Growing up

I have not really spent time thinking about what growing really means. Two incidences here at Parikrma made me wonder.

Slightly over a week ago, a 9 year old came and gave me a candy and said it was her birthday. "My sisters birthday is on December 5th but she is dead now. Her skin went bad, the doctor askes us to come back later. That evening she died. I cried", she said. Then she smiled at me and ran back to class, as she heard the school bell.

I could not sleep for week after. I could not understand why she was so casual about her dead sister. I had nightmares of my own sister being hurt. So I spoke to Shukla (CEO at Parikrma) about it.

The explanation is rather simple, it seems. I, as an adult, have many experiences to reach back to and hence have associated a certain image and value to death. Children take the incidences for what they are and do not make more of it. Hence for the little girl, her sister being dead is nothing more than a fact at this point. But, it will change in the years to come.

Later that week I met a 5 yr old boy and his is 7 yr old sister. They were both rescued from begging. The boy is a happy little child. The girl however feels shame. She has picked up the negative, derogatory tone with which people describe her past. She explains to Shukla that she is ashamed that she had to beg and asks Shukla not to let her classmates know. The little boy has not yet learnt to associate values or images with such facts. But the girl is fast learning. How fast we grow up!

This brother and sister pair were not part of a begging racket. Their only parent was mentally unstable and hence could not feed them. So they had to beg to feed themselves. At 7, the little girl was forced to understand the concept of "money". Some of the growing up happens sooner than we think. Survival instincts?

I do hope that coming into Parikrma, these children are given a chance to slow down "growing up" and have a chance to enjoy being children. I see them playing outside my room office, and I think they are getting that chance.