MID-WEEK MUSINGS

As it happens, mid-week is the time when everybody feels vexed, tired and spent. The days gone by seem a drag and the rest of the days left for the week to get over seem heavy on the shoulders. The weekend, especially if you are expecting a long one, seems as distant and forbidden as a sinful dessert. And, it is then that your quirks take precedence and certain instances which one has made peace with in the past look particularly galling.

The past week and the week before that, I was frantically looking out for a play school for my two year old. Considering that the town I am in happens to be an important commercial centre for the northern part of the state, I was under the impression that finding a decent institution won’t be much of a task. However, this was not to be. After scanning about 7 of them, I realized that we, in this state, and maybe, in this country, have a long, long way to go in terms of infrastructure and an eye for finer details. All the play schools I came across were small, dinghy one-room establishments. Poor lighting, almost no ventilation, a few ragged toys, dirty toilets and most surprisingly, no open space for the young ones to play. After I came to terms with the shock, I realized that these were hardly play schools. They were, in spirit, badly managed and even badly maintained crèches where working parents leave their children while they go out to work. I did ask a few proprietors why exactly they had maintained the establishment in this pitiable state. Some feigned ignorance, some gave the excuse of lack of funds and some said that there was hardly any demand for better maintenance. Or for that matter, a small town is not expected to offer better facilities. All of which left me fuming. We have conveniently borrowed the western concept of play schools but only marginally. I believe the idea is that in a play school, the child, in a setting which is home away from home, learns to get acquainted with the outside world. At a time when our social contacts are narrowing and there is hardly any play area in the concrete jungles, we want to send our child to a nice, welcoming place to make friends and get initiated into the process of secondary socialization. That is why parents are hankering after play schools. All the more when the precocious tiny tot starts getting hyper-active and a strain on the care-giver’s nerves! Resourceful, money-minded scrooges have cleverly sensed the need and have invested in charades in the name of play school. Actually, they are more like cattle pens to which a parent would never want to send his/her child. The school in-charge hardly has any knack of handling children, forget a professional degree, the environment is anything but conducive and the ambience leaves a whole lot to be desired. I was inclined to think that garishly coloured walls with cartoon pin-ups are not anybody’s idea of a play school. And we don’t pay a hefty sum for this squalor. I so wish that the owners/managers of these establishments would understand and respect their own importance. They are the ones who are supposed to be the first ones to be handling a generation which would be the torchbearers of tomorrow. They are the ones on whom we have trusted to develop the faculties of our babies, channelize their energies, make them happy and yes, teach them little things while they play and fool around. And they must also understand that the great geniuses of this country in every conceivable field have not only risen from the metropolises; an astonishing majority is from the small towns of India. Expecting a warm and enriching place for one’s child should not be a privilege of a parent in the metro, but a right of every parent in the nook and corner of this country. It is time that we think of a body to regulate these sharks, inspect such schools and ensure that when our kid steps out of the home for the first time, he steps into a sunny, cheerful world; not into a dirty, suffocating place obnoxiously called “play school”!

As if worries in the personal front aren’t enough, what particularly gets at my gut these days is a total lack of social grace and etiquettes amongst people around us. I believe that as we evolve as human beings and as a society, we are supposed to be more sensitive and caring about the emotions and feelings of others. Didn’t Thomas Hobbes say so eloquently that the primordial life was discarded for a more civilized way of living and life because the former was brash and brutish? Isn't it that we, the civilized people, are expected to have and display in abundance, etiquette and manners, which are a quintessential part of a progressive, evolved society? I have been pretty conscious of the fact, more so of late, that in our present way of living and life, such niceties have taken a backseat. They are supposed to be a part of the gossamer charm of the old world, somehow not compatible with the brattish world of today. All that we want today is not to peek into, but rip apart the curtains sheltering the personal from the public. Rip apart so that we can vicariously enjoy the minute details of the other’s life which is actually of no consequence to us whatsoever. But then, doesn’t this attitude conflict with the parallel view that in the present century, life is moving at such a ‘catch me if you can’ pace that we hardly have time for ourselves, forget others? Well, I am muddled. But then, I have to confront nasty intrusions into my private space on a daily basis. Being a government servant and serving at a post which is in the public glare almost all the time, I realize that I must be accountable and am under scrutiny for the minutest of decisions made in my professional capacity. But my personal life is just mine. I am not a sportsperson, a socialite or for that matter, a media personality whose very career sprouts, flowers and thrives under the public glare. My private space, as long as it does not affect my professional capacities, is simply nobody’s business. But in a small town, much to my utmost chagrin, my personal sphere happens to be a matter of great public interest. It is absolutely disgusting when even well heeled and well educated individuals become nosy parkers, ask you the most personal of questions or are waiting for you to give away some detail of your mundane life to fuel their juicy gossips later. Not that I lead a rock ‘n’ roll existence and not that I am a stickler for utmost privacy, but yes, it is extremely unsettling to realize that scores of people are prying into your daily existence, monitoring your moves for God knows which sinister design. The end result- I have to really work on myself so that I do not become quite a nervous wreck. While I fret over this, I do feel like hitting out at all these intruders and give them a lesson or two on social conduct and manners. For our social grace and composure is what defines us, earns us dignity and respect from our brethren in the long run.