I recently read stories for a competition of school children's stories, in which entrants were free to write on anything related to contemporary Nepal. The vast majority of stories written by those in school were set amid the Maoist insurgency. The children could have written on any aspect of today's life, and yet they-almost uniformly-chose this topic. It made me feel afraid.

Not that the stories were bad. Most were crafted very well, and displayed a sophistication of language that I had not expected from teenagers writing in what is, in many cases, their second language. Judging for the quality of language alone, I should have been impressed. But I got stuck on the question: what are the limits of our children's collective imagination? And what do these limits say about us?

A surprising number of stories depicted the Maoists as warriors for a just cause. Others depicted them as misguided in adopting violent methods, but essentially good people. Only a few stories depicted government forces in heroic terms. These stories came, by and large, from children studying at the most elite schools of the country. The children had obviously seen little of the insurgency themselves: yet they had formed strong views about it. Their idealism was typical of their age, and sweet. It was the uniformity of their choice of subject that kept haunting me. What does it say about us that our children-all-want to write about war?

Perhaps we wrote them in our childhood as well: those poems and stories that school children send in to the daily newspapers, published much to the pride of parents the country over. Some of these works are good, and some need a little more work. The large majority are very altruistic. Many dispense advice on how to develop the country. Others sing paeans to the beauty of the motherland. Indeed, national pride is much in evidence, as is a tendency to preach, lecture and wax moral.

What is it that leads our children to write on such weighty, important matters, matters that-no offense to children-really are beyond their reach? Why don't they write, instead, on their schoolroom tensions and playground politics, or on the foibles and follies of their relatives and neighbours and friends? What is it that makes them feel that their everyday experiences are not worthy of stories and poems?

"Write what you know" being the first rule of writing. Not the only one, but a good one to begin with, since it teaches the budding writer the value of observing the world around him or her. The imagination is served by these observations. From close scrutiny of a game of marbles between friends, a story of great beauty could unfold, even a story that touches on the home truths of today.

But perhaps I am being nostalgic. The story below, which I came across by chance, was written by Aayushi Sapkota, a student in class 3, while her father was detained on allegations of being a Maoist:

One day at our house 10 or 12 army came. First we didn't know that who was coming. So we thought that someone was coming to our aunt's home. After that they knocked on the door by calling out our father's name. So my mother opened the door and looked to see who they were after. After coming inside our house they started to check our room and ask questions and beat my father. After checking everything they did not find anything. So they went out. They beat my father very much, then they put my father in a jeep. I became sad and cried.

That day was 'Shiva Ratri'. Lord Shiva was born on that day. We should do puja for Lord Shiva that day, saying we are trying to bring out my father. We are going to be successful.

One day they called my mother to their barrack. So my mother went, but I could not go because I had gone to school. My mother went and met my father there and returned. After that day I also went, but they did not give me time to meet him. So I returned.

Here, then, is a child who is writing what she knows. It is not her fault that what she knows is terrible.
In Imperium, his book on the messy integration and disintegration of the Soviet Union, Ryszard Kapuscinski writes of the mentality that forms in those who live in conditions of ideological fervor: "A mind touched by such a contagion is a closed mind, one-dimensional, monothematic, spinning around one subject only-its enemy. Thinking about our enemy sustains us, allows us to exist. That is why the enemy is always present, always with us."

We may be losing more than we know, watching the way our children's imaginations are being colonised by the subject of war: We may be losing our humanity.