Children in tears

Dear Naksh
I'll let your wandering thoughts unanswered as you have suggested.
But I'll be eagerly waiting for the day when you'll announce to me that you have quit smoking. I'll celebrate that day in grand style with my like-minded friends!
Sri

 

My dear Mega
In the evening of my life after going through all the vicissitudes of fate, I have become somewhat immune to emotions. My capacity to get moved at any excesses of life has come down and yet the sight of a suffering child never fails to move me to tears till this day. My wife's elder sister is down with leukemia and is undergoing treatment at the Cancer Hospital here. Whenever I go there to see her, I see young kids afflicted with this dreadful disease going about their life unmindful of their uncertain future while their parents stand there watching them in great anguish with the knowledge that these flowers would soon be snatched from their helpless hands. I find it hard to get over this image for days together.

There is no greater punishment for a parent than having to witness life slowly ebbing away from their precious child. This is one of the acts of God that I am never able to understand. Who is He punishing really? The child or the parent?
Sri

 

My dear Srama
Very often I go to the School where my grand daughters study to bring them back home. There will be a huge crowd of parents waiting anxiously for their children and the general composition of the crowd would be 90% mothers and 10% fathers/grandfathers. There will be very few grand mothers and I attribute this to the fact that grand mothers are more prone to arthritic knees than the grand fathers! Coming back to the expressions that mothers wear as they wait for their respective children, they will range between a reunion after the return of the child after a 'Close encounter of the Third Kind' and the rediscovery of a long lost child! The waiting grand fathers will be eulogising about the prodigious nature of their grand children with a slight hint of how they have taken after their grand fathers! When the school gates are thrown open and the children rush out, I can see the rising pulses of the mothers and the longer it takes for the child to be sighted, the faster and more furious will their pulses be!

What a trauma it will be for a child who is going to meet his new mom for the first time! It is a pity that a child will have to go through such an experience at all. It is alright if the child is a grown up one and is fairly well conversant with the ways of the world but not for a small child who can hardly cope with such pressures. Parents intending to part company should wait to see if their child has attained the mental maturity to understand the implications of such a disaster.

I have seen moms at both ends of the spectrum. Though I may hate them when they put their children through indescribable mental stress, I soon reconcile with them when I see their reactions when the school closes for the day!
Sri