TEENOSOPHY 2.0

When my mum came home from work today, she was feeling very low. Upon asking her the  reason, she said that her school was organising a competition ‘ The biggest loser wins ’ for  overweight children. Children from all classes were registering themselves irrespective of them  being overweight or not. The class teachers were given the responsibility of encouraging  overweight kids to register. One of her students who was a little ‘ healthy ’ was standing near the registration counter but was not joining the queue to get himself registered. When she went to him  and asked why he was being so hesitant to register, the 13-year-old kid burst into tears. Amidst  tears, he told her that children his age mocked and commented on his body and weight. This  compelled me to think that at times people can be very cruel and just for a few minutes of fun they destroy someone ’ s self-confidence and shatter their self-belief. Body Shaming, which is though a...

It has been some time since that scary incident took place, but even today at times it haunts me. Jaipur was proving to be fun for me, until that day. As usual we had our 10:00 am English class. We were studying something related to direct and indirect speech. I was trying my best to solve the assignment given to us without making any mistakes. The 10 th question was a little difficult and a small discussion started in the class. In the midst of the discussion, I felt a huge heavy hand on my butt. I was paralysed. For a moment I could not understand what had just happened. All my childhood classes of good touch-bad touch simply disappeared from my head. I turned to see whose hand it was. I saw a huge guy, my classmate backing off and saying, ‘There was something on your dress so…’. I didn’t allow him to complete his sentence. I simply glared at him and turned back again. I don’t remember what happened in class after that. My mind had stopped working and my eyes were filled with tea...