When they were little, one of the biggest grudges my kids held against me,  was that I never allowed them to skip school. On the rare occasions that they had to stay home on account of illness I would ensure that they didn’t have fun. Keeping them in a state of ‘complete rest’ with the television out of bounds. It was easy to condemn children to boredom then, the Internet and its accompanying 24×7 entertainment had yet to arrive.

When my five year old daughter kept telling me how all her friends got to occasionally stay home. I thought it was time to put an end to the pestering. So I told her she could miss school if she agreed to attend my class instead. She happily agreed thinking that I would get busy with my patients and she would be free to do as she pleased. Our residence is located on the floor above my clinic. I spent the day rushing upstairs between patients to check my daughter’s assignments and give her more. At first she was compliant, but I slowly wore her down. She finally broke and cried, “ Aapka school toh bahut khatarnak hai. Games period aur recess bhi nahin hota” ( Your school is very dangerous. There isn’t even a games period and lunch break). Never again did my daughter ask to stay home.

My son who is seven years younger had heard exaggerated accounts of ‘ Mummy’s khatarnak school’ from his sister. The more diligent of the two, he wasn’t convinced. “How bad could it be?” he reasoned. “ Kitna kaam dengi ?Mein karta chala jaunga.” ( How much work can she give. I’ll keep doing it.) So I let him stay home for a day. I had developed a knee problem by then which made negotiating stairs cumbersome. But I knew that to make the treatment effective I had to deliver the optimum dose of  ‘bitter’ medicine. So I made countless trips from my clinic to my son’s room where he sat diligently doing the assigned work. My heart broke each time I saw that he had completed it in his beautiful handwriting.  Keeping a straight face I kept piling it on until he cried in frustration. Needless to say it was the last day he asked to miss school. For those of you wondering whether I had  scarred them for life. I hadn’t. They still call me ‘ gandi mumma’ though. 

Recently I watched my niece’s daughter attend school. The usual chaos, the teacher instructing a child to sit up straight, students raising hands to answer questions, some speaking out of turn. This was  interspersed with some ‘unusual’ classroom banter, the monitor instructing a student to mute his mike, a child requesting the teacher to share her screen. My six year old grandchild followed the proceedings on a laptop while simultaneously scrolling her mobile for an assignment the teacher had sent on WhatsApp. She wanted to be the first one to register and submit. Real competition exists in virtual classrooms!

The resourcefulness of the schools and the patience of the ‘constantly scrutinised’ teachers notwithstanding, kids are craving to return to‘ real ‘ schools. Virtual can never live up to the actual. My heart goes out to these youngsters who miss school, instead of wanting to miss it. They are losing out on a large chunk of childhood due to this pandemic – chaotic classrooms, punishable pranks, forged friendships, bustling bus journeys, packed lunches, peer pressure and….. the urge to play truant!

( published in the Hindustan Times on 26/1/2022)