Lost Innocence ??

I visited my school after 10 years after passing out in the year 2000 for the first time.. I saw something that was leaps and bounds ahead from what my school days were.

I still remember how I used to travel to my school during early days. I used to either go by my school bus or maybe walking (since the distance was too short) or maybe on the bicycle with friends. Rarely we enjoyed the luxury travels of the BEST bus or more luxuriously the autorickshaw. I used to carry my own bag and dabba. Bag was a normal one you buy from the Andheri station and the stainless steel dabba was nicely stuffed with simple mom-made lunch. Had just two sets of uniforms which were bought from Glory in 4 bungalows. Regarding my sports wear, it were simple too. Shoes were the normal canvas ones (corona brand.. I still remember). My stationery box had simple Raymond pen and wood pencils which were enough for me to write my home assignments. During my birthday, I used to offer simple sweets which would not cost more than 50 paise to my classmates, close friends and my birthday parities if any would be just limited to the Rasna party with the slice cake and some wafer chips. This was more or less the story for all my batchmates. Obviously there were exceptions, but the numbers could be counted on finger-tips.

Today, the children come in the high-end chauffer driven luxury cars that I desire at this stage and during my school days were limited to the text book stickers or book covers. The children seem weak since they can’t lift their Adidas bags and their elite tiffin boxes, hence are accompanied by their maids. The weakness of the kids can be surely attributed to the McDonalds and KFC snacks in their tiffins or maybe the easy travel to the school did not let them strengthen their shoulders to carry bags. Well during their sports class, they don Nike sports wear and air cushioned shoes which were only limited to the international sports stars during my young days. They carry pens which I guess my boss has just one at this stage of his life. Sorry sir can’t help mentioning this. They carry inbuilt camera cell phones to keep them connected to their friends via Facebook mobile and iPods to keep them entertained all time with favorite music. Just wondering if their call bills are more than my official cell bills. Well just heard from my teacher that one person threw his birthday party in a luxurious 5-star hotel banquet hall and cell phones were the return gifts to the invited ones. This is more or less the story for all the current batchmates. Obviously there are exceptions, who live the school days like I lived, but the numbers can be counted on fingertips.

Kids have truly lost the innocence these days. They speak fluent English but stammer while speaking in their mother tongue. We hardly used to back answer or rudely behave with our parents. Today, kids hardly behave well with their parents and hardly listen to them. Their innocence has been replaced by arrogance and attitude which is increasing day by day. Just pondering on the reason for the lost innocence.

As per my understanding the reason for this can be mostly attributed to the unnecessary extra care that parents take these days. Parents do not want their kids to witness the hardships they witnessed and would like to make things happen for them at their wish. It’s a good thought, but unknowingly is affecting the overall personality of the child and the generation to come next. Reason for me write on such topic is that I have closely witnessed the effects of such pampering by parents. This shielding from hardships does not do any good, but does lot of bad to them instead.

This reminds me of one story in somewhat similar context, that’s of King Śuddhodana, who was wishing for his son Siddhartha to be a great king, shielded him from knowledge of human suffering. But finally this guarding did nothing good to the father. He lost his son who then became known as Buddha for us. Here I am not trrying to say that by shielding you are going to nurture another Buddha for the society, but would like to emphasize the fact that this created distances between the father and the son. The son moved on his way to become the great man, but not all are lucky to have such sons.

It feels that as day-by-day our generation is progressing in the new generation, we as people are regressing with our thought processes. We are becoming more insecure about our existence and even more about our generation to come. Its time we realize that we should ideally care about our kids and how they grow and not about how they look or what they wear. Whenever we think of children, the first thing that comes to our mind is innocence and naivety. A child is the purest form of a human being as he is not yet casted by the harsh realities of life. All his activities bring forth his true feelings and he is not bothered about what people think of him. Children also become the reason for happiness and joy of the grand parents as they are able to relive and relish their childhood once more by watching their grandchildren grow in front of their eyes. I do not see my childhood in today’s kids hence I say innocence needs to be restored in kids.

As they says “To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.”