Amma, I don’t want to go to school.
I am just a child, Ma. I want someone to tell me stories and teach me. I want to watch tadpoles and butterflies and know what they eat, where they sleep. I want to climb a hill and catch a cloud to see what it is made of.
I want to wait with my hands in the stream and feel the fish swimming.
I want to run with the puppies, sing with the birds, and play with paper-boats in the rain.
I want to lie down on the soft green grass and hear the wind whisper.
Only then I want to learn more about them from the printed word.
Only after my imagination is fired, my thirst to know more has begun, a seed of ‘Why?’ is planted in my brain.
Amma, I feel trapped in the prison-like classroom. I feel my spirit slowly weakening with the monotonous teaching. Often, when I ask a basic question our teachers say, “No time for all that. Let us finish the syllabus.”
I get tired of studying just for marks without pausing to truly understand.
I want to go to the museum with my classmates and hear my teacher explain the stories of the artefacts.
I want plenty of nature trips where real Biology classes would be held.
I want to see colourful videos of volcanic eruptions and deep-sea dwellings.
I want our whole school to visit together the historic and cultural places in my city.
I want to learn astronomy after looking through a telescope once.
I don’t want to just read them in my textbooks; I want to see, hear, touch, smell and taste whatever I can. I want to experience.
Why can’t the school make at least one such trip every year?
And, I cannot stoop down anymore to carry my school sack. My back is ready to break. Why should I carry all the books everyday? Why can’t we have only two subjects per day? Or, why don’t we have lockers like in the Western schools? And, why should I squeeze in that over-crowded auto?
But, Amma, growing up no longer seems to be fun. I see only more of homework, winter projects, summer classes, weekly tests, monthly tests, quarterly, half-yearly and annual exams, external competitive exams, more tests, more competitions, more pressure, more stress…
When can I sing, paint, dance, swim, or cycle?
When I can just play cricket or even hide-and-seek?
What happened to that minimum sleep that you always say a child needs?
Why should I always study, study?
Amma, I am scared of increasing atrocities by untrustworthy teachers, ragging-raving seniors, acid-loving nuts, perverted adults…
Ma, right now, I don’t want to be a doctor, engineer or anything else.
I just want to feel safe and secure, play and learn without any stress before I become an adult like you.
I only want to enjoy my childhood, Ma.
