Children and Grown-ups
The class was well-lit by the flooding sunlight coming through the window which made each child’s face look brilliantly beautiful. There were around fifteen students between three to five years of age in the class, who sat on the carpet that was spread across the room.
The theme of the day was ‘types of houses’. The teacher had bought three house models- pucca house, kutcha house, and an asbestos house- which were made up of cardboard, straw, and various materials that gave each house an exactly authentic look.
The teacher asked, “do you know what is this?”
The children answered in unison, “yes”. The room got filled with positive vibration which was almost palpable. The purity, exultation, and exuberance reverberated in the class.
She asked again, pointing at the pucca house model, “How many of you live in this house?”
Some children raised their hands and even raised themselves a little to be more visible and gleefully shouted, “we live in this house…”. After explaining the pucca house, the teacher then pointed at the asbestos house and asked, “how many live in this house?”
Again, some children shouted in a melodious unison, “we live in this house”. The teacher then again explained the asbestos house and came to the kutcha house model which was beautifully made up of straw and mud.
She asked the same question again, not expecting any response perhaps. A single girl, unexpectedly, raised her hand but, unlike other of her classmates, she didn’t seem very happy to do so. Other children gave voice to the soundless act of the girl saying, “this is her’s house”.
It was not unexpected that, still today, some people live in kutcha houses. That, it would be admitted, was the most unexpected part, leaving aside all schemes of government for providing pucca houses for all. It has almost become a taboo to live in a mud house these days which do not seem to discount even a four-year-old child. Her honesty and straightforwardness made the teacher satisfied in a way that is often experienced while teaching children of such young age. It also made her wonder how these very children, one day, learn to lie and be dishonest to one another once they grow up.
The teacher seemed a bit confused what to say. In order to lighten the situation she said, “kutcha house is the best”. This did not seem to impress the children. She then asked, “how does it sound when the rain falls on the kutcha house?”
The girl, looking upward for a moment while thinking, animatedly answered back, “thup…thup… thup…”
Then the teacher asked, “how does it sound when rain falls on the pucca house?” “Dum… dum…dum…”, came back the answer from pucca house children.
The teacher said smiling, “see, the rain sound so good when it falls on the thatched roof of a kutcha house, it is cool in the summer and even the climber of water pumpkin adore its roofs. Nothing is more beautiful and lively than that. It makes us closer to mother earth as she adores the walls and floors. We must love and respect that.”
One bright boy sprang up from the ecstasy of this new discovery and said, “Didi, we also have a kutcha house. We have both houses.”
Then the little girl said, beaming with pride, “our pucca house is being built, once completed we will also have both houses.”
The teacher while listening those students gave a wry smile of disappointment, for she failed to make these children realize that they were all equal wherever they may live– in a palace or a hut. The pervasive prejudice of grown-up men which had already made inroads into the pure hearts and minds of these children made the teacher pensive.
