No kidding matter

I need to become thin," says the yet-to-be-five Miss Know-it-all. "My legs are fat," she adds, and points to her thighs.

Her mother and I look at her in surprise. Being thin, we think is only a grown up obsession!

"Who told you that you are fat?" we chorus.

"The uncle who sits next to the driver in the school van," she says. "

The one who does thap thap when the bus reverses."

We make a face, and tell her he is silly and does not know what he is talking about. That she is not fat. Which she is not anyway.
But at the back of my mind, a thought worms around, eating into my peace.

What I wonder is the 'uncle' doing looking at a little girl's thighs? How does one explain to a yet-to-be-five year old about 'uncles' and the fact that some of them have predatory instincts?

That adding to the testosterone that surges in young men's bodies is the endless visual stimuli that television and cinema now offer without a break. All of which adds to a potentially dangerous combination where reason blinks out!

Time was when one thought being a teenaged girl was a period full of risk. Something in a yet to be woman's body seems to be a magnet that draws out the animal in those who cannot contain their instincts. And lack of understanding, communication or fear compounded the issue, amounting to licence. And if the encounter, however slight, left scars, no one knew of it.

Today to an extent, across many families, there is better communication. Awareness makes it easier to create understanding.  Even as they enter the pre teen years, girls can be warned, made aware of the dangers…

But a five year old?

Perhaps it is the endless stories that now make it to the news about child molesters that makes me worry. Maybe it is good, that the worry exists. At least, I think, we don't exist in blissful ignorance of the endless risks a girl child is exposed to.

I know that when I suggested that I take Miss Know-it-all along on my next visit overseas, my sister went completely ballistic and forbade the risk.

"This country is full of paedophiles, and you cannot take single handed responsibility in your busy schedule for a child," she had said. I did think her statement a bit extreme, but then realised some of it could be true, and decided to heed her counsel. Was it that statement that made me view this one now with suspicion?
Was I just being paranoid?

Yet, the thought of a young man taking the liberty of being familiar enough to comment on a girl's body seemed not just reproachable, but unbearable. Even more so because a child would not even dream of what might be going on behind that statement.

I ponder over some steps mothers of the children who ride school vans can take. Of demanding that a woman to accompany the kids, and ensure she is the one who hands them in and out of the vehicle.

If only, I think, schools could weave in cautionary messages. If only along with the alphabet, the adding and the subtraction, the phonetics and the music , they could also include lessons, however subtle, on respecting one's mind and body, of safety among strangers, of civil manners...

If only we would open our eyes to the fact that in many homes in the slums, mothers worry about leaving their daughters behind if the father is around, we could help girls be safe.

But we are a nation wearing blinkers. We think sex education will lead to promiscuity.

And believe lack of knowledge makes us celibate. And that child abuse is something that happens only to those who live beyond our borders.