V-Day turns into mini-picnic for kids

CHENNAI: With kids accompanying their parents to polling booths on Wednesday, the atmosphere was a bit like a mini picnic, with kids eager to take a peek at EVMs and learn about the voting process.
"I was curious about how voting takes place," says 14-year-old Siddharth Sarathkumar. "So my mum took me and my younger brother to the polling booth in R A Puram.I have read about EVMs in my textbook but I got to understand about independents," he says.
Padmini, Siddharth's mother, says she and her husband thought it would be good to educate their children about the right to vote. "They're at an impressionable age and it's important to answer their queries. They need to understand what it means to live in a democracy," she says.
Many booths like the one at the Corporation Primary School, Luz Avenue, Mylapore, allowed women with young children to proceed to the front of the queue.
At Olcott Memorial High School in Besant Nagar, Arvind Srinivasan who works with IBM, had brought along his nine-year-old daughter. "I brought her along because I wanted her to observe the democratic process. I want her to see, how despite our differences, we come together as a society to exercise this right," says Arvind.