sense of the aged and sensibility of the children

Today I was caught up in a traffic near an interior city of Calicut. Crossing the vehicles parked off in the front, I zig zaged on my bike and moved forward only to stop near a procession. I had been asked to stop. I asked whether I can go through the side. They said nope! Only then I looked closely the colour and the tune of the procession. It was all children lined up so meticulously with some parents guarding them. It was a procession of 'Balasanghom'-The children`s organisation affiliated(?) to CPM.I dont know who had formed and affiliated it! All the children had had whilte and red flags and they carried some placards as well. They jubilantly flashing their cards and flags without knowing what does it mean. Placards were carrying hi funda slogans such as -"Godmen are dangerous", "Girls are not inferiors", et cetera.

It took me back to my childhood days. Probably Balasanghom would have been the first organisation in which I was enrolled. It happened when I was 9 or 10 years old. I was asked to to go for some programmes arranged for 'children' in the nearby Manakkad Govt. School. I went with some of my friends. Some guy with beard had come and sang some songs in clumsy voice with gawky gestures. I could not enjoy it all and moreover I disliked the idea of treating me as a child. I had a kind of suffocation and some how escaped from there. Even after that incident,since my father was an ardent CPM activist, I had to reduce myself as a subject of intense pressure and attend many of the programmes many times.

CPM, as a political party has wide range of offshoots and affiliations in many areas including agricultarists and labourers. But what is the logic of building a children`s organisation? Is that to build the party? Or to catch them young? Or to rear them as communists right from the small age? Or to inculcate the prolitarean values? What nonsense? If it is not, what else is nonsense?

Had the party arranged a nice play ground for the children to play and laugh out louder, had the comrades made the arrangements to support laymen`s children financially, had they been kind enough to give the starving children atleast one square meal a day, had they allowed them to remain as children, they would have done a wonderful job. Both as communists and as human beings!