Toy Store

I walked into a glorified hobby store this afternoon and felt as though I'd gone back in time by about two decades. The place was full of lots of colourful toys suitable people aged five and above which I remembered playing with years ago. You know, paints, stickers, block prints, copper etchings, faux stained glass. The works. The shop itself, for some reason beyond my comprehension, was situated next to a shop selling designer sarees in a relatively posh building and naturally, the prices reflected this. It made me think of a letter a friend had sent me some time ago about possible projects which could be initiated to help children living in an area in which conflict is rife.There is no reason why origami paper and coloured pencils should be the preserve of the rich. The manufacturing cost for most of the items in the shop, for example, must have been next to nothing... latex moulds to make plaster of Paris models? The same material that one can buy OTC for close to nothing in a pharmacy suddenly costs over a hundred times more simply because it's shaped like a bus. Or a building.Toys simply shouldn't be priced so high that a child doesn't have a chance to enjoy being a child without belonging to the social elite.