Ever since the song “Kabira” came out, we started singing it to my five-year old nephew, Kabir… to make him smile, to wake him up, to handle his tantrums… But the song no longer holds the magic that it did…
It’s been a month since Kabir smiled his full-blooded ever so innocent smile… When I say “innocent”, I mean it, one hundred percent… Counsellors say he is in depression… they use searing words like ‘trauma’… He cries every day… sometimes all day … his appetite has deserted him… Reason? His teacher insults him in class… So, he has decided to stay away… from school… from friends… from his parents… from carefree happiness …
Self-respecting mini-adult that he has always been, he refused to tell even his mother, his closest confidant, what exactly was bothering him… He kept saying he doesn’t like the teacher, but never divulged the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of it… a couple of days back, when the taunts became unbearable and politics became rotten, in a moment of weakness, he told his grandmother that his teacher had beaten him the very first day at school… Why? Because out of a zillion books, he was not able to find The English Book in his precocious bag… and when he stopped responding after continuous humiliation, she set out to prove to everybody – the students and the authorities alike – that the child is full of complexes and friendless…
He comes home… lost, embarrassed and hurt… and we fail, each time, to trace our way back to him. His commitment to his work is so huge that never has he made his dampened spirits and troubled little heart an excuse to not do his homework… It is not that we do not understand that, in this relentless competitive world, kids ought to be brave… and that as far as teachers are concerned, age and qualification have got nothing to do with kindness and maturity… But what do you do when the only colors your child recognizes are black and blue?