Hot house flowers

A friend, agonising over schools for her five-year-old, asked me to accompany her on a visit to one of the new child-friendly places.

A friend, agonising over schools for her five-year-old, asked me to accompany her on a visit to one of the new child-friendly places. The buildings were airy and large, the grounds green and lush, the furniture bright and cheerful. There were toys and dolls8217; houses, wooden educational toys, stuffed toys. There was a chequered floor made of material that would cushion a child8217;s fall. There were brightly coloured plastic see-saws, swings and a sand pit. Of course, all of it comes with a price 8212; and not an insubstantial one. On an average, Rs 4000 a month plus extra for special activities.

I suppose, in today8217;s free market world, hierarchy and class segregation are a given wherever you go. But there8217;s more here, at work and at play. There is a synthetic, plastic, oh-so-constructed view of making the world a better place. A world in which learning is fun, meals are wholesome and kids are healthy. Of course we all want our kids to enjoy learning, to learn well and so go on to make a better world. There is no doubt that all those projects on planting more trees and recycling waste can only help this picture come to life.

But what of the world in which meals and health are both uncertain and learning is more about learning to do with less? Yes, well, our kids will learn about that too. They will learn it in SUPW, like a capsule taken at mealtimes. They will learn of distant realities which they don8217;t really know, only know of. They will learn of the amorphous other, somewhere out there on the peripheries of their imagination. And if they grow up to take up jobs in trans-national companies and live in a green neighbourhood where the garbage is segregated and the water recycled, will they then believe that the world has become a better place?

To build a better world, we need many things 8212; but most of all we need imagination. We live in an age of inequalities. We also live in an age where technology is hoped to bridge those inequalities. But who wields that technology and what lies in their imagination, in their vision of the world? I wonder how today8217;s children will build those bridges. These hot house flowers, reared in such secluded confines, so singularly focussed on nurturing and giving them the best 8212; what will they imagine as a better world? Will their imagination be able to soar above these constricting glass walls?