Take stock of the past, learn, and move forward

There was a near-death moment that one, somehow, survived. Looking back at those critical seconds, one recalls that the first, and perhaps the only, thought was: ‘I mustn’t die. My children are too young.’ That instant passed. A basic question, however, remained: why did I think of the children, and no one else? Did that stem from my conditioning as a parent? Did it come from that core ingrained in us: ‘Children are the future. You may choose to shut the doors of the past, you cannot do that for the time to come. The opening and closing of that door belongs to the generations ahead.’ That in a strange, even primeval, way, our children are us, in another form and shifted to the future.

An overwhelming segment of our country’s population is young, with over half below the age of 25. To continue stating the obvious, our country is in the process of enormous change. This change, in its current cycle, began as a tiny seedling during our freedom struggle and in a phrase may be summed up as: ‘We refuse to continue being pushed around.’ Further, in a word: ‘Assertion’. That assertion does not have to be aggressive — but nor should it smack of cowardice and be ineffectively passive. Our strengths continue to be in our age-old culture, our tolerance, our resilience and our ability to adapt. That future, holding on to these strengths, belongs to our children — to the huge chunk of the country’s population that has a very limited idea of what they are going to inherit from our ageing generation. And next, ‘Are we doing right by them?’ What sort of planet are we leaving for them — and without wanting to walk in a sanitary inspector’s shoes, look at the piles of garbage and filth that our lives will be leaving in their wake. For that matter, are we keeping their childhood at least safe, if not happy? The answer is obvious: ‘No, we are not.’

The other day, some young adults took off about the time they had as children. It was a conversation that hit home and hit hard. The random slaps by teachers, the shaming and the humiliation that came with this and most importantly: ‘That as parents, our generation did not stand up for them.’ That educators could behave in the way that they did, as we were told, with anger and anguish both mixed, all those years later, came as a shock. Yes, one’s own inadequacy also did. In silence mixed with measures of shame and considerable poverty of courage, we listened. Saying that ‘we did not know’ was not good enough.

There was no justification that we could offer which would not be but a mere platitude. Still in recovery mode after that justified tirade, I gathered enough courage to tell them a story of my own. This was in my pre-puberty years when I was grabbed and almost molested when I and another friend were playing in one of the woods around Shimla. My friend, who was a few years older, must have gauged what was happening. He yelled: “Bhag! (Run!).” From a little distance, he began throwing stones at that man. I got away and now, one dreads to think of what could have happened. There was an older friend looking out for me and one had a safe place to run to. What about all those who didn’t? And don’t.

This meander has a purpose. It is a moment to take stock of the past and look to  the future. We come from a relatively privileged set of society with some degree of insularity. At a time when so-called saints are emerging as the biggest sinners, as a collective, as a nation, as a worldwide supposedly evolved species, the exploitation of the vulnerable has to end. That may be too idealistic, but does kindness and compassion have to be taught? Is there no other way except by legislation and enforcement? Right from childhood, we need to look at what we will become, as opposed to what we shall do.

Michael Bond gave us a beloved fictional character of children’s literature, ‘Paddington Bear’. I loved those books and still have many of them. What I didn’t know then was the origin of the character who came from ‘Darkest Peru’ with a tag that read: “Please look after this bear.” In part, Bond based Paddington Bear on the Jewish children who began arriving in Britain, on the ‘Kindertransport’ before the start of the Second World War.  These children, many of whom were very young, had been sent by their parents to escape imminent death at the hands of the Nazis. Wearing tags around their necks with their names and carrying nothing more than a small suitcase, some 10,000 children arrived in Britain and a few in other parts of the world. Almost all would not see their parents again. It remains one of the greatest acts of organised charity.

Given our nation’s expertise in platitudes, rare and random acts of goodwill cannot solve what we are looking at. Age and gender continue to determine the most vulnerable sections of society — children, women and the aged. It is equitable justice and safety for all that is needed. In the years ahead, we could do well by taking a harder look at ourselves — and do something about it.