THIS is how screwed our education system is.

There is this woman I know, who till recently used to live with her husband, four-year-old daughter and in-laws in a chawl. Her daughter is a precocious, bright kid, in kindergarten, used to go to school then come back home and do her homework and then go play with the other chawl kids. I say chawl kids, I mean chawl kids, teenagers, whoever. She was the first kid in the family to go to an English medium school and her mother was immensely proud of that. 

One day, she came home complaining of a pain between her legs. Turns out, a fifteen-year-old whose house she used to go frequently to play had fingered her. 

And her mother, instead of going to the kid’s house and castrating him with a blunt instrument, gave him a stern warning and let it go.  Why? “It’s his SSC year. If I’d made a big deal out of the matter, it would’ve screwed up his entire life.”