Children are everywhere in India. Young children play in the busy city streets as if it were a park. They run around villages helping with chores and laughing. They seem to smile a lot. The children here are affecionate, and that continues into adulthood as you see grown men holding hands or with arms around one another and women walking arms linked, often touching when they talk. Some children are curious and friendly and will ask you where you are from and will you take a picture. Others will ask for money for that picture. Some children are shy and some just stare. Most have beautiful dark eyes. In the north, where Pankaj can speak Hindi, the children ask him lots of questions. Where we come from, how we met, what Canada is like. Many children have some, if not good english skills so I can have a conversation as well. They are very direct-asking if we have children, how long we have known one another,  etc. In the tourist places, some will want to sell you something or take you to shops where they get a commission. 

In some parts of India, like Kerala, most children go to school and the province boasts100% literacy in the population.  In other parts of the country, if the family isn't well off enough, then the children beg on the streets to make enough to eat. Parents work very hard to send their children to school but there is a large population and no social safety net.  One mishap in your family and a young child may have to go to work instead of school. It makes me deeply appreciate our social services in Canada.

Most of the children I have met in India don't have "attitudes" like western children do. Even teenagers here are generally respectful, curious, open and often sweet natured. Pankaj talks about growing up knowing all the shopkeepers in his neighbourhood and having formed relationships with those people. So playing in the streets if you know everyone is not a big deal. It's one larger community of which your family is a part-more like a small town in Canada but with a community festival happening almost every week! So from one perspective, one can say there is a sense of the community being responsible for children so it makes things easier for the parents. On the other hand, there are entire families living on the street that would not be so easily accepted in places like Canada.

India is called a third world country in part because of the conditions in which many children live. However, there are things that children of India have easily, that children in the west often don't - like large extended families and a shared sense of belonging and community that goes back several generations. Indian culture is rich with human interaction and that shows in the friendliness and smiles of the children.  -----  Sophie