Tag: Children

Fart, a sport and loads of laughter thereafter.

What makes you laugh?

When we were young, we imagined animals were ferocious. And they killed other animals for food. 

But when we watched the cartoon characters such as Tom and Jerry on Disney, we were so humbled. 

Alex, the lion, from the Madagascar series’ Escape to Africa movie, was a captive, pals with other animals, dancing and entertaining. Hilarious!

The King of the Jungle was shown a laughingstock as Alex stood a complete joker in the movie with a fruit-hat. 

That just makes one laugh.

The same is the case with people we see every day in our life. 

We laugh when big people cry at the doctor’s clinics. We laughed when we saw George Galloway, the MP from Bethnal Green dressed as a cat crawling on all fours at the Celebrity Big Brother show in 2006.

Have a personal story to tell. 

I used to coach my 8-year-old cousin Sindhu. I had just finished college and my parents told me to teach her civics, history and science.

She had many friends, and they treated me with respect. I felt I was like a professor emeritus.

The girls often played with a skipping rope. 

One day, Sindhu asked me during break if I could beat one of her friends, Akila, in a skipping game. Her friends said she was a sport, and she held the record for most jumps.

I said, oh yes. Why not? Throw the rope. We gathered in the driveway in front of her house.

Akila first started. By the time I got into a pair of track pants, she had already finished 50. She was seriously an athlete. 

She gave me the rope after finishing 70. At a stretch, without a break. I was really worried. The other girls clapped. It’s my turn now.

My uncle, aunt and the maid have all gathered now to see the challenge. Loads of audience, waiting. Interesting!

I picked up the rope and started jumping. I quickly counted 20 and was just racing. I thought it was so easy.

When I reached 35, I felt something wasn’t alright. My stomach was giving me some discomfort.

Oh! God, no! Not now!

By the time I reached 40, I ripped one out so loud. Thrrrrrrrrrrrreppp! 

A fart in the middle of a sport wasn’t so nice. The girls giggled.

48, 49, 50 and this time it was long.  Frrrrt… Frrrrrrrrrt!

I could hear Sindhu, Akila and friends bursting out into a roaring laugh. 

I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. My pride was at stake. I kept jumping.

The fart now had got worse. It sounded wet. So serious.

57, 58, 59. I saw my uncle, aunt and the maid getting up and running inside the house laughing out loud. The place had suddenly become a circus.

I couldn’t continue beyond 63 and gave up. 

Fart played a spoil-sport. I couldn’t help but join in their laughter. 

I laughed, they laughed, and did you have a laugh?

Laughter, ultimately, was the winner. 

 

A Character in Wild-pants!

When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?

When we were five, we were mostly dreamers. A dreamer with eyes wide open. A dreamer deep asleep.

I was too young to think of what I would become as I was told a lot of stories about animals and characters in cartoons. I lived purely in an imaginary world. A fairy tale life, to be precise.

I enjoyed listening to those stories and I imagined I would one day go meet them really and want to spend time with them.

Some stories wouldn’t end well as characters were chased and put to death. That gave me nightmares.

I remember I asked my parents one day if I could stop people killing animals. My parents told me that I should then become a forest officer, wear a uniform, carry a gun and travel in an open jeep. All day and night. A life in the wilderness. 

That’s when I imagined I would be an officer who was out and about helping save the animals.

That gave me pleasure. I thought I would bring those animals home, live with them in the comfort of my parents, brothers and sister.

A happy cartoon family was what I wanted.

 

The last straw on camel’s back!

“Dear god, Krishna ji, please stay with me, please keep my parents happy … please help me crack Neet 2024”.

“God teach me how to work very hard” 

Those messages one never misses seeing on the wall of the Radhakrishna temple located at Kota, Rajasthan in India.

Kota in India is home to thousands of coaching centres for engineering and medical entrance examinations.

People call the city now the most stressful, as the place is known for all wrongful reasons. 27 students committed suicide last year and the number is rising.

Three have died this year. The latest being a 19-year-old engineering aspirant. RIP!

2 million students appear each year for just 140,000 seats in medical colleges in India. Over one million people compete for 10,000 seats in top engineering institutions called IITs.

Months ago, I went to a coaching centre located in Trichy, South of India.

Students study 18 hours a day, walking like zombies on the campus. Many of them sleep during class.

Teachers were mostly seen rushing through chapters and completing the job like how train drivers run between stations. Too mechanical, to say the least.

I saw a coach, an MIT, Chrompet (Chennai) alumni and an MD of a popular NEET academy breaking down in the middle of class, cry in front of students and start begging them for attention in the class.

Parents in India pay through nose (₹150,000 a year plus ₹30K for food & accommodation) for their children’s education. They place enormous hope on their wards. They want to see them as doctors or engineers, nothing less.

But there’s a sorry sight to the whole story.

Students can’t cope and they commit suicide. The pressure for them is just too much to bear.

The government is confused. While the authorities sit, discuss and contemplate measures to arrest this disturbing trend, students continue to harm themselves at these killer-centres.

Why do students resort to making such extreme ends?

Mental health issues, academic pressure and social stigma drive students to go to this extreme end – screams the article in Frontline, The Hindu.

35% of recorded suicides occur in the age group of students between 15 and 24 years, says statistics on Wikipedia.

Are students happy at home?

Studies say students who are well integrated with their families and community have a good support system during crises, protecting them against suicide. 

Low levels of emotional warmth often drive them to seek a lonely spot.

A high level of parental control, or over-protection, by parents is associated with a three-fold increase in the risk of their ward’s suicidal behaviour.

How to spot them going bonkers early on?

Students nowadays pick up info about harming themselves from platforms such as YouTube and the internet.

A suicide often precedes an attempt. An early identification of what they do when they are alone and timely intervention should help stop them.

This could help in reducing suicide rates in India, experts say.

Intervention as well as a primary prevention strategy could help keep the rate of suicide under check.

Create a positive atmosphere for the children to interact freely with parents, elderly and friends.

Teach the students to cope. Tell them to learn an adaptive mechanism in life.

An awareness campaign should be spread among parents, teachers and healthcare professionals regarding child-rearing practices.

The community should frequently meet up, sit and discuss various social programs, such as child and family-supporting ones.

The community agenda may further include programs that aim at achieving gender and socio-economic equality.

Start now to see the results.

PS: the happiest lot I’ve seen at the NEET campus was the young staff working in the canteen.

They were of a similar age group. But they were more independent, carefree, employed, earning, carrying a phone, riding on bikes, socializing, cheerful and headed home by evening.