Could a 17-year-old boy just disappear, leaving no trace and clues behind? That his mother sent to a downstairs grocery store, after which he "disappeared", rules out accidental speculations. And for six months his parents and their extended society rue in disbelief.
If not for an emerging pattern and larger indicator for social distress, the incident may have been dismissed as one of those weird happenings.
While the Prime Minister Narendra Modi trumpeted his long speeches during the election campaign, he left many charged and super-charged to debate with all passion about "ifs and buts" of his coming to the power. In one such charged conversation, a Modi supporting colleague ran into a senior bureaucrat in a government broadcasting organisation. He's a christian from Kerala. This disclosure is for easy understanding of his political orientation.
The two argued at the top of their lung power and many a times threatened to tip over into a quarrel. They were saved with timely moderation offered by a little less charged political commentator. However, it became evident that the bureaucrat was in a disturbed state of mind.
Since he was occupying the chair of another officer for some computer works, his full biography awaited his leave. And soon he left, explanation poured, that the man is disturbed, because his only son, who was on the brink of becoming an adult, is missing for six months.
One and a half months later, the officer, whose office had hosted the "hot" discussions, was still baffled over the missing boy episode. "He was such a nice boy. He would mostly stay home. The family has no enmity with any as well. He just had gone to buy Harpic from a downstairs shop where he was last seen. How could such a grown up boy evaporate like a camphor," he asked.
In the intervening six months, all that could be done (FIR, missing report, forensic examination of laptop, mobile, etc.) have been done, but for no clue at all.
The minds conditioned by patterns of past experiences could speculate on the lines of kidnapping (no ransom call yet, but could be for organ trade), fatal accident (body taken away by culprit), suicide, etc.
But two incidents in far off areas of Odisa and Madhya Pradesh help think beyond the fixed patterns. First, the MP incident: Son of a small grocery shop owner was arrested from a small town in MP, who was about 18 and going to local government school, for murder charges. In the course of investigation, it emerged that he had befriended a "girl" on Facebook, that he accessed from his mobile phone.
The "girl" had used a mugshot photo of an actress on her Facebook profile. The boy was in a fantasy land. Hundreds of calls were exchanged between them. After long courtship in the virtual world, the "girl" sought to meet him the real world.The boy got a rude shock to find the "girl" being actually a middle-aged woman from western Uttar Pradesh. He shot her dead a day later.
The second incident from Odisa may scare the bureaucrat from Kerala. A 16 years old girl disappeared from her hostel from a small town in the state. For six months, there was no trace of her even after the police did what all could have been done.
But one day the principal of the school, while surfing the net, came across a news story. A girl married a Pakistani man after running away from her home in India. It was that girl, who had been missing for six months. She had befriended a Pakistani Muslim on Facebook. And they fortified their bond in the virtual world to such an extent that this poor girl managed to reach Pakistan from Odisa on her own.
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| Photo from today24news.com |
In the meantime, it's worthwhile to recollect how the officer described his colleague's son. "He would stay home always. He hardly had too many friends...," he had said. Add to this the personality of the distressed father. He had appeared dominating enough to have been dismissed as a domineering person; argumentative and man of fixed ideas; believing in "I know all"; full of negativism (he would dismiss all politicians as thieves), etc. Such a man would invariably be a strict disciplinarian, one many consult any book on Psychology.
We may err in pointing fingers at any for not knowing clearly what the personal world was of the boy, who has vanished without a cause. But his vanishing act is reflective of the social distress.
If he's not dead, he must have been too cold-blooded not to have spared a thought for his parents. He was their only child. And if he was so, he must have been psychologically disoriented despite going to one of the best school and brought up in New Delhi.
And if he was lured at an age of 17 years by organ traders, he must have quite a weak person mentally. And the blame must squarely rest with his parents for not equipping him with enough defence mechanisms to cope with the challenges of the world. This should also apply in the event of him having given a damn to the real world in his pursuit of the virtual world.
Above all the current generation is a first, which has accepted nuclear family in toto. With no grandparents around and no siblings to play with, the children are growing amid parents pursuing professional glories in utter loneliness. And the parents even if they think they're too smart to be deceived their offspring may have erred in underestimating the guile of the growing ups.
The Principal of Tagore International school in upscale Vasant Vihar of New Delhi was unrelenting to a mother of 15 years old girl. The mother was seeking forgiveness for her daughter abstaining from the school without permission. "How is that you had no clues whether your daughter had been coming to school or not? It's for five consecutive days," the Principal told the distressed mother, who replied, "I always saw off my daughter in the morning taking school bus. But I don't understand where she had been going if not the school".
"If that is so, I will not allow her to join classes for a week. This is a punishment and she has earned it. Let her know that she has done something bad, that of having cheated the school and her parents," quipped the Principal to the nodding mother.
Time to wake up, parents!
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