Sex and the Six year old by Kavita Shivdasani

Thanks to the swine flu only 6, six year olds arrived for class instead of the twenty enrolled for the Friday sessions of my ‘Know Your Environment’ gathering. This paltry attendance however provided an opportunity to monitor a rather unexpected insight into their babyish psyche.

We launched into an energetic discussion on the significance of ‘making very strong’ our body’s immunity to battle against the ‘germ-enemy’ that could attack us because we may sneeze and forget to cover our nose, we may eat our food with grubby hands because we forgot to wash and so on and so forth.

With much gesticulation and wide-eyed wonder, visions were created of how the ‘white blood cell soldiers’ were always ready like crouching and well-dentured tigers to spring up, surround, attack and kill the dreaded ‘germ enemies’ in the blood filled battle field of our circulatory system. This was followed by an equally animated dialogue about our red blood cell facilitators and all about healthy food and junk food.

Thoroughly invigorated chirpy Sahil decided it was time to play Lock and Key. What followed was 45 minutes of pure banshee yells, dodging between chairs, planning strategy on how to prevent the ‘locked’ children from being released. Sweating and panting the group finally flopped down to catch their breath.

Relieved by the peace that had descended I was not really paying attention to the children’s conversation. I picked up my ears when I heard the words, kiss, handsome prince and Snow White. This was followed by Ishita and Sahil (who both attend the same school and are class mates) giggling helplessly while the other four listened with avid interest.

I joined in the conversation casually and Ishita explained how for their class play the handsome prince – another boy in her class - had kissed Snow White enacted by another little girl and woken her up. This play being very popular in all nursery schools I was familiar with the routine and the ‘kissing’ was always a very virtuous peck on Snow White’s hand.

So I failed to understand why the both Sahil and Ishita gurgled with such ‘goblinesque’ glee.

Enlightened dawned when Ishita went on to clarify that they were not discussing ‘that kiss’ but were discussing how the six year old little prince had kissed the six year old Snow White on the lips not once but twice during the school break time!

On enquiring what her class teacher had to say about such mischief, Ishita’s prompt reply was “Oh our class teacher couldn’t see because our whole class had surrounded them.”