“Aaj kal ke bachche bhi na!!”, “Kids these days, I tell you!” And that disgusted expression.
Only the other day, I was in the supermarket quietly looking through stuff when an old man passed me, turned around to look at me as if I had sworn at him and muttered to his wife, “Kids these days are so spoilt! Their parents should be blamed for buying them such expensive cell phones while they are still in school.”
I looked up. He had noticed my cell phone. I shut my eyes tight for a nanosecond to stop myself from saying what was going through in my head and smiled pseudo-sweetly at him. Then I very politely said, “I am not a school kid, sir. I am a post-graduation ‘kid’. Also, my parents don’t spoil me by buying me things. I spoil myself because I earn. AND, I pay my own college fees.” I so wanted to mouth, “Problem?” in the end but I managed to keep it to myself. I swear I would not have retorted had he kept my parents out of it.
He stared at me as if I punched him in the face and I simply walked away with one final smile.
This is the problem everywhere and with everything we do or say. Why is the train of thought about youth today so messed up? Okay, we know how to use a cell phone at an age when you didn’t even know what a landline was. But is that really our fault? Aren’t you the ones who taught us to stay on par with the changing world? Now that we are, there’s a problem?
So what if when you were kids, you listened to your parents? We sure as hell listen to our parents too. The only difference is that we have the guts to voice our opinions. You never spoke a word in your time and that is why most of you were forced to study subjects you didn’t even like. We know what we want today and we want to pursue it. Most of you even regret not telling your elders what you want to be in life. Now is it bad that we refuse to be the same puppets? Agreed that we can be very rash at times but that does not give anyone the right to misjudge us so brutally.
Yes, I agree hands down that some of us are indeed messed up, indeed spoilt and have no values whatsoever towards elders, family and even friends. But are you telling me that your whole generation was whitewashed with purity? That none in your generation were spoilt? To which generation did Osama Bin Laden belong to again?
Most of us see our parents work in a 9 to 5 job that they absolutely hate just because they ‘respected’ their parents too much to tell them what they wanted. We don’t want to end up like that. We want to work in a profession that we love so that we don’t quietly blame our parents for ruining our lives forever. That does not mean we disrespect our parents at any level. Most couples live together today because they are married and not because they are happy. The relationship stays intact just because they are now parents and the damn society will talk in their backs. We don’t want that. We want to marry someone we love so that we live together because we want to and not because we have to. We DON’T care what the society thinks of us. Is that so bad?
We may make decisions in haste but that is why we always look for our parents’ approval. I know a big handful of people who have obediently given up on relationships because their parents did not approve of them. We know how much we respect our elders and how much we try not to hurt them. Why can’t one just PLEASE get out of the clichéd thought and see that?
We have a world of opportunities open to us and the world is no more divided into doctors and engineers. Some of us want to be photographers, some writers, some dancers and some journalists. We only believe that this is our life and we will live it the way we want to. It is up to us to make it or – spoil it.
We respect you deeply and we have all the values our parents imbibed in us. It aches that we are so widely misunderstood. Just give us one chance to prove that to you. And please don’t judge us OR our parents by the clothes we wear and the gadgets we carry.
