Episode 53:

(First published on Facebook on 2nd September 2017 https://www.facebook.com/amitabha.das/posts/10156695302994478)

I came to the neighborhood mall for some weekly groceries and took the lift from the basement parking. Like in most malls, this was an ultra slow lift, stopping at every floor and making us wait for some 5–6 mins before it showed up. There were some 8–9 people in the lift, mostly local Chinese. There was this one lady in her 60s with a small child, probably about 6 yrs old. The kid was making a lot of fuss, both in terms of noise and actions and the lady was looking a bit embarrassed by his actions.
She looked apologetically at the others, who mostly made expressions of ‘lets hope this gets over soon’. When she looked at me, I just gave her a smile, trying my best to hide my irritation.

That’s when she tugged at the kid and told him, ’See this uncle? He is a policeman. He will take you with him!’
Like a magic, the little boy looked at me with some fear, stopped his antics and kept staring at me. Some heaved a sigh of relief, some even let out a concealed laugh.

I asked the lady, “your grandson?”
‘Yes, very naughty boy’ — she replied back.

I stooped a bit and came closer to the kid and told him, “your grandma is lying. I am not a policeman and I have no wish to take you anywhere.”

The kid looked at me with utter confusion, with those innocent little eyes and I am not even sure he understood anything. But the lady was clearly pissed and some of the people were somewhat astounded.

‘Why did you tell him that?’ — the lady demanded
“Told him what?” — I asked
‘That I am a liar’
“Well, you did lie, didn’t you?”
‘I was just trying to calm him down a bit’
“Well, next time you wish to calm him, try something else. Please don’t make me a policeman”

The lady was still grumbling because she found it to be such a trivial thing. And to be honest, this was not the first time someone has tried to control their kid/grand kid using someone else as a shield. And it wasn’t a first time experience for me either.

All three of us stepped out of the lift on Level 4 and I tried to explain two things to her.

1. I told her that there was something fundamentally wrong with her idea of using a Policeman as a fear factor. The police should rather be seen as a symbol of feeling safe rather than being someone scary. Why would you teach a little kid to fear the Police?

2. Using a man from a different race as a ‘fear factor’, can have deeper consequences. What might be the thought in that young boy’s mind after this incident? He sees a man who looks different from most of the people he sees in his family, with a darker complexion, different build, and is told to be afraid of him at such a tender age. Isn’t it likely that he will grow up with an impression that ‘these people’ are supposed to be scary? Wouldn’t it create a deep divide in his mind from his formative age?

I don’t know if the lady got all of what I said and meant. But she did hear me out and didn’t look as angry as she was just after my first interaction with her grand child.

Sometimes we do and say things considering the immediate situation, and completely ignore the long term consequences of our trivial actions. if we, as adults, can’t foresee the repercussions of our words and actions, how do we expect little kids to handle and interpret our actions in the most sensible way?