. (All this ‘reclaimed’ land in Mumbai! I live on it, and I’m not blind to its repercussions. The city is bursting at the seams, and anyone with half a mind can see it. But the builder-politician nexus will not allow any corrective measures. So land will continue to get reclaimed, buildings will continue to come up, slums too for the people in the high rises need their maids and their guards and their delivery boys and their drivers.)
Then she spoke of the water coming in from above, and went on to explain that her husband, being stocky, can’t climb up properly and put the plastic sheet on the roof. Besides the day they had to buy the plastic sheet, he was at work and she was entrusted with the task of buying it, and she got the wrong size, correct length wise, but short breadth wise; so now they’re stuck with a roof that only provides part protection and the water keeps coming in. Animatedly they exchanged notes about their husbands, how Vibha’s knows how to build a house, and has build enough of a good rapport at work so that whenever he needs it, labour is easy to find. Like last year when the roof of her house came crashing down. Fortunately Anita was around then though Vibha was at work, and she took in Vibha’s kids and called to inform her (yes, they have cellphones!). Vibha was shocked, how could my house just fall like that? But her enterprising husband came with a bunch of men from work, and they put it up again within an hour. My house is also bigger, Vibha said proudly, and drier because it’s at a higher level, so the water takes much longer to seep through. And it has four layers of thick plastic as roofing, so the water doesn’t come in. They went on to speak of some unruly relatives, and how friends are so much more precious in times of need, and of demolition drives, when everyone comes to everyone’s rescue though some neighbours do take advantage and steal. Mostly it is the Corporation workers though. They take away all good stuff, the utensils, the gas cylinder even the bamboo poles used to make houses. All this accompanied with much smiling and giggling.

It had something of a humbling effect, this ‘girly’ conversation with my maids. It reminded me of how petty I can sometimes be in my concerns. It reminded me of the resilience of people, especially the poor in this country and I suppose in the world, and their ability to smile and be happy in situations that seem so hopeless to me. I wondered about my own ‘armchair intellectualism’, and its usefulness, if any. I wondered about the order of things- how it’s always been and will always continue to be (so why despair over it?)
And having gone through the motion of pondering over such questions, no wiser in the end than at the start, I sat down and wrote this post.

Meanwhile, it continues to rain.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Good Boy Update 2

This really should have been posted the very next day, so is rather belated, and much has happened since.
Still, for the sake of record, here's how the online conversation went.

'I never once skirted the topic. first time I read kill bill 1 (he prefers this name to Good Boy), I said a lot of things.

On kill bill 2, I said different things

None of that was response?

Post that when you told me about the conversation and that I hadn't reacted in a MAJOR WAY to being written about, and I said 'it was so unremarkable' - I meant that to be your response to whoever asked you about my reaction.

Pooja says to question asker - his reaction was so unremarkable that it passed without much event.

I didn't once say the writing / being written about was unremarkable.

thus seriously serious misinterpretation!'