Time: Noon
Actors: A pair of grandparents, their two young grandchildren, and me
Background: The road is unusually quiet under the midday sun.
It was a still, slow noon at the Hongqiao Road bus stop. The street, usually alive with movement, felt almost paused in time. From the left side of the pavement, an elderly couple approached— the grandfather carrying a heavy bag, the grandmother walking carefully with their two small grandchildren: a girl around five and a boy perhaps three.
As they neared the stop, the grandfather lifted his arm to signal the approaching bus. But the bus didn’t slow down. It simply passed by, leaving a gust of warm air and a faint trail of disappointment behind.
With a quiet resignation, the grandfather lowered his bag to the ground and stepped closer to the road, waiting for the next bus. The grandmother sat on the shaded bench, breathing heavily but trying to steady herself. The children, unfazed by the missed bus or their grandparents’ fatigue, began to play around her feet.
There was something magical in their play—no toys, no gadgets, just imagination and togetherness. The girl giggled, the boy followed her clumsily, and their laughter filled the quiet afternoon. It was innocence in its purest form.
A few minutes later, the girl suddenly broke away from the bus stop shelter and ran toward the road, curious to peek into the bag her grandfather had put down. Before I could even process it, the grandmother rushed after her. Fear, or perhaps instinct, took over. She slapped the girl sharply on the back.
The little girl froze.
The curiosity in her bright eyes dimmed instantly, replaced by tears that welled up without sound. The boy stopped moving. The play stopped. Something more fragile than a moment had been interrupted.
She didn’t understand why this happened. What she had done wrong.
And honestly—I didn’t know either.
Who was wrong?
The girl?
The grandmother?
The situation?
Or something deeper—something unseen?
Perhaps no one was wrong. Or perhaps someone was—someone “unknown,” shaped by years of fear, stress, duty, culture, and survival. A force that travels silently through generations without ever being named.
And in that brief moment, on a quiet Shanghai afternoon, a child’s clean, blank slate received a scratch that will likely stay for some time—small, but real.
Background :-
(I was waiting for my bus at a stop in Shanghai when an incident unfolded right in front of me. Moments earlier, I had been watching a little girl and her brother play together, completely absorbed in their own innocent world. Their joy felt so pure that I wished it would last forever. But reality interrupted, abruptly and painfully.
I returned home that day with a lingering uneasiness and a mind full with questions. Incidents like this are not uncommon in countries like India and China. These societies share certain underlying threads—woven through culture, education systems, and economic pressures—patterns so deeply rooted that we rarely pause to question them. Yet they shape behavior in ways that leave lasting marks, especially on the young.
What struck me most was how every reaction—whether harsh or gentle, positive or negative—is the product of so many forces. Our responses are never isolated. They arise from a long chain of experiences, influences, and unseen pressures. It’s an intricate web, complex and tightly interconnected.
When we live consciously, kindly, and with awareness, this web becomes a beautiful and harmonious weave. But without that mindfulness, it turns into a tangled mess.
And in that mess, children—whose lives begin as clean, unmarked slates—often receive their first scratches. That is what stayed with me. And that is what continues to trouble me.
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