Vacation varieties

KOCHI: A troop of naughty kids dressed in soiled shirts, with bruised knees and hung faces saying sorry to their neighbour for breaking a window pane. Seems like a long-forgotten story. Blame the scorching sun or the summer classes or the television set but kids seem far-flung from outdoor games even during vacation months.  Blame the endless options! Unfurl the morning newspaper and along with it barges in colourful pamphlets announcing new vacation classes to keep your children engaged. On the bark of trees, on ‘stick-no-bills’ walls, bus stops and even on the yellow and black innards of autorickshaws there are posters of vacation classes. From salsa, carnatic music, cooking, brain gym to power yoga, you and your kids have it all, an endless array of options to chose from for these two months.  For Aswin, a class five student, vacation routines are pretty much the same. Instead of school, he squanders six hours in a summer class, where he learns guitar, karate, and pencil sketching. After coming home, he is either racing cars on his desktop or fighting enemies in ‘Shadow of the Colossus’, on his Play station 2.   “Excessive addiction to TV makes kids more grumpy and moody,” observes Ann Abraham, a mother of two. “They wouldn’t even get up to answer the doorbell or pick up the phone. They are detached, and in another world. It is to divert them from this that I made them enroll for tennis lessons at Mahesh Bhupathy tennis academy,” she adds. Forget Enid Blyton and Nancy Drew, kids hardly like to flip pages of comics, they prefer animated cartoons over cloud dialogue boxes which could be the reason why cartoonist Tom’s legendary comic cartoon characters, Boban and Molly are now being processed into a feature film due for release this year.Parents crib about kids being glued to cartoon channels, but Anu Augustine, chief producer of Kochu TV gets defensive. “Almost 50% of our programs are informative. (Science kid, art junction etc) With the help of toons and animation, we teach a lot more than what kids learn from summer classes,” adds Anu. Maybe it is time parent’s start scrutinizing the content rather than cringing at the mere sight of cartoons. But what bothers Nita Menon is interesting. Her five-year-old daughter has picked up a fake sing-song Malayalam accent after watching the channel on a regular basis. Swings and slides under the awning of green trees, and a swarm of chirping children fluttering in and around the park, Jawahar Balabhavan is the favourite resort for vacation goers in Trivandrum. According to the statistics provided by the campus manager, Madhu Nair, in 2011, the vacation class enrollment was close to 1800 and in a year it has increased to 2260. Could be the open air, the play park or the interesting set of classes like aero modeling, kalaripayittu, electronics.  When asked whether she prefers summer classes or cartoon shows, Gauri Nandana is quick to respond, “It would have to be summer class because I have loads of friends here.” “And what about home, don’t you have friends there?,” we ask. “No. My parents are working and my brother always keeps his door shut. He doesn’t let me come anywhere near his room, so I like it here,” she answers and runs to join her gang of friends, who are waiting for her near the see saw, some sipping Frooty, some wiping sweat on their sleeve, some rolling on the mud along with a unanimous rendering of the song, ‘Aiyyapan Kuyyapan annaakallan.”