Consumes alcohol, dies

“Eight year boy consumes alcohol stored at home and dies”. TV news, one week ago. “Another six year boy consumes alcohol kept at home and is hospitalized”. TV news, yesterday.  I have to write about this today.

These incidents are not reported from any uncivilized part of the world. It is from “Gods own country”, the state that achieved hundred percent literacy, Kerala.

Fathers of these children do not deserve any mercy, they have to be severely punished. They should be reminded of one thing, if their fathers were also irresponsible like them, then these people would not have grown this much, would not have had children for them to murder or harm.

Children, they observe keenly. They learn fast. They want to imitate what elders are doing. They are not scared of trying anything exciting, which they see, they think of. Probably these boys would have seen the hero happily enjoying life after a few drinks in a movie. Or they would have seen their father laughing loudly after consuming that colorful liquid from that bottle. They also would have wanted to laugh, otherwise rare possibility for them in their own homes.

Long back my 3 year old son was frantically searching in the house, when I just came out after a bath. I asked him what he was looking for so much. He wanted to know where I kept my mustache so that he can try it out and see how he looks with that. That day I had removed my mustache first time in my life, just for a change!

Haven’t you told your small child to use the “RIGHT” hand instead of left hand for all good things in many occasions? That is because she wants to do in the exact way as you are doing, she thinks her left is your “RIGHT”. (Let me use girl child now onwards for narrating examples. Normally we use “he”. Since in our society, girl child is more neglected, let me do that. Anyways S(he) includes he right?). If our parents had not corrected this (rather instructed like this) all of us would have been left handers and all our children would have been right handers ! I am not sure what would have happened to the RIGHT-LEFT conflict then!

As parents, do we teach our children values? When we go to restaurant, we over feed our children by providing whatever they ask. Argument made is, we were not given these luxuries by our parents so at least let my children get those. We order more for self and eat much more to compensate for that deprivation. How many of us know this quote from Bhagavad Gita ( in fact there are many more !) “Those who eat too much or too little, who sleep too much or too little, will not succeed in meditation”. Too much or too less of anything is not good for us. Our ancestors knew this value that is why we were deprived of excess of anything. How many of us try to understand these values and teach our children not by preaching but by demonstrating those values by way of life.

When a parent instructs his/her child to tell his/her office people that he/she is unwell, while he/she just wanted to take a break from work to watch a movie that day, what value is conveyed to the child? When you proudly sit behind the scooter when your 11 year daughter rides it, are you not conveying the message to her that law can be broken?

“Train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old he will not depart from it” – Quote from the Bible. My team was away to Mysore for an offsite 3 day workshop. We had rooms in twin sharing basis and my roommate was Vivek Shukla. In the morning, as he woke up he just came and touched my feet, I was still in my bed. I was touched ! I never touched anybody’s feet, (may be in some ritual functions mechanically without any meaning attached to it). I am not saying here that all should start touching elders feet from now onwards, people will have different traditions of showing respect to others (others can be elders, youngsters, children, anybody or anything for that matter) verbally, non verbally, by way of gestures, or by just the actions you perform. The point I am trying to make here is, that’s the way Vivek had been taught and brought up from early childhood. He will continue to do it where ever he goes, how much ever old he grows.

As a parent, show, demonstrate your children how one should behave, live, adhere to values by setting an example. Preach less.

If any child happens to read this, my request to her is - continue to observe, learn, emulate. But before emulating she should ask her parents or her teacher whether she is doing the right thing.