Srinagar, May 1 -- A relative of my friend gets diagnosed with a heart condition. The doctor suggests that they need a child in the house. The relative becomes a grandfather and that improves his health.

This is a child, without exaggeration, the concrete representation of beauty, divine and innocent. It does not matter whether it is a privileged child of my friend or the one trying to sell pens at a traffic signal.

We have robbed children in many ways and given them altered existence. We sent them to schools too early, we gave them gadgets, we told them crafty stories that they are incapable of understanding, we fed them half-truths, we taught them to compare and compete.

In a dysfunctional marital setting, parents find it in their in...