The other day I was reading a short story where the author mentions about a small child living in a joint family. The child is growing amidst the day to day hassles of a Bengali upper middle class family. He sees and hears everything… the ego clash between his parents, the problem faced by his mother due to the ignorance of her maid, he also experiences his father telling lies to his friends on several occasions, he feels bad regarding the ignorance of his elders which he himself knows. One day his uncle tells him that “don’t try to rectify your elders when they are talking among themselves.. don’t try to point out the truth when you find that one of your elder is lying to another elder…you will know all these things when you will be older”. After some days his mother finds in his copy he has written all these things and prayed that he wants to remain a child and doesn’t want to become older. He is happy to remain a child….
I think this is the experience of most children in this era of globalization and all of us should think about it.