Yet another killing by school students!  I have lost count of the murders committed by school students in the last one year in our own country.  Our own country that used to be proud of its concern for others.  Aditi devo bhava - even the guest was considered as a god in this country. That was once upon a time. 

Why is there so much hostility in the hearts of our young students?

I have been observing students keenly in the last few years.  By the way, I'm a teacher in a senior secondary (residential) school in Delhi and hence I get a lot of opportunity to observe them at close quarters.  I'm slightly worried about the changes  I notice in the behavioural pattern of the students.

The increasing narcissism is my greatest concern.  Narcissism is far worse than egotism. A certain degree of egotism is admissible in the young.  Narcissism is, however, very dangerous.  It is a kind of dictatorship.  We have so many young dictators in the school these days!

Who created these dictators?  The family and the society, who else?  Today's families have one or two children unlike the old families which had half a dozen children at the least and possibly half a century in the case of joint families.  (I still have a student in class eleven who says his family has forty members because it's a joint family and he also says that it's a happy family.  However he too has a problem.  His sisters - in fact, his cousins - are too liberal in the matter of choosing their boyfriends, he says.  He also admits that he is very possessive about them. But his possessiveness is dictated by the treatment meted out to girls in places like Delhi, he says.  More about him later.)

Coming back to what I've been saying, there is just one or two children these days in a family.  Hence each child becomes the centre of a lot of attraction.  Attraction from the parents.  Attraction from the neighbours and relatives and a whole lot of others who come to the family on rare (and very special to the child) occasions like the child's birthdays. The child grows up thinking that he is the centre of attraction in the whole world.

Moreover, both the parents are employed.  They hardly get any time for their children.  So they appoint a maid to look after the children.  But the maid cannot give love to the children.  Children want love; that's their sustenance.  As the Buddha said 'touch' is very healing.  A loving physical touch is very important for children.  Today's parents who return home after the children have been put to sleep by the maid cannot provide any meaningful touch to their children.  The children grow up longing to feel that touch.  And the touch comes from their friends!  At the age of 7!  The danger begins there.

The touch is given by another child who also is yearning for a similar touch.  The touch is on a wrong track.  It's not a touch of affection.  It's a touch of searching.  It's groping.  And that kind of groping ends up in the genitals.  Nature's mischief.  Add to that the hollow sense of attraction-centredness inherited from the upbringing.  The narcissistic child becomes possessive about his friends.  The latest killing in a Delhi school took place because of the possessiveness regarding a girl! (The irony is that the girls are so liberal these days that it's not worth being possessive about them! But boys who felt deprived of love in childhood are always possessive about anything that's 'hot' in their view.)

The society also has changed.  It places undue emphasis on money and what money can buy.  What money can buy is only the superficial side of reality.  Today's students are left on that side.  Their parents give them more money than they can handle.  (This remark is made on the basis of the students I have observed and they belong to the higher classes.) Even otherwise, the extreme version of capitalism that is vendored by globalisation encourages a superficial approach to reality.  Show off! That's what my students believe in!

Every dictator believed in that! No dictator hesitated to kill in order to save his skin.