Street Walking / Nonita Kalra

Bringing up Baby: The Ultimate ParentrapI fled before their decibel levels did irreparable damage to me. My head was resounding like a tun...

Bringing up Baby: The Ultimate Parentrap

I fled before their decibel levels did irreparable damage to me. My head was resounding like a tuning fork, so to calm myself, my friend and I charged into a restaurant close by to have a quick beer — the only hangover cure that works. I was trying to light a cigarette with shaking hands, making my way to a table, when a large pack of rats nearly tripped me over. I whipped out my cell phone to call the health authorities to have the place boarded up when I realised that the place was infested with more of those’ creatures: Children. I quickly turned to my girlfriend for help but she offered no reassurance. Instead she told me that there is still no legal Pest Control service in Bombay that offers to take care of this scourge. The only people who could do anything about these beasts were the self-same people who had brought them into the world in the first place. Their parents.

And that’s when it struck me that it was not children who are the real monsters — even though they do a damn good imitation — but it’s their parents. Their doting, fond parents who think that the seed of their loins are greatest things to have walked on earth since the Tyronnasaurus Rex. It seems that along with a wrinkled, squalling brat is born the belief that their child is second only to Baby Jesus. And that it was put on earth to save the world — unlike the saviour who did not do such a good job. My question to these parents is simple: Why haven’t their boy wonders, geniuses and super heroes — being born every few seconds in India at least — come up a a statesmanlike solution for World Peace, a cure for cancer and eliminated AIDS? All by the age of 10 to qualify as a true child prodigy.

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Also, if there were all these Superkids in the Sky — that’s where their parents elevate them to — then wouldn’t the airways over Bombay also see the sort of traffic jams only Breach Candy is privy to. The truth is that parents fail to see that children are just smaller versions of the adults they will grow into and that’s what makes them less spectacular. They are miniature, younger versions of what we are — and how fabulous is that?

Not at all. And that’s obvious from the fact that parents feel the need to defend their descent into imbecility, again and again. By talking about their children, endlessly. Heck! I’d rather lock myself in a room filled with used diapers than with the parents who change them. I used to have good friends who were perfectly reasonable, coherent people once upon a time. They were always ready to stay up the whole night drinking. If you wanted to drive to Goa on a whim they had their foot on the accelerator before you knew it. And dialogue? From Foucault’s Pendulum to foreign exchange rates, we sparkled with ideas, words and discussions. Now, after years of baby talk, their minds have stultified. Their only contribution to a conversation is what their child is eating or not eating, or what new noise emanated from its horrid, gummy mouth or what motor co-ordination skill it has acquired overnight (it seems that their little darling was the first person in this century to discover walking on its own two feet). And,yes! When they run out of the labourious details they whip out the pictures. The photo albums, actually. So, not only do you have to deal with the squalling brat next to you, you also have to fill all your senses with its two-dimensional image.

A friend on mine was telling me that apparently when the American writer W C Fields was asked, How do you like children?’ he succinctly replied, Boiled’. I am less fussy. Half-baked,’ I say — to match their parents state of mind.’

Nonita Kalra is features editor, The Indian Express.