You know this thing that they say about how, if you want to boil a frog alive with its full cooperation, you put it into cool water and then gradually heat it? I never tried it, but I'm told that as the change is gradual, the alarm bells never go off in the poor creature's head, and it never takes the decision to jump out.

I think we're like these frogs, and the global-industrial-consumer civilization that we live in is like the water that's scalding hot already, and still getting hotter. In a variety of ways, we're getting cooked to death, and you know what? We're comfortable with it, just like the frog!

For an example of how this is happening, let's take a look at my daughter, Bloo, who is in the 8th Standard.

She's a good student, and a cheerful, spirited girl with an interest in the world. She rises at 6.15 am, leaves for school at 7.00, and is back home only around 3.00 pm after attending extra classes aimed at preparing her for the 10th Std. exams.

After coming home, she unwinds, eats lunch and generally amuses herself with friends, chatting, computer games, TV, drawing, music, books etc. Before she goes to bed -- rarely before midnight -- she does homework for a couple of hours.

Overall, in an 18-hour day, she puts in about 9-10 hours of academic activity. I think that's the maximum that anybody -- child or adult -- should be expected to do.

But sadly, it ain't good enough for us.

On Monday night, my wife and I gave her a talk about how she was up against other kids who willingly put in 13-14 hours of workto get that extra edge in the SSC exams. I told her that the system tended to reward such kids by letting them have their pick of career tracks; whereas laid-back kids would have to make do with whatever was available after the best seats had been taken.

That was a sobering thought for our daughter, who has ambitions of taking up a creative profession like architecture or fashion designing.

Now supposing she really learns to sacrifice 13-14 hours per day to the gods of Academia, and manages to score exceptional marks in SSC, what lies ahead? Will she be allowed to start enjoying her life?

No, what lies ahead is more hard work, of course!

Later on, if she makes it into a prestigious institute for, say, architecture, will she be able to give free let to the creative drawing and painting skills that she's so proud of? Most of the time, the answer is, No. Because still more slogging -- not creative leisure -- lies ahead. She will constantly have to come upto the raised academic benchmarks that she herself helped to create.

Because her creativity in its natural form is not good enough for society. Her creativity has to be bent and moulded into a shape that has maximum commercial value.

Maybe someday, in the distant future, she will look back and experience a sense of achievement. Maybe.

Unless, of course, somewhere along the way, she gives in to a feeling of fatigue and a sheer sense of futility and waste of life.

She's at the starting line of a rat race, and we, her loving parents, are telling her to buck up already. We're teaching her to derive her sense of self-worth NOT from who she already is, but from who she MAY become in the future by sacrificing who she is.

I personally find the rat race revolting. It's a race that I ran most reluctantly in my life, and it's a race that I'm on the fringes of, currently. I'm not exactly a frontrunner; maybe if I were, I might have loved the race a bit more.

And then again, maybe not. Maybe I'd have disliked it as heartily as I do now. I wonder if I would have felt more rewarded or more cheated for having wasted so much of my life for something so worthless.

Why should Bloo sacrifice the simple joys of life today, when she is most capable of enjoying and appreciating them? Why must she learn to live in hope and fear of the future, instead of celebration of the moment?

True, our current civilization does not reward us richly and accord us recognition for being who we are. It rewards us for becoming what it needs -- for prostituting our abilities and our brains in whatever way it requires. But can we not exert our will against it? Can we not resist it with our words and actions, and bend reality to our will?

Can we not create a culture (or sub-culture) that celebrates the individuality and specialness each child, each adult and each senior citizen without asking them to conform and transform themselves into something that they are not?

I know it seems like I'm dreaming of a Utopia. Part of me scoffs at the vision and yearns to just conform and survive. But another part of me says this vision can become a reality -- that all of us can indeed live without endlessly competing. Without bending over backwards and giving up what is most precious in our lives -- our leisure.

We educate our children for their self-development; let's remember that. Since when has children's self-development come to mean training them to keep their noses in their books for more than eight-nine hours per day? Especially when they feel (and rightly so) that most of what they do is NOT REAL LEARNING, but a bunch of meaningless tasks that the mindless, faceless system wants them to do...

The system needs us to be prostitutes, and rewards the least questioning, the most willing, the most eager to please. The system wants us to give ourselves entirely -- and not just a small part of our lives. And for what?

To enjoy a sense of power over others -- the power to make "important" decisions, to order others about, to decide who gets promoted and who doesn't, to work out where the next multiplex-supermall gets built....

To enjoy more purchasing power -- to be able to afford a bigger house, a bigger car, to take a bigger cruise ship and a bigger hotel suite...

To marry into a richer family and keep company with "bigger" people and move around in "bigger" circles -- to play golf with the creme-de-la-creme in society (never mind the fact that in order to do so, one must stop playing marbles with ones little brother early on in life).

If I were to send my kids to help out in the neighbourhood grocery store for a couple of hours each day, I risk being accused of giving a fillip to child labour. But if I can convince, cajole and browbeat my children to devote themselves body and soul to acquiring bookish knowledge and more marks, I'm likely to be admired as an ideal parent!

Things just ain't right around here, folks. Something stinks. Something is rotten, and I think some of the rot is inside of me.