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I have been resisting writing a "back in my days" kind of post ever since I started this blog. Apart from not wanting to look like the old man with rose tinted glasses I think this is also because as far as my own life is concerned it's kind of difficult to draw a like-for-like comparison between then and now. A couple of recent incidents that followed close on the heels of each other though helped make this distinction quite clear.
Earlier this week on my way back home after dropping my daughter at school I saw a crowd gathering at an intersection. Closer inspection revealed that a school van had nudged a little girl cycling to school and toppled her from her bike. She seemed to have received a scrape and a nasty shock but was otherwise none the worse for wear. What really got to me though was where this happened. The school is located in one of those army cantonment areas, off most of the larger roads, leafy corridors and so on - in this age of insane overcrowding on the roads one would have thought it among the few places still safe for a child to cycle around. Not any more it would seem - at-least as far as the parents of that little child are concerned. I would be surprised if they let that poor little thing get back on the bike outside the confines of their own home for a while now.
Later the same day we happened to be in a part of town not usually frequented by us. While there we walked past what seemed like a street food center - many stalls offering up the usual lip-smacking, stomach-churning concoctions people of my generation remember fondly. Those were the days when eating out meant exactly that - eating outdoors. Our eyes lighting up my wife and I asked the kids if they would like to grab a bite. Our horror at their lack of enthusiasm was only matched by their own at being asked to do something so inappropriate. Our 12 year old put on a brave face but rather unconvincingly mumbled something about not being very hungry while our 8 year old started marching away muttering darkly about germs. On reflection they were probably right - awareness of and the threat of disease is more now than it was earlier, quite possibly their immunity to the corrosive stuff served up by such places is not high enough to take a risk and so on.
Based on these incidents it would seem that cycling to school, even in an area like the cantonment, and eating street food seem to be sliding off the list of things kids can safely do. It's such a pity - when you consider that travelling by train, going over un-announced to a friend's house on a whim and so many other such simple pleasures we used to take for granted as children are no longer available to the kids today. Which brings me to the point I was making - it's been bothering me how the space available for kids has been shrinking all the time. Not much you can do about it I suppose except bemoan the fact and hope that that as parents we are doing what we can to enrich their lives in other ways. That of-course is the lament of a parent it's pretty apparent though if pressed for their own opinion the kids would think they have it pretty good - you can't miss what you never had I guess!
