I just bought a train ticket online and am sitting back thinking of the journey I am about to make in a few days, from Delhi to Calcutta. I find myself silently mouthing my constant prayer about train journeys, “Save me from the children!”
Two kids pointing fingers at each other
Children are the worst part of India today. I know I am sticking my neck out here, with more than 60 percent of the country being under 25 years of age, and perhaps the largest sub-group within that class being snotty brats of unimaginable malice and capable of untold mayhem at any time. The worst of the worst of India are the children of the middle classes.
I stated that children across the social spectrum were unsavoury – and I mean it. Those from the lowest rungs of society are pressed to beggary and are an utter nuisance on the streets. They learn quite early to address the sentiments of passers-by and I can say what I am saying because, like all Indians, I have become de-sensitised to their plight. There are just so many of them. And they all look pitiable, until you refuse to part with your money. They move on to the next person with world-weary a shrug of their thin shoulders. Some of the bolder ones would pull a face at you.
The scions of the upper echelons of Indian society are blasé, big-sized and brash. They would not think of you as human if you do not have the latest and most expensive mobile phone. And even if you have that passport to their attention, they would be hard to please unless you are a fighter pilot or a bosom buddy of the current teen singing sensation.
The spawn of the middle classes are the worst. They have the whining, singsong irritability of the street urchins and are even more strident about their demands – fast food, gadgets, aerated drinks, teeth-rotting sweets and other vile de trop inventions of our age. And they are just as hardened and recalcitrant as the rich kids. They refuse to listen to reason, or to their parents who seem totally incapable of handling them. This may have to do with the immaturity of most Indians and the alacrity with which they get married and whelp – just into their twenties and before they have come to grips with the realities of life. They bumble through with their babies and the rest of the populace has to suffer the curse of their fecundity. In another article I shall wax eloquent about how child-like Indian men are, and how like ingénues the women. Here, I shall list the things that one has to do to bring up children in the Indian style:
- Spoil them with goodies till they do not understand when to stop asking.
- Do not teach them self constraint
- Keep them far from discipline – they would bawl their guts out if you tried
- Give them your working mobile phones so that they could play with them and delete your numbers and other important information.
- Give them free access to your personal computer – so that they can inflict upon it the damage that the most malicious malware cannot.
- Never breathe to them the importance of words like ‘Thank you’ and ‘Please’.
- Do not give them the impression that other people and adults are important. Adult are to be treated like kids… worse than kids, in fact.
- Do not tell them to respect their teachers. Teachers are known impediments of schoolrooms – who get in the way of passing effortlessly and ingloriously to the next class, without bothering overmuch with books.
- Books are another irritant. Any that do not have pictures (preferably of limitless violence) are not worth a look.
- Self time, spending time with oneself, so important for mental development, is not something that kids should be troubled with. All their time can be spent with adults, particularly if adults are busy or speaking among themselves.
With these helpful pointers, you would be sure to bring up your children in the commonly approved ways of the sub-continent. The future of India would be assured.
On a personal note, I had toyed with the idea of having children myself, just a few years ago. Then the horror of being a parent in India hit me. And quicker than the thought had come, it went.
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