Recent news report disturbed me a lot. A 13 year old boy climbing a tree to pluck a fruit or two was shot down by a trigger happy fellow inside an army compound. Gone are the days that children can freely emulate squirrels, parrots or even monkeys wandering at will by jumping from one tree to the other and tasting each and every fruit in sight.
My own memories traveled down the lane recalling my childhood. I remember my school days when I would sneak out from the class after finishing the lunch, even when the class was in progress, to join the street urchins to go hunting each and every house for mangoes,chicoos, gooseberries and pomegranates. Of course, we would try our luck during the post lunch period when, in every household, the members would have retired for a siesta. On many occasions, hearing the noise of our stone throwing or shaking the trees, somebody would yell out of window, calling names. We would all take flight to another safer target. Never missed a single day will we return without our share of the fruity-booty!
Once during summer vacation we three brothers went to our granny's house at the native place in Kerala. In the back yard I climbed one coconut tree, after ensuring that was the shortest of all, and attempted to pluck a tender coconut. Seeing this, our neighbor threatened us that he will report the matter to Granny, which made us abort the attempt and runaway!
We had heard stories of Land lords catching errant boys and tying them on to the trees for hours and letting them off after a dose of warning and extracting profuse apologies, but never heard of anyone fatally attacking the children. To prevent animals from grazing the farm field, there are instances of farmers putting up barbed wires. Some farmers started electrifying the barbed fences, which raised wide condemnation from the animal lovers and also became illegal.
I had made a comment to one of my contemporaries that today's children never go out to play games, and outdoor games are slowly fading out from the minds of children. This may be because many parents do not allow children to play out in the open without an active supervision of an adult member of the family.
Can we just take this story of 13 year old boy as a stray exception of a child paying for being in his childhood or should we worry for this changing trend wherein we observe children wither childhood?
After all it is better to be safe than be sorry!
1 comment:
True , it was really heartless of that person to just shoot the boy. He could caught him given him a slap and a warning and left the matter there.
I think these days it is better to be safe than to think we can get away by troubling people constantly. There are some Badam trees on our road too, and there are many children and adults too coming and throwing stone to get a few of them. We have even heard that some little children had died eating some of these badams plucked from trees like these because of the poison content in that.
Thanks for your vote, I really appreciate it. Though I don't think I can win for one lady has got more votes for her house, as she had more friends than me to vote for her. Anyway thanks for remembering and voting on time.
Post a Comment