Hands Tied

I see empty parks. Isolated play areas. I don’t see children playing hopscotch anymore. I cannot imagine a child running down a street any longer. I fail to figure what is so wrong with the picture here.

I think of my schooling days and I feel the bliss of absolute freedom. I think about parking lots and I want to play tag again. I think about my school building, my memory flashes pictures of walls dressed in cute animal drawings and the hand prints we left behind after every art class. The after school bell was like an overbearing sorrow clinging to every young soul. The leaving behind of friends almost depressive. Waving to each other until our parents would finally tug at us to move along, often crashing into a grownup or two.

Today I look at a school building and I see plain cemented wired walls. Wires so stingy that I’m sure even a cat would fail to tackle them without getting hurt. I witness armed guards securing the buildings. In the olden days all we had to deal with was a guard and a battered wooden stick never was it a guard with a bullet. There are no children running around the parking lot anymore. The after school bell sounded freedom but now it’s like an order to not to move a muscle unless you’re told to do so. Through the metal detectors, the iron fences, the armed guards – I see terrified faces being shepherd by stern nervous teachers. I think it’s worse than when you had to pretend to be a chicken in front of the entire class as a punishment .nonetheless the routine is soothing for the very fragile nerves of parents. As soon as a child steps through the haunting black gates of school he would be bundled by the parent and securely locked inside the car before they could figure what had hit them. It’s as if there are armed bees flying around. Not that the parents would ever doubt that.

At home parents are forced to forbid their children from going out on streets no matter what the age. The child would incessantly argue against the notion and post his argument that he can’t possibly do anything behind locked doors. To which the parent would either direct him to either the computer screen or the television.

I believe here we utterly destroy the innocence of a young mind. I don’t think a terrorist aims to kill, I would rather say he would want a child to have an absolutely stunted intellect. What has become of this country? It’s saddening actually how no more are we able to give our children the experience they would never possibly get and something that we could forget.

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Tags: pakistan, schooling, Terrorism

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 24th, 2010 at 00:30 and is filed under Current Affairs, Pakistan, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.