"It is a sin to kill a mocking bird" said Atticus, in the novel 'To Kill a mocking bird'. The novel revolves around the trial of a negro, who is not guilty of the charges of having raped a white girl, but the jury unanimously believes otherwise. The negro finally is battered with 11 bullet holes while he tries to run from the jail.
The preface and the description on the cover tell you the same story, only in some different words. Yet, it looses to give due attention to another killing. There is the murder of innocence and purity of Scout, the protagonist, who has been characterized as being in the 2nd grade. The child in her is murdered as she becomes a lady at ten. She observes her aunt and her neighbors as 'behaving' that way when they get to know about the Negro's death and slowly she too starts 'carrying' herself around. I wish to express my views on such transformation, but there is another killing of the mocking birds, which is currently taking place in most of the households that I see around that I want to discuss. The figurative 'killing' of the child.
India has 1.2 billion people living in it, with 30% of the people below 14 years. If you ask mothers about the routine of their kids, they would tell that their child goes to school at 6 in the morning, comes back at 1 pm, takes his/her lunch, studies till 4 pm, goes for tuition at 5pm, returns home at 9 pm, has dinner and goes to sleep. This grind happens 5 days a week. Non-stop.
Don't the mothers see the mocking birds in their children? Where is the time for the birds to sing? What a shame that the children have been gifted with wings to fly, but have had them clipped by the social pressure of studies. Why are the children forced to conform to the rat race before they even know the pros and cons of being rats?
I wish rather than running and making haste to their schools at 6, they would have been suggested to pause and look at the red of the sun. Just to get the warmth and the freshness to fly in this world rather than race like the rats.
