New Delhi, Nov. 5 -- It is said that a child is the father of man; not literally, but figuratively speaking. The biggest advantage a child has over adults is unfettered imagination. A childhood populated by books, travel, people and a myriad of experiences, good and bad, enriches us and makes us what we eventually become. As we grow older, that imagination gets fettered and our vision blinkered by societal pressures, changes in our surroundings, physiological changes, etc. However, our childhood memories stay with us, evoking nostalgia and affection for the past.
For folks of my generation who grew up in the last millennium, childhood meant both freedom and discipline, nature and beyond. We were let loose into the great unknown, and life was our teacher, not just our parents and teachers. In that era, you lived in joint or bigger families. The limits of your freedom did not need to be drawn; they were palpable. Mostly, we were left to our own devices so long as we did not get in the hair of our parents. Parents had little clue about what was happening in our lives. Fathers had the distinction of invariably getting the school year of their kids wrong! Indoor and outdoor games were invented if you were tired of Ludo or carrom. A thick branch of a tree became a cricket bat and the fruit, the ball. There were plenty of trees and nooks and corners to play hide-and-seek. Trees were aplenty if you were adventurous enough to climb them. Load-shedding during cyclones meant endless rounds of antakshari, where adults joined in with unrecognisable melodies from another era. Holidays meant travelling, often by road and occasionally, to a far-off place by train. A train ride entailed adventure of the highest order, particularly in sleeper class, where you could savour the tastes, sights and sounds. The days and nights passed with companionable conversations and bonding over food with co-passengers, local delicacies from hawkers, and impromptu songs in the compartment.
Discipline was ingrained in every part of our routine. If you did not like the food that was cooked for the 20-odd people at home, you went hungry. There was no a la carte; simple meals of rice, roti, dal and sabzi, and on designated days, fish, chicken or mutton, were polished off by ever-hungry kids. Evening prayers after a wash were compulsory, as was at least an hour of study. You went to school by bus, hand-pulled rickshaw or town bus. And failing those, classes that day were missed. Parents were mortally feared. All school friends were carefully screened. There were no phones; digital excess and detox were unknown phenomena. Lights needed to be switched off by 10 pm, even if there was an exam the next morning. The logic was that if you had not understood the subject by then, rote learning would not work. One form of classical music or dance, along with a sport, was the rule in most homes. You could venture into uncharted territory and sign up for sewing, jam/sauce-making and kite-flying classes. One constant in most homes was active encouragement to read, watch live music or dance performances, or enjoy the occasional cinema outing. Our home was a veritable library, with books strewn all over. The joke was that if you wanted space to eat, study or sleep, you first had to remove the books in that area.
Fast-forward to the present, and one finds that the entire paradigm has changed. It is as if we are breeding entire generations of geniuses who need to be fettered with punishing schedules. Tuition, school, swimming, music, tennis, abacus, one after the other, leave little time for unstructured reading or playtime. As the phenomenon catches on and our public education system struggles to cope, economically weaker sections not only enrol their kids in private schools but also sign them up for tuition, leading them to financial ruin. Meals are curated to suit the child's taste and convenience. Parents exhaust themselves with projects, homework, and the planning and execution of all these myriad activities, leaving them with little time to talk to their kids. The toll it takes on children, already facing the brunt of the digital age and social media explosion, is being expounded upon by mental health professionals.
A society that fosters kindness, respect and love begets responsible, thinking individuals. The formative stage during which kids should explore this world is lost in structure rather than content. Independent thinking becomes a casualty. Competition is actively encouraged through our body language. The joys of sitting with a parent and discussing a good book, place or experience are missing. Peer pressure is healthy, but parental pressure is not. Studies reveal a growth in anxiety, social clumsiness and hyperactivity that may take years to reverse, if at all. As parents, we must let up a little on parenting, except where safety is concerned.
Views expressed are personal. The writer is a former IRS officer
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.