Children and parents inhabit two different worlds. The secret world of children has been shunned from parents since the beginning of time - kept away in notebooks, under beds and pillows, in lockers, in codes and slang and inside private SMS text messages.
And parents know. They fear it. But they accept it. They know about the smoking and drinking and gambling and they pray that it is the extent of it. They pray that their child will return home safely, from their secret world of children’s games, and rejoin the safe and fabricated world of family.
Is it not every parent’s worst fear to outlive their own children?
When 21-year-old Shalvin Prasad’s burnt body was found in Kingseat, South Auckland late January, his parents’ fears came true.
South Auckland is a haven for immigrants and crime. South Auckland offers you a slice of Polynesia and Asia, with a dash of home invasion, assault, rape and outlandish Police Ten 7 antics thrown in. Or so goes the word on the streets.
Indians are certainly making their mark on the Auckland crime scene. It was only in November last year that 24-year-old Inayat Kawthar was stabbed to death by her 27-year-old partner, Ramnitesh Avinash who subsequently committed suicide in the South Auckland suburb of Manurewa. Domestic violence is of course, common practice within the Indian community, though it seems that Ramnitesh took it a bit too far.
Aged 18 and 20, Shivneel Shahil Kumar and Byrne Permal are being charged with Shalvin’s murder. Had they been a few years younger, they would have been tried as juvenile. And that would have really complicated the case.
I began this editorial talking about the world of children – with all parties here occupying the hazy intermediary period between adolescence and adulthood, nobody should be referred to as an adult.
The death of Shalvin Prasad is essentially the violation of the Immigrant Dream. To immigrate, to set foot into a Western country is usually an attempt to flee the deficiencies and hostilities of the homeland. It is a wish for a better life.
Children of the Diaspora have the responsibility - and the unique opportunity - to take the teachings of their parents, infuse it with Western teachings found outside of their parents, and create a world for themselves whereby they are Global Children, equipped with multiple languages, first world freedoms, higher education and the power of the internet.
Failure to turn these opportunities into gold and to digress into crime is unfortunate. I am pointing the finger at anybody in the Indian community who is blaming the parents of the alleged killers – these boys left the womb a long time ago.
There is no correlation between immigration and crime. Walking around as minority race on another man’s land, first-generation immigrants display their best behaviour – cautious, subservient and willing to work without question. The lone immigrant becomes responsible for carving the public image of his entire race. There is no correlation between race and crime either.
Indian peoples have an unhealthy preoccupation with public image and reputation. The judgement from within the Indian community is far harsher than what happens outside it - Fijian Indians generally being thought of as occupying the lower rung of the Indian socio-economic ladder, for example.
Murder is as human and as universal as salt and water. Indians, as proud as they are about their over-protective parenting and smothering, are neither above it nor below, but as prone to it as anybody else.
Manisha Anjali, born in Fiji and raised in Auckland, is a writer based in Melbourne, Australia