The Second Child Labour

Honk! Honk! Hooooooooonk! Honk!

The peaceful morning silence was broken into a million pieces and scattered by the honking school bus!

It was almost 06:45Am but the Sun hadnt yet removed the little fog formed due to the heavy rains on the weekend.
The breeze was cold and the air still wet. The little sparrows showed up as usual in the veranda and the little black bird pecking at the window glass and crashing into it again and again.

While I sat chanting on the cot, my wife was cooking, so the windows were open and the door left ajar.
It  was not even 7am, so people could be seen out on the streets for their morning walk.

But it was already late enough for a kid in our neighbourhood so the schoolbus kept honking.
The sound was loud enough to cut through the silence of our not-so-busy street so early in the morning.
The driver kept honking so hard that we both rushed to the window to check what stopped his yellow spaceship!

The poor kid ran down with his mother, puffing and panting to catch the bus on time. He was helped into the bus by the conductor who could almost pull him up with one hand.

We saw the bus drive away and on the little last glance, we saw him take a seat. It was surprising to see that he was so young that he wasn't even tall enough to reach the seat properly!

My wife hadn't even finished half her cooking so we wondered if the kid even had the time to properly shower at this hour...what to speak of having a good breakfast.

Such a small kid surely needs a good sleep, some playtime and a nice breakfast to boost his morning time.

This was just pure pathetic upbringing!!!

Who do I blame?
His parents? His teachers? School? Society? World? Education system?
Where do I start and where do I end?

Im not sure about you the reader, but atleast many people I know, including myself, very much cherish childhood memories and school days for one big reason:
Lack of worries & pressure or atleast minimal.

Yes, maybe it slowly increased as you went higher in the education ladder but Im talking about primary and preprimary aged kids.
Kids who grew up in villages ofcourse enjoyed a far higher level of luxurious freedom in childhood.

Those were the days when we freely played with no thoughts of day or night, inside or outside, sun or rain, school or home!
Academics did have their place but they only remained secondary at first and slowly increased their share in our lives as we grew in age.
But the bottom line was: NO WORRIES!

Why dont we give our kids the same? Why do we want to deprive them of that treasure?
Why are we growing so cruel that we want them to grow up into mere money earning robots?
Yes, money seems to be ruling the world quite a lot... probably too much!
But life is much more than that.

We need to be happy! We need to pass on the secrets of being happy to our kids.
We surely have the responsibility of teaching them to 'stand up on their own feet', but dont we want them to be happy?
Do we stop at just teaching them how to earn their daily bread?

And who is going to question about the way we are supressing their different talents and trying to just fit them into ready made modern moulds?

Where are we headed to?

A little kid rushing to catch his school bus at 06:45am? The kid would have hardly been in grade 1 or 2!

What tragedy, what misfortune, what disaster has befallen his parents that they need to put the kid through so much pressure?

Isn't this some kind of torture ?
What has comeupon the kids parents that they need to train him so vigorously at such a tender age?

And we see this in every street of our city, state, country and everywhere!
It is so disheartening to see such little kids being pushed away out of their homes so early in the morning without a proper sleep, breakfast or leisure time!

I don't wish to give a conclusion to this topic, I rather wanted to start a discussion.
Why is society punishing them so early in life?
I wanted to ask you if it doesn't bug you to see such a scene so early in the morning.
I wanted to ask every kid if they want such a thing for their friends.
I want to ask every parent if this is what they will do to their kid.
I want to ask every teacher if they have kids who they wish, had such a morning.

"GOOD MORNING!"

Credits:
Image: Internet