Swings & Roundabouts

Yesterday, the whole family visited an amusement park with friends. Both of my children were totally absorbed in the experience and wandered around the place, in a heightened state of excitement. As I watched them go from one ride to the next, buoyed by the adrenaline, it stuck me then, suddenly, in the middle of a happy day, that it doesn’t take much to crush the joy out of them. Children are like delicate flowers, aren’t they, and it hardly takes anything to hurt them irrevocably.

Unfortunately, in our society, there are perverts that get off doing such acts. Much as we, as parents, wish to rid our society off such monsters and protect our children forever, it isn’t possible. Teaching them that evil exists and equipping them with the means necessary to protect them is all we can do. The best way to do that is communication; communication is a two-way street and talking with our children about what is out there and hearing their concerns without showing our fears / worries will really help them remain open with us.

One of the first things they need to learn is to say ‘NO‘ firmly and quietly. Teach them to be aware of their body and to say ‘NO’ firmly when anyone, even if it is a sibling, touches them in the ‘no go’ area or is rough with them. My daughter, at 2, shouts ‘Don’t touch’ when I tickle her when she is angry with me. I am teaching her to say that calmly, under different circumstances.

Another thing they should know is to say ‘STOP‘. Molesters come in different guises and sometimes, it might even be a peer. Teaching our children to say loudly ‘STOP’ will have two effects – it might well stop the would-be molester in their tracks and more importantly, it will give the child courage that they are standing up for themselves and are fighting back.

In case of emergencies, every child MUST be taught how shout for help. A former colleague told me to teach my son to shout ‘MUM!’ instead of ‘HELP!’ Her reasoning? People might ignore someone shouting help, thinking it might be children fooling around but no one, especially a mum, will be able to stop themselves from turning around, hearing ‘MUM!’, even if their own children are next to them. In India, we must tweak this generic pointer and teach our children to shout “Ma!” and follow it up by a ‘HELP!’, again, in the local language. I can never forget the time, many years back, when a poor lady on the street cried unconsolably learning that a child was in distress a few metres away from her but she didn’t know, because the child kept shouting in English!

These may seem too simple but they are vital. Let us teach our children these simple concepts that may form a very strong foundation to help guard them against abuse.

What happens when two enterprising bloggers get together to chinwag? Lots of interesting banter, fun & laughter and sometimes, a germ of an idea that can quickly snowball into a wonderful concept. The month-long blogathon across many blogs on Child Sexual Abuse Awareness during the month of April is a perfect example. The brainchild of bloggers Monika Manchanda and Kiran Manral, Child Sexual Abuse Awareness blogathon gets off to a cracking start today.

Every day, bloggers will post interesting articles relevant to the topic, professionals will pitch in with their valuable insights while NGOs take this to a whole different level.

So bookmark the CSAAM website and follow @csaam on twitter. Join us to share your stories if you want to or just to learn how to tackle this very real problem. Whatever be your reason, be a part of it. Let us do our bit to make our children safe.

If you would like to add to the discussion or know somebody else who would, please note that we welcome entries

a. mailed to csa.awareness.april@gmail.com OR
b. posted as FB notes and linked to Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Month Page OR
c. posted on your own blog with the badge and linked to the main blog OR
d. linked or posted on Twitter tagged twitter.com/CSAAwareness OR
e. sent via some/all of the above methods

The next person to take up my guest author request is the blogger behind Baby Loves Books, mum of one and one of my oldest friends, Rupa Raman. Here she is, asking you what’s the worst parenting faux pas you have ever committed.

When Lavz asked me to post on the topic of ‘child safety’, the voice in my head went,”You’ve.got.to.be.kidding me!” and I have no idea why I agreed. Here’s the thing: Not only am I not qualified to write on child safety or anything remotely close, I am, in fact, on the verge of being included in the Clumsy New Mom’s Safety Handbook, under the section titled How to Keep Baby Safe – When Mom is Around.

Hmm…child safety. Child friendly. Where should I begin?
* How about the time I accidentally locked myself out of the car, leaving my 8-month old strapped to her car seat, inside, alone? Boy, did I spend the longest 15 minutes of my life waiting for the locksmith to arrive!
* Or the time when my 6-month old had her immunization shots and, eager to relieve her discomfort I gave her an overdose of infant fever medicine. (Although the nurse later assured me that the quantity I had given was well within the safety limits – not really an overdose)
* Need I even tell you about my first attempt at helping my daughter wear her bicycle helmet, when I nicked her neck while tightening the strap?

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for parents taking full responsibility for their children. I assure you I am one of those parents despite what I’ve just shared. But, truth be told, keeping a child safe is no easy task these days with or without a parent to watch over.

Step into a mall and you never know when a lunatic will decide to unleash fire arms. Send kids to daycare and Junior’s best buddy is likely to share everything with her, including the latest exotic virus doing the rounds. With roller coasters falling off their tracks at amusement parks and sharks attacking swimmers at the beach, where on the planet can you take your kids so they can be safe and happy at the same time? Let’s say you decide to keep them home. Voila! A sea of plastic toys, (who knows how many contaminated with ‘toxic lead paint’), welcomes them. Plug in the television, DVDs or video games and you get an earful about how screen time impairs their development. Take them out to eat and you risk turning them into obese tweens.

So, you see, although I’m not particularly proud of some of the times I inadvertently put my daughter’s safety at risk and granted. But whilst I may not be the most eligible candidate to write about child safety, I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.

I challenge you to show me a parent who has never accidentally bumped her baby’s head against a wall, given her a lead-painted toy to chew on or one who has never left his baby unattended on the bed just for a teeny bit (and it’s very likely that the baby who hadn’t as much as tried to lift a toe until that point somehow decided to roll over for the first time and crashed head first onto the floor at that precise moment.)

So, if you’re a parent reading this – out with it! What is the most embarrassing/worst parenting faux pas you dare to own up to? Do share so we know we aren’t the only ones guilty of parenting oversights and parent-induced boo-boos. And hopefully we can learn from each other’s experience.

As for me, in the 3 years and 11 months that I’ve spent learning the ropes of parenting, I’ve discovered that no matter what the safety ratings on a product says and no matter how big a fortune you spend on baby-proofing your house, there really is no such thing as 100% baby safe. And I now know why they say keeping kids safe has less to do with intelligently designed products and a whole lot more to do with mom’s instincts…even if she’s a little absent-minded.

Article by Rupa Raman

The author in NYC with her daughter M

A voracious reader herself, Rupa Raman believes that reading to children regularly enriches their lives, expands horizons and changes attitudes. In her blog, she writes about everything from Karadi Tales to her love of picture books. Visit her blog at Baby Loves Books today!

Kiran Manral’s guest post brought up the oft-raised in an Indian context – that of Health & Safety. There have been various incidents in the past decade alone that have result in the needless loss of innocent lives, lives that may well have been spared if a few precautions have been taken beforehand.

Tragedies like the Kumbakonam School fire, the Garuda Mall mishap and of course, the recent accident of Aditya Dube, to name a few, may well be averted had basic Health & Safety procedures in place. A fire drill at the school, with a set procedure to be followed in event of a fire, could have prepared the staff and students at the Kumbakonam schools for the actuality of a fire. They could have merely followed procedure and assembled at a pre-agreed assembly point (as they do in the West), instead of running pell-mell and adding to the chaos.

Similarly, if the malls and restaurants had rigorous Health & Safety guidelines that they HAD to adhere to in order to remain open and strict building regulations that they had to follow to ensure the safety of their patrons, the tragedies that followed may well could have been prevented.

Whilst it is ultimately the responsibility of the parents’ to keep their youngsters in check, it is the duty of the owners of an establishment to make sure their mall / restaurant / cinema hall etc is safe enough for their patrons to visit without losing an arm or a leg or their lives. We go to a restaurant to have enjoy a meal and deserve to do so without wondering if we will fall a few floors to our death if we step on a tile.

Accidents like these focus on how little regulation is there to ensure the safety of our lives in everyday India. How easy it is to grease palms and speed things along, instead of worrying if a building will pass muster with the officials regarding its construction, design etc. How there are no standardised methodologies in place to ensure the safety of the users.

I wonder when the powers that be will sit up, take notice and take issues such as Health & Safety seriously. What needs to happen to bring that about?

As promised, here’s my first guest blogger, uber writer Kiran Manral, with a plea to the Indian restaurants to up their child-friendliness stakes.

Hotel Ramee Guestline, Juhu

When Lavanya invited me to be a guest blogger on her newly revamped blog, the theme she told me, was “child friendly”. Write on anything child friendly, she said. Yars, yars, I nodded sagely, and scampered to googlebaba to figure out what I could write about that was child friendly related and something parents across the globe could identify with.

And then this happened over the weekend. Friends of a friend lost their son when he fell to death from the sixth floor of a restaurant. While the parents were dining with friends.

What is scary is that the parents didnt think of looking for their son until they had finished their meal. When I read of such incidents, I think that I err on the side of paranoia, and that is a good thing to be these days. I have the deepest sympathies for the parents, but this incident is a symptom of the malaise that affects parents in restaurants here in India. Let the kids wander off once they’re done with their meal so that the parents can eat in peace.

Which also comes about because of the total dearth of restaurants with child friendly facilities here in India. For a family with small children here, the only dining options are fast food places like McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, or Papa John’s. Or else restaurants like the ones with a wild dining or a theme like a Village Festival etc, to keep the kids entertained and busy.

No restaurant, except for Mall playzone/food court combos, have spaces within the restaurant premises which have supervised playing facilities, adaptations of the main courses to fit children’s appetites and discerning palates. High chairs for infants and toddlers, children’s toilet seats are something most restaurants already have in place. Basically, restaurants are telling us dont bring your kids along. Which is why the maids are dragged to restaurants to wait uncomfortably out in lobby areas, walking and entertaining the small babies. Something that gets my goat, but well, to each his own.

What we need here are child friendly restaurants which welcome kids, have a dedicated employee or two to supervise the children in a safe hygienic section of the restaurant, with adequate toys, games etc to keep the children busy.

Apart from this, a child friendly restaurant will offer colouring kits, jigsaw puzzles, toys, and such like to keep children occupied. And will even have a designated supervised spot on the premises with a small play area, with a play pen, rubber flooring, slides and the like to let the parents drop their kids off, and eat a meal unhurriedly. If only restaurants in India understood that the demise of the joint family does mean that many young parents forgo dining out because of the difficulty in keeping young children entertained and out of the plates of the other diners in the restaurant.

And the attitude of the staff! At a lunch with friends at Moti Mahal, in Bandra, the staff and the maitre d’ made it very clear to us that we were obliged to finish our meal quickly and leave the premises because of the rather vociferous fun our two boys were upto, albeit confined to our table. Needless to say, I have never gone back since. On the other hand, when the child was bored at a family lunch at Mainland China, the waiters were quick to engage him in a quick chat, and the maitre d dug out a random toy to keep him busy and entertained. Guess where we have returned umpteen times?

Are any restauranteers reading this want to try this concept? I guarantee the restaurant will be double booked from day one.

Article by Kiran Manral

Uber writer Kiran Manral

Mom, freelance writer, India Helps charity founder, blogger, voracious reader and a “good egg”, has been writing since she could hold her pencil on her own. She has over 20 years of experience writing for some of the top Indian publications.
Kiran blogs at Thirty Six & Counting and Karmic Kids.

So it was “get dressed as your favourite book character day” at my son’s school on Thursday, on account of World Book Day. After much head scratching, we decided he would go as Harry Potter. The Grim Reaper’s shroud left over from a Halloween party was modified into a wizard’s robe; a scabbard became a fancy wand and with his father’s old pair of glasses (with the lenses taken out) and a mascara lightning-shaped scar on his forehead, he was ready.

He went to school, practicing saying “Expelliarmus!” under his breath. At the bus stop, there was a Fantastic Mr Fox, another Harry Potter, a Willy Wonka and a few more Roald Dahl characters. But what I couldn’t guess what character a girl the same age as my son, wearing a funky version of her school uniform, with her tie askew and a lurid short skirt over a pair of black tights, was. I quizzed her mother and got the answer that the girl was a St Trinian’s school girl.

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BBC’s “Famous, Rich and Jobless” (telecast at 9.00 pm on March 10, 2010) seems another in the long list of “Celebrity tourism”, as the Guardian puts it, to grace our television. A bunch of “celebs” visited various members of the public who are living purely on benefits to see if they can help them.

That the rationale behind the show was shaky as hell is another topic altogether. What I want to discuss is the issue raised by one of the celebs, Diarmuid Gavin, as he visited a big family receiving £29,500 a year from the state. 28-year-old Mum and 29-year-old dad are both jobless and mum is pregnant with her sixth child. They live in a massive six-bedroom detached house and the dad hadn’t had a paying job in seven years.

Of course, this small fact doesn’t deter him from having more and more babies, that the taxpayer pays for. When Diarmuid asks the wife what she feels about sponging off the state, she points to her husband and goes “it is his fault! He wants a big family.”

That made me speechless.

How can you have a child without figuring out how you are going to provide for its future? When you yourself do not have a job, how can you have more and more children?

Answer: Quite easy. Get the state to pay for it.

There was some sob story in the offing, of course, why the dad hadn’t got off his backside and found himself a paying job in 7 years but I don’t buy it. Both husband and wife used to do menial jobs before and chances of them pulling in £30000 a year are slim. But now, thanks to the gazillion kids, they not only have the money, they even have other perks like rent, council tax etc that are paid by the state, aka, taxpaying mugs like you and me.

Apparently, the sick bastard labelled ‘British Fritzl’ was “driven by child benefit greed” and kept raping his daughters and having babies with them because he got child benefits! Ba$tard wants a plush lifestyle and instead of going out there and working his butt for it, he impregnates his daughters repeatedly and bills the state for the childcare.

If these are not examples of  gross abuse of the British welfare state system, I do not know what is.

I say give the benefits to the old, the infirm, those who cannot fend for themselves. The OAPs who die every winter because they cannot afford to pay their heating bills, give them the money. The disabled person who cannot  go out there and earn her daily bread, give her the money to look after herself. The others, able-bodied ones who are sitting in the comfort of their six-bed taxpayer-funded life, get over yourself and go out there and get a paying job.

I used to work for a social research agency and one of my projects was working on the incapacity benefits – who was receiving them, how much and what was their status. The findings made my blood boil. Whilst there were genuine applicants, there were many who, despite their claims to go out there and work if given a chance, would rather sit comfortably and watch the benefit cheques come in month after month.

I say the simplest way to reduce the massive deficit is to completely rehaul the benefits system. If guys like the father-of-five-with-one-on-the-way had to pay their own way, I am sure they would stop whingeing and get a vasectomy first and a job next.

*image courtesy: Guardian.co.uk

First there were no uniforms, then too many clothes that weren’t uniform enough and then some fab uniforms that weren’t Made in India. Amidst all this conflicting reports regarding the Indian Winter Olympic team’s outfits, one big factor slipped by almost unnoticed. There was an Indian Winter Olympics team! Winter Olympics!

And for the first time, the officials didn’t outnumber the players 5:1.

For a country where a significant percentage of the population has barely seen < 20 deg C temperatures, much less snow, the fact that we had two skiers and a luge contestant was a huge deal. Throw in the fact that sports really isn’t our cup of chai, I think it is nothing short of phenomenal that we actually have two blokes that can ski!

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CLANG! CLANG!! CLANG!!
The noise of the bell would reverberate across the colony and the opposite-house aunty will lean out of her balcony and yell “Hey Lavanya! Your rickshawman has come!” That will become almost like a battle cry, spreading from house to house till it reached our compound in fever-pitch. RICKSHAWMAN HAS COME!
Though an hour and a half remained for my school bell, I had the misfortune of living farthest from school. Hence, my school run had a First In – Last Out approach and I got on to my rickety rickshaw at the ungodly hour of 8.10 AM. Never on time at 8.00 AM. Because, day after day, at 7:59:55, I would be staring into space, wool gathering and building dams with my breakfast of dal-chawal. My grandfather would be seated behind me, prodding me on with non-stop admonishments and threats. All around me, the household will be spinning at a furious pace, with the other members of the family getting ready to get on with their day. Everybody except for me, that is.

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19 years, 400 hearings, 40 adjournments and at the end of it, Ruchika Girhotra‘s family had no justice for the injustice meted out to them in 1990. It was in 1990 that 14-year-old Ruchika was molested by DGP Shambhu Pratap Singh Rathore and within the span of three years, drove the child to take her own life rather than face a day more of torture and harassment at the hands of Rathore and his goons.

And the punishment? Six months imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1000. That is what the life of Ruchika Girhotra is worth. That is the price of her honour, the price of the harassment her family has faced.

Shame!

A supposed pillar of the community in Chandigarh, Rathore, a Director General of Police, sworn to protect the lives of the common man, woman and child cannot keep his glands and check and molests a child, one who is the same age as his daughter and is in fact, her classmate. He, Rathore, is defended in the court of law by his wife. Not one to sit back, he keeps up a daily assault on the Girhotras – Ruchika, her ten-year-old brother Ashu and their father. Ashu is repeatedly tortured and beaten in a bid to make Ruchika take back the case. Ruchika is kicked out of school on trumped up charges and their father is harassed at work, with false cases of murder and theft filed against the Girhotras, man and boy.

After years of this non-stop harassment, Ruchika commits suicide. Not even an FIR has been filed for the atrocity committed against her and the teenager finally gives up her fight. But still her family wasn’t left in peace until they were driven out of Chandigarh, forced to take up menial jobs to survive.

Whilst the lives of the Girhotras swirled in a downwards spiral, things couldn’t be more different for Rathore. Less than a year after Ruchika’s death, Rathore gets promoted to Director General of Police. In 1999, he is recommended for a President’s Medal for Distinguished Service.

Meanwhile, the fight for justice for Ruchika continues. Ruchika’s friend Aradhana Prakash, the eye-witness, is running a signature campaign to garner support. Her family has appeared on NDTV, where Barkha Dutt interviewed various power figures like Kiran Bedi. Online petitions have been set-up, in a bid to get the President’s eye.

Will the Girhotras get justice? Will Rathore get his comeuppance? Going from the past, where Jessica Lal and Priyadarshini Mattoo got justice after a furious campaign kicked up by the people, one can live in hope. But justice? Basic rights of the common man? Truth? Do these have place in the Indian society? Or will money and power be the only currencies and, in the words of Kiran Bedi, the criminal justice system be on the side of the criminals?