“I go to tennis class in the morning before school, attend quiz club in the evening before chess or keyboard practise, and on weekends work on my blog and website,” was one bespectacled fifth-grader’s answer. Another sixth-grader from a private school in the city answered that she juggles chess, debate team and ballet on a weekly basis apart from topping her class. Yet another teen has started her own company along with her parents’ help and manages it part-time after school every day. 

But what was surprising was that it was not the parents forcing the kids or pressuring them to excel, but the children themselves being frightfully aware of the rat race in today’s competitive world and pushing their comfort zone with no limit in sight. In fact, most of them have their educational and professional career plans mapped out for the next 10-15 years. 

Amid balancing so many interests, however, do the kids get any time to enjoy being a child at all? A weary parent nearby tells the scribe, “Actually I’m tired taking my son to all these different classes daily. I wish he would want to just be a normal kid and play cricket on the streets or video games with his friends once in a while.” How the tables have turned!