Diwali ...

Diwali ... crackers. 

Another indication of a monumental generational failure - an inability to communicate with the next generation. I tried telling the children outside, very politely and in simple English, that these bombs they let off terrify the dogs so much that in case of street dogs mother and children scatter in opposite directions and lose each other forever. They go into other territories and get bitten by the street dogs there.

I got blank, completely blank, looks. They just did not regiser what i was saying. In some cases there are specious arguments abount how greater wrongs are going on - cars, ozone layer, global warming ... As if two wrongs ever made a right. I do not even get the drift of many 'discussions (for the sake of discussions !)'.

But to equip our children, all children, to think with their mind, heart and soul in tandem ... without that we would have failed them. And the earth.


(A year later 2014 ...)

One 11th std girl was letting off crackers that burst my eardrums. The same girl I had tried explaining to last year - that the dogs hear sounds 20 times louder than we do, and are traumatized. She gave me a blank look a year ago then - as if i was speaking a foreign tongue. I failed to summon up nerve to tell her the same thing this year, and face that blank demented look.

I grieve that we have failed so completely to give the next generation a sense of empathy. It is a systemic failure - which our generation needs to own up.