Acouple of months earlier some little ones of my block were playing ‘bomb-bomb’ with some empty tins and fire crackers. Not surprisingly, considering that for the entire week they saw nothing on the TV but visuals of the Taj Palace and Oberoi hotels in Mumbai burning and hand grenades blasting.

Are we leaving a legacy of terror for the coming generations? There were a total of sixteen big terror attacks in India over the past five years — an average of over three attacks a year. Those who were close witness to these devastating terror attacks or those who have lost their near and dear ones in these dastardly and cowardly actions, many of them children, were traumatized for life. They will harbour a sense of insecurity and suffer from depression and negatively, besides a loss of confidence in the government for ever.

A 14-year-old girl, a resident of Ganeshguri, Guwahati (close to the spot of the October 30, 2008 blast) says: “My first thoughts on hearing the shots were that they were fire crackers... India must be winning a match. But later I learnt that I was wrong. It was a huge tragedy. I was scared because the sound was so loud and the smoke really bad even inside the home.”

A recent study has shown that six months after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US, approximately 75,000 New York city public school children in grades fourth to twelfth suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including children who were not directly affected by the event. We live in troubled times and often wonder what kind of world we are handing over to our children? Most children have the word ‘terrorism’ in their vocabulary, right from the second or third standards, at present.

Blast and terror attacks strike at vulnerable minds. Five-year-old Nisha Bora, also a resident of the city’s Ganeshguri area, had lost her grandfather in the October 30 blasts. Her father Niren Bora says: “Everytime my daughter asks when her Koka will return, I always tell her that he never will. It is always best to tell the children the truth.”

The symptoms of PTDS include disrupted consciousness, uncontrollable, intense grief, changes in sleeping or eating patterns and extreme cognitive impairment, the study says, adding, other symptoms include depression, anxiety, increased startled response and arousal level, irritability, sleep disturbance, restlessness, social isolation, aggression, peer rejection, bullying, school abstentions, a decline in academic performances and a decreased interest in previously enjoyed activities or hobbies.

What can we do? We are parents, not commandos trained in anti-terrorist warfare and battleground survival tactics. I think we can only do what we have always done-teach our kids to despair violence and treasure and uphold real human values and to make the most time we all have here on earth.

We feel that exposure to media must be reduced —children see video clipping of long past events and think these of fresh attacks. Like becoming insecure even in our homes inside.

Meenakshi Das