Do riot children smell fear in parent’s sweat?

Vivek,

Sorry for the oversight...:)

t,

Thanks! Hopefully the trapeze act will continue to work.

Farzana,

Thanks. This business of little adults think about children is quite a shocker. Considering, so much in the market is specifically targetted at children. And there are very few children`s writers too. At least in our neck of the woods.


BeeJay,

Fear is too common a feeling for anybody who has grown up, and recollects childhood fears. The fear of impending punishment from parents, teachers, the fear of getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and mortal fear of being in life threatening accidents, abuses etc. This do not impact identity building, so much as the psyche of the child, and therefore its personality. Identity building, as in being part of a bigger whole, a community, etc is tied to the fear I mean here. The fear is what they`ll overcome, I would imagine, with age. Its binding with religion is what can turn that particular wound septic over the years, especially under communal durress.

Thamizhan,

I share your prayers too.

dost,

Your many have learnt from your partition experiences. It is particularly interesting to hear it from somebody who is the first generation riot child of Independent India. But circumstances differ. A whole lot of other issues, often considered ``larger``, too helped. The re-defining of borders, a ``new`` ``Our`` country. Perhaps, less partisan and more humane treatment of the survivors who crossed to their respective ``countries.`` After all the unbearable suffering, the adults had a ``new`` country, and economic rebuilding was perhaps the only immediate goal. The trauma obviously cannot be overemphasised.

But, in the cases I am discussing, in contemporary India, the ``larger`` issues of geography or national identity do not intercede. It is a more ``ingrown-toenail`` kind of issue, an issue where there is no escape forever, like the Muslim families who moved to pakistan, of the Hindu families who moved to India, there was no promised land of perpetual succour.

It is in these circumstances that riot kids within India, end up being ``sleeper cells`` for extenuating circumstances when communal flareups excite extreme emotions that can become force multipliers for those interested in anti-national/community/society activities. Of course, i am not saying it is a 100 per cent convertion of riot children into potential terrorists or anything. The lack of ``larger issues`` end up messing the internaal debate within India about secularism, majority-minority issues etc.

HN

Harish:

Nice to see you back on track.

Regarding children, I think that adults perhaps get more wounded than children. As a child of the mother of all riots, the partition, I can describe the feelings of this child at that time. I had no questions for my parents and the only thought on my mind during the journey was whether we would make it safely across the border or killed on the way. When I reached the other side safely, we never asked any questions of our parents or even did much introspection...were too busy putting together the pieces of broken lives, feeling hungry with not enough to eat, finding a place to shelter us and to get admission in a school. What we learnt about what had happened and what was happening was through overhearing adults talking to each other and later on through books and newspapers.

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Mr. Nambiar,

This is much better than your last one. Putting aside cliches such as ``Children heal faster`` one can only hope that as they grow up they move beyond their trauma and forge bonds with people outside their community w/o regarding them as the ``enemy``.

Harish:

Nice article overall. However, that rambling about Gowda was redundant and distracting.

[“…We have been travelling for eighteen days,” he said. ]
To some chowk readers, it feels like an ETERNITY.

[Those children in those trucks. They would know what religion is, a lot more concretely than the children of my friends.]
I disagree. You mean that those children will simply know what FEAR is. Still, I am also sure that many of them will survive the trauma and go ahead to build productive lives.

(Enter the lion)

Lion (ears perked): Did any one say “fear”?

Lion: Sniff, sniff…

(Much later)

Lion (looking sad and dejected): No blood here!

(Exit the lion)

Sounds from the cave: zzzzzzz……

Harish:

This was thought-provoking to begin with -- the neglected worldview of children. You began in an upbeat frame of mind with their innocence, the little sponges of adult knowledge and ignorance. But then...the last parts were rather disturbing.

I know those children. They are family. The mental ghettos give them alien wings. They cannot fly, so they fly away, if they can...

Trucks crush the potted plants. But then, potted plants too grow according to the manure they are fed.

HN, your journey is full of insights...I tried looking away from the mirror, but couldn`t.

harish:

ole! in the last series i wrote : ...this one is one tenuous bubble away from breaking ......you pulled it back and tightened the screws marvellously...

The mental ghetto of the religiously persecuted. Many will easily forget the persecution, but the ghetto will keep alive in the nooks and dark crannies, a miasma of loss. And that loss, like Orissa’s dead and mutilated statues, will always be kicked to lethal life in times of another communal crisis.

the series is firmly back on track:)

maybe in another link you will extend and explore the `47 truck children`s children`s children...and how they fare on this front?

rgds

t

A quick note: Hassan was long famous before Deve Gowda as it has a major ISRO centre. Those who lived through the doordarshan days would remember it being mentioned frequently during news.