Nerve Endings Firing Away

If it were up to few adults, we would be considered a nation of sex crazed children waiting to jump our classmates’ and indulge in some heavy petting if not outright sexual congress. Sexual congress? yeah! such archaic terms suit the news I am about to reveal. Two schools in Mumbai (yup, not some mofussil conservative heartland school, if that would indeed justify such news) issued notices this week asking girls and boys studying there not to touch or hug members of the opposite sex. You heard that right, my friends. Now the students of Vibgyor School and Jamnabai Nursery School are forbidden from indulging in the sensation of touch with their classmates from the opposite sex. If you do, a special device embedded in each student shall detect the different chromosome and emit a mind-numbing electric shock. Ok! I made up that last sentence but given the possible motivations of such a rule, the punishment cannot be ruled out for repeat offenders, right?

Immense rage swells at the school’s ridiculous justification that “the rule will “discipline” students, who are easily exposed to and influenced by violence and vulgarity on TV and other media.” Dilemmas of students affected by the rule are too funny but what is not funny is the silent acceptance of parents who still insist that their kids attend a co-ed school and touch only boys. But then I read the name of the school and chuckle. Vibgyor! Isn’t that the acronym invented to helps us remember the colors of the rainbow. What will they name a school next – ROTFL? Such names might even be popular with students who are exposed to the violence and vulgarity of SMS-ese on cell phones.

Like I said, if I would rant on every moral policing issue in Indian society today, you would see this blog updated more frequently. Bloggers in search of a niche topic, I hope you are listening.

PS. Image not from the schools in question.

Update: Now it seems like schools in United States are truly following the Indian example and wondering how the heck we manage to produce so many engineers and doctors. A middle school in Fairfax County, Virginia seems to think it is because boys do not touch girls and vice versa. The no-physical-contact rule seems to be more harshly enforced than the no-evolution-teaching rule in Kansas:

She has seen a poke escalate into a fight and a handshake that is a gang sign. Some students — and these are friends — play “bloody knuckles,” which involves slamming their knuckles together as hard as they can.

What? You haven’t heard of the deadly poke…pssst….don’t walk seven steps after you have been poked. And please don’t poke me on Facebook, I don’t know how to respond and no, I’ll not poke back. Now even Darwin wouldn’t approve of the no-touching rule. Let the touching begin and only the touchiest shall survive.