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Flowers reek of smoke here
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Urban children no longer experience the joy of a simple stroll, says DEEPA GANESH
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Illustration: Naveen Kumar
Then, little Chukki had great joy in strolling down to the milkman's house; watch the fascinating act of the cow being milked, and wonder with amazement how the milk comes out so white even while the cow was constantly fed with mucky-looking kalagachchu.
Of course, Chukki loved running down to the flower-seller Champa, who made the entire pavement smell so fragrant! While Champa wrapped flowers in a huge green leaf, Chukki snatched those few minutes to play with the flower seller's little son and even taught him a couple of "Inglees" words.
A detour to the cobbler on the next road was routine; considering her shoes wore out so frequently. How quickly he ran his dabbala into the thick sole! Chukki believed it was the ragi rotti he packed from home that gave him all the strength. The icing on the cake was of course to march to the school with Seena, Shobha, Hari, Dolly, garnering more friends en route. After all, the entire lane was one's neighbourhood, a time when everyone knew everyone else.
Now, Kitty alias Krishna (taking the time and age into consideration) jumps into dad's car and zips off to school, his fav swanky toy cars tucked under his arms. He sure knows those interminable traffic signals, gruelling traffic jams, and the thick pall of smoke that ensures he has a leaky nose and nagging cough through the year. No, he doesn't know any milkman or flower seller. His mother, the adult Chukki, drops money in the mailbox at the gate and milk and flowers get dropped off miraculously. As far as Kitty is concerned it is sheer magic — milk, flower, newspapers... they spring from a faceless source! For this urban, "post-bipedal generation", a journey out of home has come to mean long hours on the back seat of cars, cut off from people and everyday lives.
Connecting
A stroll for Chukki's generation meant a lot of things — knowing the neighbourhood, meeting people who pursued different interests, exploring one's environment, wandering off to discover new routes, to stop by and see the sights, smell flowers or simply stop at street corners watching the world pass by. With good health and exercise thrown in as bonus. In fact, for an age that knew no computers and video games, it was great pastime too. Bipedalism, say evolution experts, led to the greater development of brain. In Linda Baker's essay in Salon.com, "Walk to School, Yes... ", Engwhict, an Australian Traffic Consultant, speaks of its emotional advantages. "It's about adventure. To spend time with friends, to explore the physical environment, to build a relationship with the built environment and develop a sense of place."
Remember the long walks Swamy had with his friends, damning oppressive institutions. How Oliver Twist and Artful Dodger hit it off during their dubious expeditions. And the way in which Tom Sawyer the nascent rebel and Huckleberry Finn the outcast came to cherish each other's strengths during the former's journey to school. All this has been buried in our distant past, because Kitty knows only Noddy who jumps into his car straight off a helicopter and Bob who hops on to his huge machines. And maybe an occasional Potter or Hermione.
It was just the other day that Scottish researchers screamed from rooftops: "Teenagers walking to and from school get more exercise and are more alert." Harrrummmph, said a generation of a certain vintage in reply.
But then: "My kids walking to school? No way," declares Prathima, mother of two. She rules out the option of them even cycling to school. According to her, in chaotic urban settings, even half a kilometre is a long distance and she is simply not willing to take the risk, even in the face of the huge benefits of a child's holistic development. "I admit that my growing up years were packed with a lot of walking, and it's a pity that I can't give the same to my children," she concedes. Apartment living, in a way, makes up for it, with plenty of room for physical activity, Prathima insists. "And my daughters' school also lays a lot of emphasis on sports. They take the school bus, which in a way makes things slightly better."
Even as she seeks solace in these small comforts, she recognises that modern lifestyle comes with a farrago of disadvantages. Her children are completely cut off from the various worlds and people who don't share their own lifestyle. Schools are located far away from homes, making it impossible for children to now walk the distance. It comes with attendant risks of bad roads, absence of pavements, overloaded vehicles and four-wheelers that seem to grow monstrous day by day.
A study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the U.S. mentions parental concerns about safety having much to do with "stranger danger": the chance that a child walking to school will be snatched off the sidewalk by a complete stranger.
However, in an attempt to revive walking, NGOs in the West have devised several programmes such as Walking Wednesdays and Walking Bus. As a part of these programmes, kids not only design and post signs around the school about the benefits of walking, but also walk to school and back with an adult `driver' in the front and an adult `conductor' at the back.
However, it's no surprise that the market forces appropriate such ideas. And so walking will mean sporting sports shoes that cost an arm and a leg, snazzy Ts, pit stops made fizzy with colas, and wipes packaged by cosmetics giants.
Capturing it rightly, Linda Baker writes: "The collapse of walking as a natural activity and its rebirth as a public-private partnership suggest the inter-modal equivalent of a society gone mad, an Alice in Wonderland state of affairs, spotlighted by the corporate sponsorship and liability insurance measures."
In the same spirit, Sudha Seetharaman, professor of sociology, argues: "Walking was never a conscious activity in the past, it was something that one did naturally." She feels that with the concept of local schools vanishing, walking to schools doesn't exist any longer. This act, now unhappily deceased, once exposed us to the world, a community and taught us to negotiate with various things that one encountered along the way. "After all, education doesn't just happen in the classroom. Sadly, community has come to be nostalgia."
Seeking the past
Even Chukki now hops on to her bike to go to the grocer who is a mere 100 yards away. Ridden with guilt, she vows to take Kitty beyond city limits during the weekend "to cleanse off the crust made by his life in the town," (Thoreau in his essay "Walking", 1862).
She watches Kitty, fast asleep with his toy cars lined up by his pillow. And recalls how she slept with the various flowers she picked up during her walks under her pillow.
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