Editor's Pick

The anxiety of devouring children

11 February 2010, 18:00 PM
EDITORIAL
Mohammad Badrul Ahsan
TWO small children died in road accidents within the space of two days. Two lives were nipped in the bud, two projects demolished in mid-construction. The bereaved families are mourning their losses. One of the children was a schoolgoing boy. His classmates will sorely miss his presence. For some time, his teachers will fumble in class during roll calls. Then the reality will catch up with everyone. We shall let bygones be bygones again. Do we have a choice? In this world 25,000 children die everyday, 9 million every year. Poverty, hunger, diseases, and wars kill them. Between natural disasters and manmade havocs, these buds wither before their chance to open. What is the use of holding onto the memories of two children in the face of such large-scale deaths? It's not their death that should make us sad. Sooner or later death is a given in life. But we should be sad for our handling of children. Grownups inflict cruelties on them. Even a bigger sadness is that we take pride in our civilization when we're unable to protect children from insensate hands. Within the past month only in this country, a stepmother scorched the flesh of a little girl with a hot fish turner. Two underage girls took their lives because lecherous adults harassed them. Throw in the two road accidents. This is by no means an exhaustive list. Many more must have gone unreported or escaped our attention for some reason. This is just a crack in the window to a ruthless world where progenitors prey upon progenies. Sick and deranged minds rape, kidnap and kill young children. Countless of them are sold to prostitution. According to U.S. State Department data, between 600,000 and 820,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year, up to 50 per cent being minors. A far greater number is sold in their own countries. Children are also victims of broken homes, abduction, politics, wars, and ersatz abuses. These are but a few examples of the garden variety of brutalities regularly faced by children. And, this is a global phenomenon. Nearly 800,000 kids go missing in the United States every year, more than 2,000 in a day. If anything, it shows that a lot of people in this world aren't in their right minds. They seek release by hurting children. Myths are often mirrors of the future, and this Roman story puts that in context. It had been foretold that one of the sons of Saturn would overthrow him, just as he had overthrown his father, Caelus. To prevent this, Saturn ate his children moments after each was born. We must be eating our own children out of somekind of an anxiety. Those adults who hurt children are an unhappy lot. They must be uncomfortable with their own lives, incapable of coping with their own horrors. They must be reluctant to leave a better world for their children. Even better, they must be unwilling to leave children in this world at all. So, the driver speeding his bus must have felt the reflex of that nihilism in his feet when stepping on the gas or brake. The woman must have felt that same reflex in her hand while applying that turner to her stepdaughter's flesh. The same goes for others, who do other atrocious things to children, driven by that same pathetic instinct. Its nothing new that adults take out their frustration on children. Children are easy targets. They are weak and guileless. Adults find it convenient to let children take the fall for their own lost innocence. It's a kind of depravity. Blossoms are trampled by savages for no less than the same reason. One particular driver or woman or gang of pedophiles isn't to blame when kids are badly treated. It's our collective insanity that percolates through the impaired minds of reckless people. "This is not an issue. Thing like that happens", our honorable Home Minister riposted when asked about a university student killed in police action. The same repulsive impulse must have gone through their hearts before the drivers knocked down two innocent children. Market principle that works for products also works for people. Supply chasing demand, drives down prices. That explains why human lives are dirt-cheap in this overpopulated country. That explains why the Brazilian police use street children in Rio for target practice. Many of us probably need psychological evaluation for bad conscience, limitless corruption and abnormal greed. Here is the contradiction. They do these mindless things to mind a perfect upbringing of their children. Terrifying but true, the forces we create, create us in the end. In selfish anxiety, everybody forgets other men's children need an upbringing too. That selfishness hardened into sickness, nobody minds killing so long as victims aren't chips off his own block.
Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a columnist for The Daily Star.

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