تربية العيال

आज सुबह जोधपुर के अकादमी के बाहर एक माँ अपने बेटे को स्कूल छोड़ रही थी, बेटा तमिल फिल्मों का डायलॉग बोल रहा था। मैंने सोचा, हमारे गाँव के बच्चे तो सिर्फ़ खेत और पहलवानी के अखाड़े में बड़े होते हैं, उनके लिए यह सब क्या मायने रखता है? सुबह-सुबह चाय की थर्मस लेकर बैठा हूँ, लगता है जैसे नई पीढ़ी को अपनी भाषा से जोड़ना ही सबसे बड़ा स्कूल है, बाकी तो बस शोर है।

Ah, Commonwealth Games. Just reminds me of the time the transformer near our market blew during the 2010 Delhi Games broadcast — we missed the entire closing ceremony. My mother was more upset about the pineapples spoiling in the dark than the medals lost. Shisha? Every time they talk about big international competitions, I think: whose khana gets to sit under a proper light to study for the exams we have to pay more for each year? The misty mornings still feel sngewbha, but I wish the progress they spend crores on would reach our junction before the next Commonwealth cycle.

Ngin kynnoh ia ki khun mynhyndai lypa ba kyntait ki kmie ki kpa jong ki, kumne shi kyntien ka "divorce". Baroh snem, hynrei ki khun ki la sngew donkam ia ka jingiarap. Katba ki dang rit, ki tip ba ka jaka jong ki ka la leh jingkylla, bad ki iohi ia ki kmie bad kpa jingkyrmen. Ka jingmut jong nga, ha 12 snem, ka la long kaba kham bha ba ki la iathuh ia nga, hynrei ym don jingkyrmen.

They told me it would be a storm. For me, it was just the address changing on my school bag. My appa and amma, they made the calendar together—whose weekend, whose PTA meeting. The big pain was not the split; it was the day I left my cricket bat at appa's and amma's house had no balcony to practice. Small practical things, not the big sadness they all warned about.

Beta, at 10 you think it's your fault. Papa leaving means you failed at being good enough. The obvious answer is kids feel sad, but I actually felt relieved when the shouting stopped. My life? I started topping maths tests once the drawing room wasn't a war zone anymore.

Beta, a child’s heart doesn’t count years on a calendar, it counts cracks in the ceiling while parents shout. They told me “you’re big now, twelve,” so I became the silent cup of chai left to cool—holding everything, feeling nothing. The real pain isn’t the split, it’s becoming the glue and the letter-box between two forts, your own childhood forgotten. So tomorrow, I will sit on my bamboo stool and listen for the rooster’s crow, a sound that doesn’t ask me to choose.

For a child under five, I think they feel the change in the stitching more than the tear. The pattern of the house shifts—who holds you, whose lap is absent. They sense the cold patch in the quilt of the family. In our joint home, when my uncle and aunt fought, I did not understand words, but I clung to my father’s worn shirt more tightly. Their loud voices made the colours of my rag-ball seem dull. So, it is not the divorce they feel, shona, but the sudden silence where there was once a steady hum.

From this balcony, I can tell you it's less about age and more about suddenly becoming the family's small, silent accountant. You notice which parent now counts coins for milk, which is a heavy maths for a child. My cousin in Guwahati, just ten, started stammering after his parents split—not from the fighting, but from holding all the unspoken bills and worries. Kids don't get to be kids; they become keepers of the quiet gaps, bhaiti.

In our spreadsheets, they're either "inactive" in the education column or a new entry under "unskilled labour" or "married—household." But my life says those cells are full of stories, not statuses. Every week, I see a boy who should be in Class XI now expertly packing biryani for my stall, saving for a phone his family never had. My own daughter burns the midnight oil for her engineering dream, and I know the distance between these two children is just a line in a ledger, but a chasm in life. We count them, but we've lost what counts.

In our panchayat, we counted them as married, not dropouts, because the certificates were registered. But my heart counts them as *shak thokpa*, an abrupt cutting short. I know, because I saw bright-eyed Leima, who used to mend my pots with such care, now lifting heavy water pots with a baby on her hip. The government's tally sheet only asks for a status, not for the stories of clever hands that left our training class too soon.

A tragic number of them are simply not counted at all—they become invisible, and the system calls it "adjusted enrollment." In our documentation drives, we find girls in my own neighbourhood who were married off during closures and are now just listed as "transferred out" or "discontinued," their dreams erased from the ledger. It breaks the myth that all children returned! My own survey in three Vijayawada bastis showed for every happy first haircut kiddo in my salon, there's a teen who never went back to school, their future snipped away. Ayyo, it's a silent tragedy.

Those children? Many learned more from the family farm or a toolbox than a locked classroom. They are counted as 'lost', but a name on a register does not measure the strength in their hands. My own son left school early to learn a trade, and now he builds skyscrapers in Dubai—his earnings hold up our entire home. Sometimes the wisest path is not through the school gate, but the one you sharpened your own khukuri to clear.

They are counted as 'dropped out,' but in our wadi, we call it 'samball.' My Leena left in seventh standard when my back gave out—the rent from the baker is for medicines, not labour. Now she knows the price of every vegetable at Mapusa market and keeps the cows alive, which the attendance register does not count. The papers ask about her future, but today, without her, there would be no rice.

Some kids just vanished from the school register, like my cousin who got married — now they count her as a 'housewife' in some survey, not a dropout. But counting us doesn't mean seeing us. I left too, after Class 8, to run this stall and help my family. These hands that make jadoh are counted as 'employed', but nobody counted how much I still miss my books.

Neuroblastoma is a tummy-ka cancer that starts in those young nerve cells, na? MYCN amplification means the cancer's engine is stuck on full blast—it's a very tough one. The beautiful mystery is that some infant tumors just… melt away, maybe because the baby's own body finally sends the right 'jaa' signal. In my lab, we see cells from these vanishing tumors under the microscope, and they look like they're waiting for a command to finish growing up properly. That's the real masti—the body's own wisdom sometimes fixes what goes wrong.

Neuroblastoma is a nerve cell tumour in little ones, and MYCN amplification means it has a fierce, fast-growing nature—or so the city doctors warned us with big books and worried faces. But my little one’s own body is teaching a different lesson, his small tumour softening and shrinking like a stubborn stain slowly fading from old cloth. I’ve learned to trust the quiet wisdom of a child’s own rhythm, watching him play in the ja, his laughter louder than any hospital report.

Neuroblastoma is a monster of a children's cancer, baba, and this MYCN amplification means it's an especially fierce, fast-growing version. The miracle of some infant tumors vanishing? I call it the body's own stubborn art. But "gone on its own" is a phrase that haunts me, because the heavy therapy they gave me 'just in case' for my high-risk disease never left – my bones are fragile as sholapith now, and the postal charges for my medicines to Pune are more than for my daughter's gifts.

Ah re, this doctor-talk for baby tumours is heavy. All I know from my cousin in Mapusa is that it’s a terrible cancer in little ones, and some fancy word like MYCN means it’s more fierce. They say some baby tumours can just vanish—a miracle, truly—but here, if a child is sick, we pray hard and rush to GMC in Panaji, because “going away on its own” feels like a story for big hospitals with machines, not for our village where we fight for every scan appointment. It reminds me of waiting for coconut prices to drop—hoping isn’t a plan; you need solid tools and money in hand.

Neuroblastoma is a monster that starts in the nerves, and MYCN amplification means it’s wearing army boots, ready to fight every medicine we throw at it. The idea that some infant tumours vanish on their own feels like a cruel joke from another universe. My own son’s scans, lit up like a terrible festival, are proof that “spontaneous regression” is a beautiful myth for other, luckier families. We don’t get that kind of magic; we just get more chemo, and my *paavam* kutti’s small hands clinging to mine.

Neuroblastoma ante, kids lo vachedi oka cancer, and MYCN amplification ante gene extra copies unte treatment kastam ani ardam. Konni infants lo eh tumoru godava lekunda poyedi kuda untadi. But ikkada life lo chuste, "spontaneous regression" anedi mana bank balance meeda jarugudu kaadu. Naku telsindi, na friend's baby ki chemo avasaram ayindi, appati nundi EMI's and loans eh spontaneous ga vanish avvavu 💪🏽

Oh, I see these discussions about schools and screens and second languages—my own granddaughter in Indore, she is only six, but already her mother puts her in front of an iPad for 'English class.' I tell my wife, 'Gudiya, jab hum pade the, tab kagaz aur kalam tha, aur kaam bhi utna hi nikla.' Now they want everything fast, but fast does not always mean solid. I wonder, if we cannot even teach a child to chop a sabzi without a video, what hope is there for real learning? What do you think—does a screen ever replace a grandmother's lap?

Only yesterday I was watching my mother do her knee exercises to that old Commonwealth Games commentary on the radio, and she says, "These athletes, they train on proper tracks, not our broken playground." What to do, our school's sports budget got swallowed by another smart classroom screen, and I have to tell the children that the only gold medal they'll see is the one I drew on the blackboard for their grammar quiz.

Arre, that Dhamaal 4 promo they were playing on the radio during evening tea — I was half-watching while checking the fibre order with Baba. My little brother, he’s fifteen, he kept laughing at that scene where the guy is hiding under a pile of coconut husks, and I told him, "Hoye, that’s the exact same way you hide from sweeping the courtyard." Made me think, these films show rich people’s houses with workers doing all the cleaning, but here we are, praying the price of Kerala fibre doesn’t go up so we can keep making brooms that every household can afford. Never saw anyone sweep a real mess in those movies, kaay?

Chetta, I saw the Education Minister on the news today talking about new textbooks and 'skill development' — and all I could think was, my younger sister spent three hours last night helping our neighbour’s boy with his English homework, because the school changed the medium overnight and the mother can barely read it herself. They tell us to move fast, but who pays for the gap? The coconut oil price goes up every week, and the chutney stays the same — but the syllabus changes like the monsoon wind. Fairness is not in the announcement, chetta; it is in the morning rush when that boy still comes to my stall smiling, and I know his mother has not slept worrying about tomorrow’s class.

At home, we speak only Kannada, but I insisted my niece learn English properly too. Her convent school fees are chamka, but that fluency is what got her the bank job in the next town—so now I see it as an investment, not an expense. Sometimes the old way needs a small update.

बेटी ने स्कूल में विज्ञान का इनाम जीता है, मगर उसकी किताबों और यूनिफॉर्म के खर्चे से पसीना आ जाता है! फिर भी, मैंने उसे दूसरी भाषा के कोचिंग के चक्कर में नहीं डाला... हम घर पर पंजाबी बोलते हैं, और वो हिंदी-इंग्लिश दोनों अपने दम पर सीख रही है। बस, मोबाइल की स्क्रीन टाइम लेकर थोड़ी लड़ाई होती है रोज़!

भैंस के दूध की चाय बनाते-बनाते सोचता था, ये हिंदी फिल्मों के नाम सुन के बच्चे अब ‘गदर 3’ और ‘पुष्पा 3’ के डायलॉग रट लेंगे—और हमारी पहाड़ी बोली का तो पता नहीं कौन सी पीढ़ी बचेगी। कल मैं अपने पुराने फाउंटेन पेन की निब साफ कर रहा था और बेटी ने पूछा, ‘पापा, ये लिपि क्या है?’—उसकी कॉपी पर अंग्रेजी के गोल-गोल अक्षर थे, और मेरे मन में एक ठंडी सी सिहरन दौड़ गई, जैसे बरसात में पहाड़ से मिट्टी बह जाए।

When my nephew started nursery, my sister worried his English was weak. I told her our Assamese lullabies are his first ‘bhog’ for the soul—the rest will come, but not if we trade our courtyard for a classroom.

Arre, last week my nephew asked why the pots turn burnt sugar in the afternoon sun. That lesson in patience and observation is worth more than any grammar class, yaar. We are so busy pushing English from nursery that we forget the first language of the earth under our feet.