Form-sitting

Witnessed today:
The front pavilion of a reputed (read: expensive and pretentious) Bangalore school lined with an endless row of chairs. Half of the chairs were warmed by the posh posteriors of CEO-types, flashy housewives and the laptop variety; the other half filled by peon types, uniformed, no jhatak-matak. Pretty odd crowd.

Apparently the poor souls were caught in the latest parental trap- form sitting.
Two weeks before the school begins selling admission forms for pre-school and first year, parents are allowed to queue to, ahem, facilitate orderly conduct. (There are probably two times in a child’s school-life that the parental claws are truly drawn- admissions day and the day of 10th standard results.)

Two weeks is a bit much, but to anyone who has been through the grind of school admissions, this would make sense, albeit in a roundabout way. Plus, I thought, quite nice of the school to provide chairs, na?
Not quite. I discovered there’s actually a contractor who ‘rents’ chairs out for Rs.30 per day, and Rs.50 per night! (Opportunities to make a fast buck crop up in such strange places!) Apparently, parents sit through the day and usually send home-help or an office peon to ‘guard’ the chair at night lest someone grab their precious place in the rather preposterous queue.

All this for a single form, for a kid who is probably no older than five and absolutely clueless about the crap her/his parents are willingly putting themselves through- all for the sake of ten-twelve years spent learning things s/he won’t need to know at a substandard institution enforcing a positively archaic method of “learning”.

I try not to feel sorry for people, but this time I couldn’t help but wonder who to pity more- the kid, the parents or the home help/ office peon.