MORPARIA’S PAGE E-mail: [email protected] Morparia.pmd 2 10/27/2015, 10:34 AM Contents NOVEMBER 2015 VOL.19/4 ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ THEME: Morparia’s page 2 Children Of baby rats and races 5 Nivedita Louis Living on the edge 6 Managing Editor Sadia Saeed Raval Mrs. Sucharita R. Hegde Our poor children 8 Dr. Harish Shetty Listen to your child! 10 Editor Shammi Nanda Anuradha Dhareshwar Quantity v/s Quality 13 Dr. Madhav Chavan Assistant Editor Pappu eighth class pass hai! 15 E.Vijayalakshmi Rajan E. Vijayalakshmi Rajan To flip or to click 18 Design 6 Vinitha Ramchandani H. V. Shiv Shankar A television-free life! 20 Nidhi Jamwal Know India Better Marketing The unsung monuments of Mehrauli 23 Mahesh Kanojia Rangan Datta Face to Face 37 Sunder Ramu : E. Vijayalakshmi Rajan OIOP Clubs Co-ordinator Vaibhav Palkar Features A 3600 look at India’s foreign policy 39 V. Pramod Subscription In-Charge Building a smart India? 41 Nagesh Bangera Avani Jain 23 Wart a problem! 43 Dr. T.D. Rajan Advisory Board Mallika’s tryst with child labour 45 Sucharita Hegde Kirthi Jayakumar Justice S. Radhakrishnan Partition, once again 46 Venkat R. Chary Shoma A. Chatterji Cultural Kaleidoscope Bangles for the bride 48 Printed & Published by Shoma A. Chatterji Mrs. Sucharita R. Hegde for Not just Tamasha! 50 One India One People Foundation, Dr. Kanak Rele Mahalaxmi Chambers, 4th floor, Column 51 22, Bhulabhai Desai Road, Rural Concerns : Bharat Dogra Mumbai - 400 026 Economy : Anuradha Kalhan Tel: 022-2353 4400 37 Young India 54 Fax: 022-2351 7544 Sunder Ramu Great Indians 56 e-mail: [email protected] [email protected] Printed at: Graphtone (India) Pvt. Ltd. A1 /319, Shah & Nahar Industrial Estate. S. J. Marg, Lower Parel (W) Mumbai – 400 013 visit us at: Tenali Ramakrishna Air Commodore ‘Aachi’ Manorama www.oneindiaonepeople.com Narayanrao Khanderao www.facebook.com/oneindiaonepeoplefoundation Shitoley, DFC Contents.pmd 3 10/27/2015, 10:42 AM Warm thanks A very warm thanks to Mr. T. Sadanand, who has been a well-wisher of One India One People magazine and the Foundation since a decade. Here, he is talking about the magazine to students of Changu Kana Thakur Vidyalaya, New Panvel (East). He also spoke to the students about the Foundation’s charter and purpose. He urged the students to read the magazine regularly in order to get more familiar with their country. Letters should be addressed to Mumbai - 400 026 22, Bhulabhai Desai Road, Mahalaxmi Chambers, 4th floor, Foundation, One India People The Editor, 022-2351 7544 e-mail: [email protected] / [email protected] www.oneindiaonepeople.com 022 - 2353 4400 Fax: Tel: 4 ONE INDIA ONE PEOPLE November 2015 SATIRE Of baby rats and races So, life is a rat race. And our little ones are the new rats on the block, scurrying around to the tune of their parents’ weighty expectations. Can the parents be reigned in? asks Nivedita Louis. HE race is on. As the rats look either side and run comes to chatting and socialising, they are way ahead of faster, I stand clenching my hands in tension and us in Whatsapp. Statuses like “I am what I am”, “I have an Tanticipation. My baby rat is on the right most lane attitude” and little red hearts pop up. Locking themselves up and I crane my neck to have a peek. Prayers are sent in rooms physically, in chat groups mentally, we know not Heavenwards for divine intervention to save my baby rat. All the paths they tread. When you have that aged uncle and the spectators have their own prayers, some folding hands, aunt visit you, calling out the kid, “Beta…kaise ho?” the little some kneeling and most of them yelling, with sweat dripping one’s facial expression is priceless. Neighbours are always down their temples. With a sudden jerk, I open my eyes. “Chintu ki mummy” or “Bunty ke papa” and relatives are Too much of chicken and rice can give you “Woh lal saree auntyji”. The moment they such nightmares in broad daylight! I have say their byes, they dash away in a flash to Our children are two little rats at home. They run the race the sanctum of their rooms, back to their pretty well, but I am not satisfied. “This is rats and chickens Lara Crofts raiding tombs. to us. Rats because a cruel, cruel world”, I tell them looking all The number of classes they attend to sincere, as they hold the joysticks of their they run the race satisfy the unquenched thirst of the Mom and PS3. The bigger rat just nods his head and and broiler chicken Dad needs all fingers of both hands and legs the little one keeps kicking someone on the because they are to count. Starting from abacus classes where large TV screen. custom made to a the poor kids shake and chuck their fingers Our children are rats and chickens to feeding cycle. like crazy to the karate classes where they us. Rats because they run the race and break tiles imagining them to be their parents’ broiler chicken because they are custom faces, children today are put under undue made to a feeding cycle. It is corn flakes in the morning. stress. Our unfulfilled dreams are our children’s additional As the schools cry for a healthy lunch, we pack those two baggage. We keep honing their ‘skills’ for succeeding in the chappatis with a tomato sauce smiley or that spoonful of rat race, in material pursuits, that we forget children are rice with fried potatoes. Night comes and the lazy career just children and their dreams are filled with balloons and woman syndrome sets in, as we dial for that delectable bubbles, not Newton’s laws and Pythagoras theorem. I am pizza with cheese dripping from it. Weekends are spent at still wondering if there will be a day when I will really put to KFC and Domino’s as we watch our ‘slightly’ over weight use my favourite (a+b)2=(a+b)(a+b) algebra that I learnt kids lick the finger good. in my mom’s favourite kneel-asana! Spending quality time We have visitors, our rats promptly run to their holes with the children and plain ‘listening’ to their babble would armed with their tabs. Not even a courteous ‘Welcome suffice. Watching their sleeping form with a smile on our lips aunty’ or ‘Hi uncle’. All their childhood they spend growing is enough. All this I write as my little vegetables in Farmville and feeding the chicken in Hay Day. rats play God of War, a smile playing While we were bathing in the rivers with cousins and played on my lips. in the fields, all our children have for company are the The writer is currently a Commercial dragons they slay in Game of Thrones. Locked in their own Apprentice with Southern Railways. She is married with two kids. She has world, clutching the tab which is their lifeline, the kids stay a B.Com and an MBA and is an avid at home, waiting for their Mom and a sloppy dinner. blogger, social activist and voracious reader. You can read more of her writings So… do our children socialise? Yes, they do. When it at: www.cloudninetalks.blogspot.com ONE INDIA ONE PEOPLE November 2015 5 CHILDREN LivingLiving onon thethe edgeedge If our children grow up to be achievers, but stressed and unhappy, we would have done the biggest disservice to them. Parents are increasingly transferring their own fears of the future onto their children, says Sadia Saeed Raval. The only way to mitigate this stress is to demand less and support more. Are we capable of doing that? RE urban kids on the edge today? This question has a The fallout of stress lot of significance, at least in the psychologist’s office, When such heavy investments are made for the child - Awhere what is happening in society is reflected in real- expensive education, classes, best sport equipment and so on time. Increasing behaviour difficulties in children is one such - naturally, rewarding outcomes are expected. Parents watch change that we are seeing over the decade. their children with great anxiety. Children are in the spotlight under which they are expected to perform and if they Why are children more stressed today? don’t, parents freak out. They step in to help, with all Children are the mainstay of the future. good intentions, but the help can take the form of pushing When the society expects the future to be the child, criticising and comparing the child, more competitive, more difficult, less safe, sometimes even physically beating the child and naturally it will impel parents to gear children displacing their own fears of the future onto the child. up for facing such a future. What these little Children manifest behavioural difficulties primarily beings are going through today is perhaps a because they are missing out on their natural reflection of the entire social system’s anxiety development. Nature has a way of allowing of what it expects to convolute into tomorrow. growth and development. During Naturally, the expectation of children is to certain periods of life, certain grow up faster, be smarter, know more, and psychological developments all in all be geared for something naturally take place. It takes difficult where they will be place by meeting other thrown into oblivion if they do children, having a lot of free not match up. play time, especially And how is this being through unstructured play achieved? This is being time where there is no achieved by having more binding on what they do and schools, different boards (no also very little adult longer just ICSE, CBSE or SSC), supervision in terms of what more expensive schools where kind of play is valid.