The desperate ‘Match Box’ children

A R Farrukh Ahamed :
In past 30 years time, Dhaka City – a capital city for last 400 years, minus the British rule – has expanded on horizontal sphere in geometrical progression. Similarly, on the vertical line, Dhaka has skyrocketed where buildings with 30 plus level are too common a feature. In demographic estimates, this capital city has reached mega metropolis’ status with an ever-increasing dwellers (1421 new comers both by birth and migration per single passing day). It now houses some 150 million people, roughly 10pc of the total population of the country.
As an expanding metro-entity, Dhaka has its own charms and agonies (of living). Measuring on different scales, mainly in terms of civic amenities and provisions offered to the city citizenry by the city fathers; city planners from home and abroad labelled it as most inhabitable one (in the world).
With the advent of nuclear families and studio apartment living, some new social phenomenon are also coming up in the all day living patterns of the earlier compact families of the city communities of Dhaka. Here, we shall focus on one such issue, which bears immense impact on the life of the inmates, particularly of the children concern; of such trendy family(ies).
To be very simplistic, these children are desperately lonely – lonely in the home, lonely in the association, lonely in thoughts (or thinking process), lonely in interpersonal interaction(s).
However, a similitude may be drawn with the ‘tax babies’ (of UK) to these apartment living kids of Dhaka. In UK, the new born babies are well covered under its social safety nets out of tax payers’ money.
Taking advantage of the generous social service coverage, some South Asian families, mostly of this sub-continental origin, would try to enlist a few more ‘fake babies’ in the family list. This was very common in the 90’s of the last century. At one stage, the British tax officials went all out to detect those fake babies which they code-named as ‘Tax Babies.’ Following the British codification, we too can name the apartment living children as ‘Match Box Babies,’ because by structural design and space arrangement these flats mostly look like ‘Match Boxes’ pilled up one upon another in series. This all but for fun, not to demean those babies or their families in no way, whatsoever.
Let us now ponder about some of the painful life experiences of those ‘Match Box’ babies in their all day living process or growth – both physically or mental or intellectual – environment point wise.
Painful childhood
Conventional wisdom suggests that the number of issues of the couples living in such apartment communities is commonly limited to a maximum of two with wide age gap between the siblings. That is in most cases these kids rarely have a companion to grow up with sharing a brother or sister. On the other hand, the parents being working persons, these kids do not get them (parents) also to share joys or sorrow with any one other than him or herself. In more simple word, they live a very painful lonely early childhood.
Victim of wide – generation gap:
The rearing process, life-style and living pattern and life orientation of this generation do differ in almost all counts from that of their parents (father and mother), not to speak of grand-parents. Readers (if any) of my age, who are in their mid 30s; may recall that we had companion to play football in the muddy grounds in the rainy days, cricket in the sunny winter morning, going school, walking in groups, roaming aimlessly or simply passing times gossiping with peers or making pure fun in big company of friends. True, we had red-eyed parents (mostly father) to ask explanations for all deeds or misdeeds but we had also a soft-hearted grand mother or aunty to extend the affectionate hands for taking care of and at times allowing indulgence of a sort to be playful as a child as they would argue that those social interactions were very much needed for one’s growth – physically, mentally and more so for socialisation in attaining interpersonal relationship skills.
Unfortunately, these children (of nuclear families) lack those experiences almost totally. They have little or no off house engagements as members of peer groups. Thus, they are growing in an environment of wide generation gap.
Poor socialisation/interpersonal relationship skills: It is true, these children grow-up in affluence or richness, they maintain a good (at times very high also) standard of life. They eat enough, live in luxury, attend good(!) schools (generally English medium), use high-tech apps (even from the very infancy), but they grow up in loneliness, they do not acquire the art of social living or inter-mix. That is, they are rather poorly socialised and hence lack the very basics of intra or inter-personal relationship skills.
Degenerated creative faculty
As mentioned before our match box kids are less engaged in out-door encounters, so naturally their life-style is hugely occupied with or involved in e-apps, computers and etc.Thus, they have naturally a trend or tendency for mechanised entertainments, which eventually lead them to a wrong cultural orientation – wholly different from that of the greater society they were supposed to belong to as members of a traditionally bonded society.
However, what is more worrying is their ineptness or poor language sense of mother tongue. Commonly, these well-off (in financial standings) families are used to enjoy the services of domestic aids and the kids are left to the care of these Buas (female domestic aid) for most of the daytime when the parents remain outside the home at their respective individual work places. Thus, these English school attending boys/girls learn the mother tongue in the style and dialect of the Buas, which they speak of amongst themselves. In the process these boys/ girls develop an unsophisticated language skill(s) in their very mother-language for which their fore generation sacrificed life – What a tragedy of life!
Another point, emphasised a psychologist, deserves serious consideration. Out of frustration(s), these children bear the risks of developing loneliness induced aggressive behaviour, which may even end in behaviour disorder syndrome.
In summing up, we record our deep concern for a section of our generation (of the nation also) and expect there should be an in-depth action research or anthropological study on the issue to unearth or unveil the real happenings/developments in the living pattern, more so on the development process (both physical and mental with weighted average social interplays) of the kids belonging to nuclear families living in the studio apartment culture or way of life. Compromise on it may be too costly – economically and in social matrix. n