On being 20….(in India…)

[*This is not even most distantly a literary piece, just a volley of thoughts with gross ignorance to grammar and conventional writing styles.]

Still standing on the threshold of adolescence and adulthood... Parents expecting you to be responsible adults when it comes to your conducts, while restraining your freedom on the pretext that ‘you are not yet matured enough to make your own decisions’. A phase each one of us has lived or are still living…

Fired by the intense desire to make it big, to outrun the rest and snatch your coveted position under the sun, while longing to relive the innocence of childhood at the same time. The peer pressure that strongly dominated our lives back in high school seems to have taken a backseat, though their influence on our everyday life still inevitable. A phase of battle between making our presence felt to the world ,and escaping to world of carefree oblivion…

Howsoever enigmatic the above lines may sound, these are golden years. We may loathe about the absence of the freedom (freedom, the word we have learned to worship since stepping into our teens) that our counterparts in the west live; but an innocent smile ‘here’ helps us get away as kids even now. It’s a time of rediscovering yourself and what you want from your life and this world, it’s the phase when parents slack the noose of parenting to ‘let us be’, the smell of this new found liberty inexplicable.

But for most of us today,in urban India, barring basic academic obligations and maybe an occasional summer internship, the word responsibility and other allied ‘big’ words are thrown into the sack of stupor. It’s the time to rejoice and live those last few carefree days before being stamped as adults with heap load of responsibilities to last a lifetime. This age is about burning the midnight oil before exams because you had befriended procrastination for the rest of the semester; convincing parents that extra circulars are equally (rather more :P ) important as grades on the resume so pursuing them is a necessity and not our bail for ignoring academics. It’s the time when you have that fag of cigarette with friends and then using the deodorant to make sure the hostel authorities do not take notice of it. It’s about waking up with a bad hangover from the ‘shots’ at the party last night and convincing each other(read friends) over lunch to never try ones ‘capacity’ again, only to forget it by the next Friday.

A time when facebook & googletalk are no less than a parallel to our very existence, unable to explain elders how your fingers seem totext and chat with a mind of their own…. A time when everyone is convinced(what else are friends for…) that ‘Hukha’ barely has any tobacco and that Mocha and Seesha are Gods bequest for mortals like us to unwind, and in the senior year every weekend is equivalent to parting under the pretext that it’s the last year together(with friends). It’s a phase when life without internet seems no less than an exile to Guantanamo Bay… and downloading movies and songs online is not even distantly regarded as piracy... Googling for the the pub with least cover charge, searching for the latest cellphone scheme with maximum discount charges, bragging that Simpson’s tshirt that you always wanted while your Dad is amused by the fact that you are sporting a cartoon chest print at 20!

The above lines may portray a very irresponsible and flawed picture. But it is just one side of the coin. Yes, we are impulsive at this juncture, driven by the fire to live most of what life has to offer, snatch our piece of this materialistic world. I do not deny that most of us want to have a piece of the cake and eat it too, but we are aware of the fact that we are nearing the hour to brave the world. We have lived our share of the innocent childhood and the carefree teens, its only a matter a time before we have to spread our wings and fly out of the nest into the open sky, the sky that does not merely offer freedom but also bring about responsibility and obligations, of family, friends, conducts and oneself. We do know that scores on the grade sheets today are a parchment that would affect the fate of our lives tomorrow. The parties and long drives are not an escapade, rather a rendezvous with our youth and innocence. They are not an excuse the snub adulthood but a reflection of who we still are, memoirs of the teens and a rejoice of the present. A phase that our parents have lived and smile back upon, and something even we would cherish seated in plush cabins, defining the epitome of responsibility in the years to come. But for now while we do justice to our academics and conduct, we want to party and live every moment that life has to offer, to keep the kid within alive and still carve out our niche in this humongous ocean…