Recently a bizarre incidence was
reported – A teenager was arrested for killing and eating his neighbour’s pet
Labrador in Suburban Mumbai! Worse still it wasn’t the first dog he had eaten
nor was it that he had eaten only dogs, cats had been on his menu as well and
worse the dog meat was actually meant to be consumed raw but thanks to his
unimpressed taste buds that the meat eventually landed in a cauldron! And if that was
not all he wasn’t the only one who relished eating dogs and cats but actually
shared his taste for dog and cat meat with others all driven by one common passion – to do
something different ! While the discovery made the pet owner sick, it enraged
many who branded then juveniles as ‘Cannibals in the making’ and ‘a potential
threat to human lives’!
Of late there have been several
disturbing trends amongst the youth, properly speaking adolescents that are
triggered by one passion – to be different! There have been instances of
juveniles taking to eating bread with iodex for spread, sniffing whiteners,
keeping venomous snakes as pets and God
knows what all and all this for one thing – to be different! The incidences are
shocking but actually they should be alarming. Are the juveniles today going
through a severe identity crisis that they are desperately trying to chalk out
one for themselves in such a bizarre way? Are they a victim of negligence and
abuse at home? In any case we have to understand that these are results or
consequences and are indicative of the bitter truth that something terribly
wrong in our methods of discharging our duties towards our children! And
therefore, punishing the youth isn’t the solution. Isolating them and treating
them as criminals would be worse and may have disastrous results. People in
Vietnam relish dog meat and people who go on safari try out scores of unusual
meats from snakes and crocodiles to
elephants, tiger and civets but haven’t yet graduated to cannibalism, so
why are we inferring so here in Mumbai and pushing the young minds to believe
they are abnormal and potential criminals worse cannibals? The issue is
undoubtedly bizarre and alarming but needs to be tackled with great deal of
sensitivity. What’s more important is to retrieve and rehabilitate and reform a
misguided person or to punish him and push him to a point of no return? The
real issues that we need to address is that one - our youth are a misguided lot
going through a low self-esteem and a severe identity crisis and suffering
badly at the hands of parental negligence. Two, there’s a strong natural will /energy
to do things and that needs to be channelized. Three, we have to stop
ostracizing those whose energies have gushed into wrong corridors and revive,
retrieve and reform them. Four, we need great teachers and great counselor’s
and for that we need one to respect the teaching profession stop treating them
as house maids, pay them well for they too have families to feed. Five we need
to draw lines between need and greed and stop running about like mad dogs and
be sure to spend some quality time each day with family. Who knows one of these
juveniles who has taken to dog eating may just have had the potential to be an
inventor it’s just that his dad failed to take a note for he had no time ! The essence of both
the things is same – a burning desire to do something that’s different except for the fact that in the former case it is misguided and destructive
and in later case it is guided and constructive! All we need to do is divert
the energies!!
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