Trustworthiness

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.” ― Sigmund Freud

 The young girl ran for a while all along with the bicycle, and as it gained speed she mounted it with ease and crossed through the crowded market. She wore chappals and the road was in a bad state with slush and potholes filled with water which did not deter her. There was a tiny basket fixed to the handle of the bicycle inside which she had arranged a few vegetables, painfully bargained and bought. I kept gazing at her till she disappeared in the array of by lanes at the corner of the main road. It was late in the evening. She must have been fourteen years old but had the mellowness of an adult. As I looked at her, I reminisced the day’s happening.

 

It was a bright morning and the students of the second-year science in the Junior wing were being ushered to the seminar hall. Being new, I could sense they were being led for some unknown reason. Some of the students lingered, we looked on through the doorway of the staff room. All of a sudden we heard a loud yell, the youngster was unmanageable as he burst into tears. We rushed out to find the cause, thinking some mischief was being played. The young boy’s friends in reality were trying to console him and told us that the youngster had lost his best friend in a road accident. We tried to console him and made him sitdown. He  then told us that his friend was hospitalised yesterday, and had received the news of his friend’s death just then. We had to dismiss ourselves to attend our classes. His teacher stayed on.

On reaching home, I read the newspaper to find that there was a head-on collision of a SUV with a water tanker. The news said the SUV(sports utility vehicle) was driven by students who were sixteen and seventeen years old. The news also said that the boys were speeding back from Lonavala in the afternoon. The callousness of the driver of the water tanker had caused the accident.  However, the boys who were speeding away had not anticipated the swiftness of the tanker’s move.The result was a mangled car and bereavement of the youngsters.

I wondered what made these  youthful boys drive a car when the Road transport authorities do not issue a licence to youngsters below eighteen years of age. These boys had not reflected the consequences of their action being highly irresponsible.The young girl who was driving away on a rainy day completing a chore for mother was actually displaying a sense of  conscientiousness for the happiness of her parents patching her trivial interest for the sake of greater bliss which could have been a beam of a smile on her mother’s face. Youngsters never comprehend the trauma their parents would undergo aftermath an accident. Parents spend  the prime years of  their life in fostering their children not to encash their hardship, but to cherish an objective of  contributing their role through their offspring to the world. Perhaps societal transformation  can be reassured through a youngster's dependability, but when an unnatural incident snatches their young one due to sheer thoughtlessness an emotional vacuum persists even in the consciousness. 

                 

As I read the news I resolved to evolve a new lot of students through my teaching who will value freedom as a task to accomplish greater deeds in life rather than insignificant actions like driving a vehicle rashly without a thought for the warmth and protection bestowed by their  parents, leaving them depart this life in an unlamented death.

“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.” ― Joan Didion