The Destiny of an Innocence

She is growing up. Looks quite old now. Totally human. Unlike six months ago when her movements were restricted to blinking and random, clumsy hand- and feet-throwing and crying. Now she can crawl, smile, giggle, play, throw tantrums, all of which make her so cute and lively and bouncy and innocent and loveable.

However, as I clicked a few photographs of her yesterday, copied them on to my computer, and revisited them (like the one here), I felt apprehended. For the first time has a child scared me with her photo, and such a pretty child at that. She looks very human now. Very soon, she would be able to understand language, speak, and then think and understand and feel. And then emotions would start cropping up. Doom! There you go!

She would have option to choose. She will start discriminating between people. She would begin loving, caring, and would demand more of the same from others. She would start 'wanting'. She would expect from people. She'd feel bad. She'd feel good. She'd start enoying material things. She would begin a lot of things we do, and...

I am not exaggerating at all when I say I felt a shudder down my spine when I saw her photographs. Why do we have to have feelings? Can this child not be spared from the evils of the world and her innocence be preserved in its original form?

Innocent craving

He wore a shabby, oversized shirt, and his half-pants ended just a couple of inches lower than the shirt. His hair was unkempt, and his dark eyes shone on the dark face. He looked like he was seven-eight years of age. He did not say anything, but started pulling at the hem of my friend’s kurta.

It was a sunny September afternoon. After a good lunch, we had gone out for an icecream. There is this Food World on Cunningham Road, and yes, it is not a great place to have icecreams but it was close to office and they did house Cornetto, one she really liked. We bought a cone and since Food Worlds are grocery stores, we had to seat ourselves on my bike parked in front of the store.

No sooner had she started enjoying her cone, this little boy came from nowhere and started begging. He was exactly the kind of kid you would like to shoo away—the typical child who begs at the traffic signal. Dirty and unkempt, he did not utter a single voice, but started pulling at my friend’s dress. Seeing my friend getting irritated and disturbed out of her Cornetto, I did what almost everyone does in a similar situation; I tried dissuading him but he was stubborn. I generally disapprove of beggars, but offer them something sometimes to avoid their pestering. Thinking he was just asking for money, I gave him a five-rupee coin, which he gladly pocketed. I had believed he would go away.

I was wrong. He continued poking and touching and pulling and gesturing with his little hands. We had now got down from our perch and I again tried to drive him away. He was all the more adamant. My friend had got flustered and wanted him to leave and had started shooing him. I was wondering whether what I gave him was too less and that he wanted more money. Maybe he was hungry, but we could not have given him the half-eaten cone my friend was really enjoying.

She then suggested: “Yeh kahin nahi jaayega ashu, hum hi office chalte hain”. I considered that the best option and drove back the half-kilometer to office, where I joined my friend in finishing up the cornetto, after which both of us went to our respective cubicles to continue work.

It was when I reached my cubicle when I realized what a blunder I had committed!!!! Waves of guilt churned inside my stomach. All this time I was irritated by the child’s pestering and did not realize that he was asking us to buy him something unachievable for him!!! Even if he had the money, he would not be allowed inside a Food World and there was no way he could buy a cone!! Couldn’t wonder at the helplessness of the poor child.

He was probably mute, or perhaps chose to remain silent because he would not speak anything other than Kannada. Whatever the reason be, but all the time he had an eye on the icecream, and was gesturing us to buy him one, which both of us failed to understand. I admit we never tried to. We were too irritated to try and understand what he meant. I still remember those dark eyes requesting in vain and the disappointed and sad face when we decided to run away from him.

Ashamed of myself, I went back to the store, but could not find him around. Perhaps he had dropped the idea of an icecream, or someone more intelligent had understood and quenched his craving.

After this unforgettable episode, I kept an eye for him whenever I went to Cunningham Road, but could never spot him. And yes, we could never go again for an icecream after lunch.

Whose fault is it anyway?

Two third-standard boys picked up a wire from the ground, tied it around the neck of their classmate and strangled him to death. All over a pencil.

These were the opening lines of an article on the front page of the Bangalore edition of Times of India last Saturday. Apart from the shock, the first thing that crossed my mind was how could this have been averted. Who can be held responsible for this young life coming to an untimely end? Is a human life’s worth less than that of a pencil?

The boys subsequently told the police that they didn’t realize what they were doing.

The boys would have seen this in some movie and had tried to imitate that without having any clue about the consequence of their act. This is similar to children trying out moves out of WWF and TNA shows, and imitating Spiderman and Superman, and even the desi Shaktiman. The inspiration for the act would have been some action sequence the twelve- and the nine-year olds would have seen on TV or a movie. They knew this would hurt, but did not know it could lead to death.

This would have happened at such a normal occasion that none of the school authorities would have paid attention—children do quarrel over small things, but who would have imagined someone getting killed in the process?

Children learn from every incident, every visual, and every sound they encounter, see, and hear. There is no way we can stop any of those. We cannot prevent children from watching TV; banning all forms of violence on screen is not feasible either. Parents cannot, and should not, censor absolutely everything their children watch and talk about. Keeping a check on all forms of tiffs between children is also not possible.

It is not necessary to put someone at fault but there is something that is not right somewhere. Imagine the plight of the three-years elder brother of the 9-year old victim, who went to rescue him seeing him fighting, only to see him collapse to death when they reached home.

Whose fault is it? Is there anything we (read anyone) can do to prevent such losses?