Subir Roy: Games our children play

OFFBEAT

"Papa, give me an idea about Belize," said our daughter. Why are you so interested in such an obscure country, I replied, hoping that she would not continue her interrogation. But she knew she had me on the defensive and persisted, forcing me to admit I didn't know where exactly it was on the map.

So she turned to today's great answer man, the internet, to prepare for her role as the delegate of Belize at the UN session which would be held shortly in Delhi. Then followed several days of intensive preparation, seldom undertaken for a school exam, and frequent long conversations with friends on the phone in which arcane diplomatic jargon was freely tossed around.

After it was all over and she was back home, she declared it was great fun but had one regret. The big-brother school hosting the show had hogged most of the prizes. At last I got a chance to sound knowledgeable and declared that the whole model UN session had indeed prepared her for the real world of international power politics in which there was one big brother who got away with almost anything.

But it is so unfair, she protested, and I replied in the wisest tone I could muster that part of growing up and training to face the real world was having a foretaste of its injustices. There was only one way to fight back "" change the world by influencing as many as you could.

There was no such disappointment at the UN session held last week in Bangalore where a succession of children from a cross section of local schools trouped up to receive all manner of prizes for two days of solid deliberations undertaken in an effort to change the world.

One look at the resolutions they passed told you they knew what needed doing. One was on demilitarising outer space, another was giving the UN a chance to help take forward and facilitate the transfer of technology for nuclear power among member states so as to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and yet another on the need for a dialogue with Iran so that it did not violate the NPT.

Great as these were, my favourite was the resolution on the need for governments to combat climate change. It affirmed that one set of countries has greater responsibility towards mitigating climate change, another set of countries deserved all the help they could get to fight climate change, and all countries had to work on CDM (clean development mechanism, in case you didn't know), emissions trading and investment in eco-friendly technologies.

Children traditionally play games among themselves in which some take up the role of grownups "" mum or school teacher "" and the rest, the role of children who are sternly hectored. And then in the next round, the roles are reversed. But these were fairly grownup children in high school, in formal suits with the occasional jacket a bit too big or tie knot slightly skewed.

The role play too was totally different from child's play. The teachers who had been with them through the whole exercise were impressed by how much they had picked up on procedure, the extent of research they had done to prepare for it and the way they argued out their divergent positions flowing from the known stance of the countries they represented.

What it had done to the children in two-and-a-half days was truly impressive. They had learnt the importance of and the need to be formal in the way they dealt with situations and exchanged views. And it was quite incredible the way they had gained in confidence and poise in such a short period of time.

All I could do in my valedictory address was to draw attention to the fact that by the time they actually began running things, India would be one of the most important nations in the world. And they would need a deep well of knowledge to be up to that role. The global role of my generation was child's play compared to what would be theirs.

When the prize giving and taking and the applause were over and the children let their hair down, or didn't care to tuck in the shirt tail, they allowed a peep into their world. It looked the same and used known words but which had alien meanings. They thanked each other for "chilling out" and was it "cool", though how something as uncomfortable as a chill can make you as comfortable as cool, I could not figure out.

If our future can be in such safe hands, I thought, let them build a new language and let me not be an old fusspot complaining about usage imported from god knows where.

subir.roy@bsmail.in