Stupid
Chapter 1 (? — perhaps, depends on your response, honestly speaking — this doesn’t mean I am dishonest when I don’t explicitly call it out. I don’t know why people say half the things they do, but they do and so do I.)
Our kind neighbor invites me and my wife for a conversation over tea and some pakodas. We wonder how grown up we must appear to the external world, because mentally we are both still kids – at least when we are in the comfort space of being with just each other.
My hypothesis is that this feeling of being “still young”, stems from not having kids of our own. Nothing makes you more grown up than having a life to care for which is completely dependent on you for survival. But (I like starting sentences with that and you should feel free to crucify me at the altar of grammar if you feel so inclined) I cannot discount the role of media and the society at large that values youth way more than middle age. Can’t even feel bad properly about that though. Seniors don’t even have a space apart from a footnote, perhaps, so my sympathies.
To build a hypothesis within a hypothesis, I am truly surprised as to why the youth is celebrated as much as it is? As a youth, not very many years ago, I was stupid. I had no sense of what I want and no money to buy the things I was being sold by the media (PS3, an iPad, a car). Why then? Is middle age not a better segment to target? Celebrate that middle age man with a pot belly who can actually buy those ridiculous pointy shoes and over priced t-shirts that are made in the factory (hopefully) opposite your house but carries the mark of a brand you are conditioned to value. Nonsense, isn’t it?
But maybe the youth is valued exactly because they don’t have much sense. You want to impress them when they are impressionable and hope they carry the nonsense ideas lodged in their unformed brains to their graves. It’s a good grand-plan by smart people, I have to admit. Took me a while to understand. Conspiracy theory from a cynical mind? Maybe.
But sometimes I am truly glad that I am still stupid.
Coming back to the tea and pakoda conversation.
It is mighty awkward to be the middle of the pack. The neighbors are more middle aged than us. We are more middle aged than their kids.
The adults in the room talk about how we have tea and pakodas, just the rain is missing. And also laugh at this.
I realize I feel closer to the kids, perhaps because they seem familiarly lost and confused. I was like that not very many years ago. I am able to relate. As opposed to the self assured, calmer, more middle-aged-than-me folks in the room.
I pick up a conversation with the elder of the two kids. The only one I know, having been in the same situation not very many years ago, What’s your plan after school?
Accustomed to the question from middle aged folks, the 14 year old responds casually. Judge, he says.
Now I am intrigued by the response. I am more accustomed to hearing engineer or doctor. Lawyer is also fast becoming normal. So I ask, Why?
Mom says I am very judgmental, he says, looking at my worn out flip flops, I thought I should put it to some use.
My first thought is to explain to the kid that being a judge means the exact opposite of that. I think of how, without sounding sarcastic, should I tell the kid that he’s being stupid. Maybe I can tell him that he’s a stupid the world needs (because there are limited judges). And also that the quality of reason why you pick anything in life has no bearing on how good or bad you eventually are at it. I wish someone had told me that when I was growing up. But I shouldn’t project.
My second thought is that it’s not really his fault. Language is stupid. How can judgmental be the opposite of what is required of a judge? I can’t believe they ran out of words and chose the nearest one. I think of alternate options for judgmental like prejudiced that are somehow not cool and haven’t been as popular as judgmental. A cooler option could be a wacky new word, like zingy, maybe– I think this could really catch-on. Don’t be so zingy when your mother talks about Big Boss Season seventy thridiculous. But zingy has the potential to become the kind of bad that people sometimes want to be. Like how our heroes glorified being a tapori in the 90s. Like anti-hero is sometimes more alluring than a too-straight hero.
My third thought is that I am the one who is stupid. In all probability, this kid knows that and in one short sentence he took a dig at his mom, my flip-flop and my cliched question.
Makes sense then to celebrate the youth, I think.
