{"id":1372,"date":"2016-07-13T20:02:28","date_gmt":"2016-07-13T20:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=1372"},"modified":"2026-07-17T14:05:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T14:05:06","slug":"gurgaon-ryan-international-murder-case-parenting-new-delhi-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=1372","title":{"rendered":"Paranoiac Activity: The Birth of the Anxious Parent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I<\/span>passed from school 10 years ago. That\u2019s one short decade. It\u2019s barely enough time for a good bottle of wine to age properly but apparently it\u2019s enough for the landscape of India\u2019s educational institutes to change\u2026. drastically.\n\nJust like one day Delhi woke up to find itself foisted with the title \u201crape capital of India\u201d, schools, once safe sanctuaries, have now been recast as places where children are knifed, slapped, and raped. This is stuff bad prison movies are made of.\n\nThe horrific incident at Gurgaon\u2019s Ryan International School has me schizophrenically trying to reconcile the monsters who did this, with Cundi Uncle, the friendly school-bus conductor, who would break up the bus fights and wipe away tears of the children who got bullied. And Sharma, the peon from the chemistry lab, who would be our \u201cinformer\u201d on teacher movements, and who taught us how to mix silver nitrate to make indelible ink that would ruin immaculate, white shirts. I\u2019m wracked by the thought: Could it have gone another way? In a time when everyone\u2019s a suspect until proven otherwise, should Cundi Uncle have been allowed to hug a bullied child? Should Sharma have been trading secrets with us? Would we allow it today if our children (future child, in my case) were to go to the same school or would we report someone like Cundi Uncle for crossing the line?\n\nWhen I think about it, there\u2019s a lot that happened in school that would be considered high risk today. I remember I was in class one and had a fall from the jungle gym. I was bleeding profusely, and while my classmates panicked and joined the wailing, the school gardener rushed me to the first-aid room. The nurse dressed the wound and a peon was instructed to drop me home. A little woozy from the fall, he carried me to the cab.\n\n<\/p>\"\"\n

\n

Childhood is no longer an adventure \u2013 it\u2019s a 15-year-long gauntlet.<\/p>\n

Image credit: Parveen Kumar\/Hindustan Times<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n\nToday a school peon accompanying a child without any \u201csupervision\u201d of concerned school authorities wouldn\u2019t have gone down well with parents. Today, the incident would have become a subject of debate in multiple WhatsApp parent groups; the school would be branded irresponsible and some would even demand the sacking of the peon.\n\nIt might be an overreaction, but perhaps the only thing to cheer about in this entire situation is that this is the outcome of awareness about the sort of horrible abuse that has gone unchecked in the \u201csimpler\u201d times that we tend to romanticise.\n\nBut by that count nearly half of our childhood experiences would be considered unsafe. I\u2019ve made friends with the hawker down the street, crept into the school groundsman\u2019s hut to catch dragonflies, packed off on my bicycle from Churchgate to Babulnath to run errands for my mother. All these would send any parent today into a panic attack. Childhood is no longer an adventure \u2013 it\u2019s a 15-year-long gauntlet.\n\n

Children aren\u2019t supposed to be reared inside hermetically sealed bubbles.<\/blockquote>\n\nAt least, that\u2019s what the paranoiac inside you wants to believe. Yes, children\u2019s safety should never be taken for granted, and instances of child abuse should not be brushed under the carpet. But we should also realise that not every person is here to cause you harm. A parent today has a difficult tightrope walk ahead of them: To have a keen eye on everyone who interacts with their child — but equally, to refrain from automatically treating everyone as a predator.\n\nI know how hopeless it can sound when we\u2019re greeted with news of the sort that unfolded in Gurgaon, but not everyone who comes in contact with our children is a rapey paedophile. And it is especially easy to attribute malafide intentions to anyone from a lower socio-economic strata, to those who\u2019re not \u201cpeople like us\u201d. For every murderous bus conductor, there are thousands of Cundi Uncles, who will wipe the tears off a crying child\u2019s cheek, give them a smile, pacify them with words of encouragement, and wave goodbye as the bus pulls away.\n\nChildren aren\u2019t supposed to be reared inside hermetically sealed bubbles. They\u2019re supposed to get dirty, scuff their knees, explore their environment, and learn about life through their own experiences, not the internet. Our instinct to protect them shouldn\u2019t turn into an extreme version of helicopter parenting, where sheltering kids \u201cfor their own good\u201d ends up with the opposite result. This issue involves walking a fine line \u2013 leveraging the modern tools of mobile phones and CCTV footage that have allowed us to become aware of the true, darker nature of school life, and also trying to maintain a healthy detachment from a child\u2019s personal growth.\n\nSo educate and inform the children. Let it be known to them that monsters do not exist only in the pages of their fairy tales, but also in real life. Also, tell them that just like in fairy tales, those monsters can be defeated by good. Let them play, cry, and fight, but above all, let them be kids while they still can.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In light of the Gurgaon incident, parents have to balance a tightrope: To have a keen eye on everyone who interacts with their child, but equally, to refrain from treating everyone as a predator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":1375,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[161,2330,164,471,2331],"class_list":["post-1372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov","tag-gurgaon","tag-murder","tag-new-delhi","tag-parenting","tag-ryan-international-school"],"yoast_head":"\nParanoiac Activity: The Birth of the Anxious Parent<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In light of the Gurgaon incident, parents have to balance a tightrope: To have a keen eye on everyone who interacts with their child, but equally, to refrain from treating everyone as a predator.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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