Monday Musings 101

Monday Musing is back after a hiatus of a little over three months. Everyday living sometimes gets better of us and the discipline of pursuing an interest takes a back seat. I guess thats precisely why it is so difficult to be dogged in pursuing an interest without compulsions other than the calling of the heart. I guess that is why it is difficult to be a genius. But the good news for me is that it is back. This time with a fair amount of audacity i am taking the liberty of marking it to a wider audience, some of whom are far more learned and experienced than me. Hope Monday Musings in its second incarnation as a blog will be received with as much fondness as its first avatar.

The creeping social transformation - 1

In an extremely short span of 24 hrs I witnessed two isolated incidents bound only by a very fragile thread of what one would call a trend – a thread so fragile and subtle that one would miss it If one did not pay attention. I was in a hotel in Chennai in the course of a training program, which also housed a pub on its first floor. It was the middle of the day and the place was swarming with teenagers who were barely out of school. It was some kind of a party and they were having a ball – dancing to loud music and from the state some of them were in, it wasn’t difficult to imagine that they were also a few drinks down. It was also not difficult to imagine that it was a college bunking party and young boys and girls were ready to go back home after what was a day supposed to be attending classes. As the party broke at around 5 pm  and they started to bid goodbye to each other the inebriated state they were in became obvious. The sight of extremely young kids drunk and smoking without remorse or hesitation and with ease was, for the want of a better word, disturbing.

The sight of one particular girl who looked more like the front bencher-studious-notes taking types, puffing like a practised veteran just doesn’t leave me. This was happening in a relatively old and traditional neighbourhood, on a lazy afternoon and in Chennai - had its own significance. This was breaking all the stereotypes of the youngistan that I had in my mind or had read about.

I am not puritanical normally – in my own growing up or in my views on changing sociological landscape – but even my otherwise liberal sensibilities were stretched to accept what I was seeing. Surely I have been a youngster and not a very nice one at that, but this took my breath away. For heavens sake – they were just too young.  As those images linger in my head and the pragmatic in me takes over, I am almost forced to consider that perhaps I missed some changes that might have occurred around me since the time I was a teenager.

Teenage rebellion is not new – neither is the youth’s desire to experiment with the prohibited. I guess the prohibited list just expanded. So how does one deal with such social transformation. I guess the first step is to accept that the world of an adolescent has undergone a change and so has the notion of taboo. What was taboo till the last day is perfectly kosher now. My sense of disbelief is a construct of the times that i have grown up and may be completely out of place.

My own liberation lies in accepting an entirely different new world of a 16 year old and accepting that he and i are united at least in one way – that he is deriving as much joy in being a rebel as much as i enjoyed it in my times.

Guru

(I shall talk about the second evidence of a creeping social transformation in my next blog.)