Current affairs on the telly

MEDIA AND PARENTING

Namitha Dipak

Although he has years to go before he can vote, we insist on my eight year old son accompanying us to the polling booth so he can see what happens there, and we can answer the endless "But, why…?" queries that go on throughout the day. He also plays "spy" by going with each of us separately and coming back and reporting what symbol the other pressed. That’s the easy and fun part. What’s a little more difficult is trying to use current affairs as relayed by the media as starting points for household discussions. Since neither of us is personally involved in politics or works for the government, our source of information is always secondary.  There’s nothing academic or forced about these current affairs discussions – the truth is that it is always a revelation to hear what he thinks about something "grown-up" and his replies always give us much food for thought. 

 The earliest time we really discussed "current affairs" was when the term of President Abdul Kalam was coming to end.  I wanted President Kalam to get a second term because I thought he would be good for science and children, and made no bones about my opinion. It soon became evident that if my son was on unfamiliar ground and he did not recognize the people we were talking about because they weren’t family members, friends or Pokemon or Beyblade characters, he would take the opinion expressed by a person he trusted and go with it. So there we were watching the television everyday for the latest twists and turns and anxiously waiting for the verdict, hoping that President Kalam would get another term.

When the announcement came that the new President was going to be someone else, we were amazed to hear his cryptic comment. "Ok, so now Santa Claus can also be a woman!" he exclaimed, actually stalking off angrily because his favourite candidate did not win, no doubt going to forget his sorrows over a game of Beyblade. It was a memorable moment to hear him express an opinion of his own that was so loaded with possibility…but eventually, of course he had to come back and hear us tell him that yes, indeed, a woman could be Santa Claus all right, and she’d do an equally good job.

 The second incident was when the infamous "Cash in the Assembly" incident took place,  -- being at a fairly loose end that day, we were watching the evening news together. After a long pause while we watched the fairly amusing scenes (that were actually incredibly grave) unfold, he finally asked in a very puzzled tone: "Why do they keep waving that money all the time?" since he was unfamiliar with television’s looping videos. I tried to keep my explanation simple, but trailed off and just summed it up weakly by saying…well, SOME people did SOMETHING they weren’t supposed to do.

 Those actually were the good old days where that explanation could be handed off casually. Lately, my interest in trying to discuss current affairs with him has been really hampered by the depths to which powerful people are using public platforms to get personal and in fact do everything that we tell our children not to do.  The more I try to couch things in simple terms the more convoluted the explanations become. Besides, tackling the "But why..?" questions has become difficult because I realize that we cannot view an incident in isolation without giving something about its history. It was the Mangalore pub incident, Valentine’s Day, the comments by Pramod Muthalik and Renuka Choudhary, and the Pink innerwear campaign which really brought things to a head and for some time I stopped asking my son or indeed anyone what their opinion was about anything, because I found it difficult to sift out the facts and accusations and everything else and come up with an opinion about it myself.   

Yet this habit of trying to have an opinion about things is difficult to put down  for long. Last week’s shoe throwing incident provided another such opportunity for our little chats. During one of those news broadcasts where another technique, the slow motion replay, helped us understand the sequence of events better, I told him that a journalist had thrown a shoe at a Minister because he wasn’t answering a question. "Do you think it’s OK for someone to throw a shoe at someone else if they get angry?", I asked gently. Silence. I asked the question again. Silence, while he looked away and fidgeted with a toy. When I was about to ask the question for the final time, he piped up softly : "No, it’s not ok." "Why?", I prodded.  "Because someone could get hurt", he said before rushing out to play.    

For the moment, I’m done with my political current affairs lessons because there is no way I am going to be talking to him about recent events like the Varun Gandhi comments, Lalu Prasad comments, the exchanges between Maneka Gandhi and Mayawati about motherhood, and much of whatever has happened of late.

From my discussions with other parents, it is apparent that we are all concerned about how children will cope with the reality of the outside world which comes into our homes via television. How long should one protect them from uncomfortable realities? There is no gentle way around it, but perhaps it would help if we reinforce the larger issues and the positives. I have discovered that one great way to focus on current affairs and encouraging opinion-forming on issues, is the environmental movement. As parents we must be grateful to all those campaigners and ordinary people who have made environment a focus area. It is a much more pleasant way of bringing home fairly early the messages of nurturing and acting to protect the country’s resources and the larger issue of the world and its citizens. Besides, one can still bring in the topic of governance, rather than "politics", through this theme.

 ndind@lycos.com