The recent Miramar case where three minor boys clubbed another minor almost to death over the sharing of marijuana brings to mind similar cases from Mumbai, the first of which happened in a Goan enclave.
At 2 pm on November 19, 2003, Leticia Mendes (54) who used to conduct cookery classes in her one-bedroom apartment in Immaculate Conception Colony, Borivli (W), opened the door for five boys who had fixed up a class with her.
Half an hour into the class they slit her throat in the kitchen. On hearing her scream, her daughter Glenda Lobo, 24, came rushing from the bedroom, only to be stabbed and left for dead. When Glenda’s 18-month-old son started crying, the boys hanged him from the ceiling fan with the telephone cord.
“There was a blood-stained palm impression in the staircase,’’ remembers Michael Rodrigues, then a photographer with the Times of India, who lived a stone’s throw from the crime scene.
Miraculously, Glenda survived and based on her statement, the five were arrested within 24 hours. “We were shocked to know that these were our own boys,’’ says Rodrigues. They were: Ashish Dominic Waravale (20), Clint Fernandes (19), Wilfred Dias (19), Clinton Fernandes (16) and Karan Khanna (17), all from the nearby Marve Road, Malad.
In fact, Leticia did not suspect the boys as they had been introduced to her by Wilfred, whose mother was a family friend.
Just as in the Miramar case, these were students; Ashish was from the prestigious Elphinstone College in Fort while Clint was a student of Bandra’s Rizvi catering college. There was a drug angle here too, the motive was to fund their drug habit.
The questions raised by O Heraldo in the Miramar case were raised in the I.C. colony case too. How do kids from proper middle-class families end up committing such heinous crimes? Is there something wrong with their upbringing? How can schools, religious institutions and society inculcate good values in the young?
In the aftermath of the I.C. Colony double-murder, it emerged that the Waravales were a working couple who provided their son Ashish with a motorcycle and pocket money. Ahish’s father, Dominic, spent his spare time on community projects but his bonding with his own son suffered.
The media had then sought a comment from the local parish priest but he merely said that the law would take its own course.
Experts say that children need and want to be told right from wrong and to be taught to take responsibility for their actions. However, parents tend to be either very strict or very lax.
In another Mumbai incident dating back to November 2006, spoilt brat Alistair Pereira (21), returning from a party, drove over construction labourers sleeping on Bandra’s Carter, killing seven of them. He showed no remorse, hoping that his builder father would bail him out. Instead, the move backfired and the Supreme Court sentenced him to three years.
On December 31, 2021, a girl was found murdered at a teenagers’ terrace party in suburban Mumbai. Two of her friends were arrested amidst suspicion of drugs, sex and a love triangle.
Diagnosing the malaise, psychiatrist Alex Martin says our children, who are supposed to be handheld while they explore their world, are left to face the adult world guided not by parents and teachers, but by social media, resulting in ill-founded relationships, a crass understanding of sexuality, reality mired by drugs and a digital world, which is cold and emotionally hollow.
How many parents, especially fathers, spend even 15 minutes a day of quality time with their college-going kids? Imagine the disconnect where family dinners have been replaced by solo TV dinners. As it is, the social secrets of teens go deeper than parents think.
The culture of entitlement makes today’s kids feel they can do anything and get away with it, says psychiatrist Dayal Mirchandani. The I-me-myself generation also does not think of the consequences.
In the US, there’s a term for delinquent behaviour by the wealthy – affluenza. It is defined as the inability of individuals to understand the consequences of their actions because of their social status and/or financial privilege.
The term gained currency when a Texas teenager, who mowed down four pedestrians while driving drunk in 2013, was sentenced to 10 years of probation and zero jail time after his attorney successfully argued that his privileged upbringing precluded his ability to understand the consequences of his actions.
It’s time for us also to wake up to affluenza and do something about the problems of the poor little rich kids before they become everyone’s problems.
