Bitten and bitten, but never shy

Have you heard the adage: “Once bitten twice shy”? In all probability, you must have heard of it, although its usage would have been applied for several other experiences. But does it hold water over losing children to the silliest of reasons — falling into drains and drowning and, of course, their bodies not being found.

It’s happened again. As if the shocking memories of eight-year-old Abhishek’s drowning and vanishing into a Lingarajapuram drain in May 2009 have faded away into oblivion, now 13-year-old Aravind Kumar has gone the same way to remind us of that we have failed to put a stop to this tragic series.

And I, or any one of us, need never be surprised if it happens again and again and again; year after year, just to remind us that we are a city which does not care for its children.

They say it was de-silting work in the fateful stormwater drain — that swallowed Aravind on Thursday — had forced BWSSB workers to open the safety fence that prevents people from falling into the drain. That’s exactly where Aravind ran to fetch a ball while playing cricket and that’s exactly where a huge mound of silt removed from the drain was piled up, deceiving the unsuspecting boy into believing it was a little embankment that he could run on to fetch the ball. But he slipped on the muck and fell into the gushing water, and was gone.

As long as his body isn’t found, at least a dim hope remains of him resurfacing somewhere… alive.

We have not learnt lessons from these incidents. When the Abhishek incident occurred, there was much discussion over why it could not be prevented. But somewhere in the course of the discussions, some points kept that are not comfortable kept coming up. Summed up, the gist of these points was this: “Accidents do happen, and we have to live with them!”

The problem with such a feeling of surrender is that we only allow more of these incidents to occur rather than put a stop to them. That is because we Indians do not value life. If a person dies — let alone a child — and in whatever shocking case of negligence, we remember it, shed tears over it, express our anger, shout slogans against the civic agency (if it was involved in negligence), and then let all of it evaporate, and we look for a fresh case to do the same things all over again.
But no solutions will be arrived at.
If we are able to open our eyes to each individual’s potential and value of life — and this is all the more important when a child is concerned — then we should be able to care more for his/her future. We should be able to feel that if any harm (or death) comes to any individual, there is one less valuable person in the world who could have gone on and done something good in life.
Why do we talk and boast of our rich cultural heritage when our current valuable human resources are nipped in the bud like in the cases of Abhishek or Aravind? We only get bitten, never to be shy!