PLEASE, NO THANKS...

I was in Delhi recently and heard of a school for kids below the age of two... where they'll be taught.. get this.. how to say hello, please, thank you and ask their mothers politely for food! Made me wonder what their parents were doing?.. My parents never needed a school to teach me manners... My mother knew how to keep us in line... First a few words... and then any slip-ups would meet the smack of her hand... Did the job quite well.. thank you!

I mean what sort of parents pay other people to teach their kids how to behave? Parents who obviously didn't learn their manners right. Parents who perhaps were left to their own devices as kids and learnt them the hard way. But nothing wrong learning things the hard way. In fact me thinks you remember those lessons even better.

Like the time my 6th standard teacher told my class not to enter the classroom during lunch hour and disturb her. One of classmates had forgotten his ball in the classroom and was fretting over how to get it out. I, being the naive moron that I was, thought I would play the hero, come to their resuce. After all the teacher would'nt punish me if I apologised and was polite about it. I went in asked the teacher, she said sure go ahead take the ball and then come and kneel next to my desk for the rest of the break.

I learnt two lessons there. a) Listen to what you're told to (b) Being polite and marking your manners does'nt always help.

But coming back to the begining of my ramayan. I heard about it from my friend Smriti who's son is just about beginging to stand. She had taken him for a b'day party where she met all these mothers who were talking about this place 'little gabriel' ... Apparently the place to be if ur 18 months and belong to a certain social set... I asked her what this social set was... The social set she replied of parents who are using their children to acquiant themselves with social mores... that hardly come from a lalaji sitting behind a galla in chandini chowk...