Hahahahah! Kids will be kids, always speaking the truth. There need not be any particular reason for children to hate their parents. This aversion of theirs is the most original and spontaneous of human emotions.

That said, parents don’t like to remain passive, they constantly endeavour to provide more reasons for their kids to further hate them. Like enrolling them in the now ubiquitous camps during the annual vacation.

When this world eventually ends, and if there is a possibility for columnising the reasons for its demise, two things will occupy the pole position: The 24-hour news channels and the annual summer camps for children.

Yes, as human civilization further evolves, there will be a time when babies will become so advanced and knowledgeable that they will refuse to emerge out of mothers’ wombs for the fear that if they come out, one of these days they will be signed up in a summer camp.

Summer camps, in principle, represent parents’ earnest desire to open up some interesting avenues of fun/recreation/learning for their wards. Remember a Vishwanathan Anand was unearthed only after his mother started playing chess with him and enrolled him in the Mikhail Tal Chess Club? A Steffi Graf emerged courtesy a pushy father who took her from one tennis coach to another.

At least this was the idea when I put my daughter in a chess coaching camp once and a tennis training centre later. I am happy to report that she indeed exhibited the talent of both these remarkable legends: She played tennis like Anand and chess like Graf. She smashed the rook with a whippy forehand and practised Nimzo Indian defence at the net.

Undeterred, I took her to a music class, lest the potential Sudha Raghunathan in her went unvocalized. Here too it was a similar story. She, as it turned out, is endowed with the voice of Raghunathan.

Okay, my daughter and her terrible flop-shows may be an extreme example and is not a reflection of the camps she was put in. But what I am worried about is what parents these days choose for their children as healthy recreation.

Karate, for instance.

In real-life situations, knowing karate is like a dog possessing the skill to walk only on its hind legs: A wonderful ability to own, except that it fetches you nothing in life, barring perhaps a few medals at competitions.

Ok, I may be overstating my case.

Karate sure does have its uses. Especially on a lonely night on a deserted street, with a violent thief ready to attack you. But before you start landing the ‘chops’ on your villain, as a karateka your first job will be to pray that he is also a karateka. Because karate is that unique martial art that becomes that unique martial art only if the opponent also knows karate.

(Also, it’s pertinent to point here, karate is most effective only when you are stuffed in a karate outfit. So your next trick is to hold off your enemy till you changed into your karate robes. If for some stupid reason you have not carried your karateka uniform with you, the most logical thing to do is to politely request the robber to wait while you scamper home and come back cloaked in your convenient combat clothing).

The rules of karate are simple:  You cannot practise your karate even against, say, a boxer, much less against a Chennai street thug, against whom it’s just a stupid flailing of arms to the accompaniment of random, incomprehensible whoops.

Yet, these days the first thing that most parents check out, when they move into a new neighbourhood, is for a friendly ‘Sensei’. If the idea is to develop in the boy/girl some physical robustness and help him/her indulge in some energetic combat, then the easier way would be to allow the kids be their natural kids self. Because left to themselves, especially young boys, like nothing more than bashing and biffing among themselves.

Another of the summer camp specialities is the handwriting workshops. The fact that you are able to read this piece clearly is a testimony to the fact that I honed my handwriting skills at a renowned workshop. It’s a skill that I later dutifully passed on to my keyboard.

Ok, I am kidding. But dear parents, if legibility or clarity is the idea, there is something more basic that humanity must attempt in the first place: Ban ‘cursive writing’. Kids, in general, start their life, writing in bold and clear-cut natural god-given fonts. And then thoughtful teachers, introduce them to cursive writing, which, I suspect, was invented by someone when fully drunk.

Let me illustrate with a practical example.

Natural writing: You are a genius.

Cursive writing: The font style is so silly that it has failed to load here.

I rest my case.

©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.

This was also the comfortable working pattern of most parents till one cataclysmic moment in history when all of them took a wrong turn and decided to actively involve themselves in rearing their offspring, especially in matters relating to their school and college education.  Considering the situation the world is in today, this must rank as the single biggest blunder of mankind after the invention of 24-hour news channels and employing the likes of Barkha Dutt in them.

I strongly suspect that parents of that era astutely adapted their working style from the functioning of the government. Remember how the Punjab problem was solved? Terrorists were demanding a separate Khalistan, and to drive home their idea they were killing people by the dozens almost on an hourly basis. But the government of the day was stubbornly steadfast and equal to the occasion as it went about its essential business of doing not much of anything. It is also quite possible that the government was so carefully unconcerned that it might not have even known that Punjab was festering. Eventually it came to a situation where the impassioned terrorists were simply bored with their chore that they decided to do something else which at least had a chance of eliciting response from others.

It is a plan that might as well work in Kashmir if only the authorities don’t botch it up by their overzealousness of trying to reason out with the ultras or holding peace-talks with them. If the government is faced with the question, ‘what about Kashmir issue?’ its response has to be, ‘yes, what about Kashmir? And while we are at it, where is Kashmir?’

This simple expedience will ensure that the troublemakers will shift to a place where the authorities at least know which part is where.

Getting back to bringing up children, the situation today is such that school and college education fear parents more than it possibly can the students actually undergoing them. But it wasn’t the case back then, when parents’ lifelong commitment for the education of their progeny started and ended with enrolling them in some kindergarten school. After that it was the bounden duty of the children to ensure for themselves quality education. If they didn’t, too bad. If they did, not bad. But either way, parents didn’t notice.  For, it is quite conceivable that some of the parents hardly ever noticed that they had children in the first place.  That alone can possibly explain why some of them ended up having brood whose number qualified for a special delimitation exercise and earmarking of a separate electoral constituency for them.

Parents chose the school for their child to be enrolled in after extensive and rigorous research done by way of walking down the nearby street and looking for a building with the signboard ‘school’. This was such a taxing exercise that parents were sapped of all their energy for the next 12 to 15 years and hence couldn’t make any more meaningful participation in their children’s education.

Parents and teachers meetings happened regularly whenever the duo ran into each other in the nearby market. During those moments, both the parent and teacher struck to utmost decency and etiquette by not discussing about the life and things concerning a third person who was not around —– namely, the child/student concerned.

Whenever a child didn’t go to school for a few days at a stretch, parents will niftily pick out that the child is either unwell or the school is closed for summer vacation, in which case the examinations must have been over and it is time for holidays.

Talking of holidays, parents also brought a even more wonderful laissez faire plan when dealing with summer vacation plans for their children: Since holidays were anyway fun for children, why dilute that by taking them to distant lands under the guise of vacation trips, was their essential approach. This worked wonders in limiting travel-related accidents to a minimum. This also kept at bay the emergence of new airline companies, thereby there were fewer complaints on flight delays and in-flight food, which like today, was insufferable then too.

Since every one was busy having fun and being happy doing practically nothing, history books said, peace reigned. And then, summer camps came into being. As history books would not say this, we will say: History of humankind has been altered forever.

Then there were colleges. College education, parents then understood, was very important in moulding a person’s life. It was not something that could not be treated casually. This meant parents had to remain even more hands-off than they did with school education. So parents had even lesser clue in which college and in which stream their wards were in. But diligent parents kept track off what their son or daughter was studying by noticing what they were carrying to college: If it was a steth and a hideous coat, it must be for medical. A T-Square and khaki uniform meant that an engineer or bus conductor was in the making. A single notebook and a casual demeanour was all it took for education in the science and literature groups.

The one great advantage of being in science and literature streams was that the students did not have to pay any attention to what was being taught as the subjects hardly had any relevance to real living. Fortunately for them they could all be accommodated in an organisation that continues to have no connection with reality and human condition: Government.

Governments have remained doing what they have been doing all along, which is pretty much nothing. So why did the parents change from pro-active nothingness to no purpose activeness? I blame the summer camps.

(My weekly column for the publication)

©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.