Societal indifference

Children fall to oblivion! Where's Newton?

By Galileo

Within the last week alone, there have been two sad deaths. All deaths generally are sad, but these ones particularly hurt the most.
They were children, both aged six. While one fell to his death in a Bangalore mall, the other fell into a iron pipe dug 13 feet deep into the ground, for whatever reason, in a village close to Jaipur.
There is absolutely no point in acquiring statistics about how many of our children just go away like that because of careless attitude of people around.
There are plenty of them.
Malls are the svelte entertainment centres that children find hard to resist, what with the range of entertainment and toys on offer.
Six-year-old Aahan Bhandari was no different. Now Garuda Mall, the ill-fated place, has at least four floors with railings attached with glass panes. But leaves a gap between the railing and the escalator hand-grip that moves along with the system. That claimed Aahan's life.
On the crowded fourth floor where people throng to get tickets at the Inox multiplex, Aahan found himself close to this entrapment where he was propelled by the escalator hand-grip and shoved into the opening to his death. He fell 50-odd feet even as his helpless parents and hundreds of others stood as mute witnesses to the tragedy.
A sheer failure of human reasoning, which should have perceived the threat in advance rather than cry over a life snuffed out. Now the mall management headed by Uday Garudachar, plans to set up a net in the opening shaft where hundreds of people lean over the railings to watch events takign place on the ground floor.
This is in the hope of preventing another child from following Aahan.
Now, they do it!
Too late, but OK to prevent further such incidents. But it will always remain too late for Aahan's breaved parents and elder brother.
Same with the six-year-old Suraj who the authorities were able to extricate from the 13-foot iron pipe, only find he was already dead.
He slipped into it while playing nearby with other kids.
That incident may have gone by unnoticed probably because it occurred in a remote village.
But there is no rural science or urban science. There is just science.
It was sheer lack of scientific thinking that led to these incidents.
Plain thinking - and not rocket science - could have saved these young lives. Remember, gravity acceleration is 9.8 metres per second square. That is quite a thud from a height.
Why should only a Newton remind us that gravity continues to exist, even if he doesn't now?