Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Recently, I took a stroll in one of the local parks in Bahrain. With the temperature having dropped a bit and the Ramadan period slowing the bustle, an evening stroll was a welcome change.
The park was populated with a few of families, a solitary jogger, a couple walking briskly, and a few girls strolling. I took one circuit of the garden’s promenade and was walking towards the parking lot when I came upon a child. He was standing at an intersection and the fluorescent light shone on him.
Now you must understand how innocent this little wonder looked. He had on those tiny baby jeans, which hung off him like a stiff skirt. He wore a red-striped shirt, which was buttoned up to his neck, in a very prim and proper manner. His hair was combed neatly with not a strand unkempt. And he was so little; I had to bend a bit to see him clearly!
Such a sight, that the more sensitive of us would feel a lump in our throat! It was probably the light and the innocence on his face, whatever, it drove me to him like the hungry to food. I tried all my weird faces and antics to get a smile out of him, but all he did was stare blankly up at me and somewhere I am sure he must have voiced out “what the heck?” in his head!
What was strange was that there was no one about. No father, no mother, no man, no woman, nobody. This little boy was standing in a park, with a pond — that looked like it contained a tonne of waste — nearby, absolutely alone and freakily calm. I looked around to see if there was someone, but in vain. On the grass I saw a family playing cards and on another end I saw a man playing with a child on a swing. I scoured up and down, still no one.
All this while, the boy continued staring at me and no one came to him nor at me to ask what was happening. As though he sensed my anxiety, he looked away and started walking very slowly towards the grassy area by the pond. He walked in tiny, slow strides, reached a short wall, climbed it on to the grass and walked up to what seemed a black figure on a garden bench. And that was when we realised there actually WAS a guardian.
It was a sight that would have child-care screeching to a halt and reeling off accusations of negligence. How can a mother be so ignorant? What if this small child walked into something that could have hurt him? What if he got carried away and fell into the pond? What if someone took him away? What if...many more unthinkable and horrible things had happened?
And that boy was adorable and naïve! Why would any parent or guardian leave him unattended even for a single minute? How could they? You don’t have to love children, all right, but at least give them the respect they deserve, like a little bit of concern. If that was indeed the case, then consider not having children at all in the first place?
This isn’t the first time I have come across such ignorant behaviour by parents. It isn’t their fault that they were born. No amount of frustration, anger or self-pity should be reason to treat a child wrongly.
Those who do are just pathetic losers who cannot get a hold of their lives and should be ashamed to even be alive!
Shilpa Chandran
