Is this your child?

16 years I've walked this planet. 16 long freaking years. Is it just me or do you guys too feel as if as you grow older, the years become longer? Is it the stress of being a better person as you grow up or the stress of getting your own life from your family or the stress of having a fruitful career? I guess these are questions I will never get the answer of. 


I've been blessed to have been born into a happy family. My parents and my grandparents took good care of me and my sibling. We went to reasonably good private schools, went to tuitions after school, had good food to eat and good clothes to wear. Somehow, that only added to the pressure of performing well.


Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't want to perform well in studies and in life. But why the pressure? Will grown ups ever realize that the pressure only adds to the stress of having to perform well?


As I ask this question, another comes to mind. Will we remember not to pressure our kids the same way when we're adults and become parents? Why do all parents behave like they have the Classes 10 and 12 board exams more than the kids themselves? I guess these are some more questions we'll never learn the answers to.


Today I get worried about a lot of things. I want to get into a good university. I want to get better grades. I want to be ready for my career. These things have been hammered into our heads ever since we were born. The moment we are born one or the other elder has to say, "Oh look, what a sweet baby, he/she will grow up to be a doctor/engineer for sure." Of course, these days the choice of doctor and engineer has increased manifold to being an architect/model/lawyer/politician/shop owner etc. Which once again leads us back to square one. Pressure. And how it has increased now that there are more career options which are considered good. Tbg tells me how in his days careers that were considered good were basically being a doctor or an engineer. Everyone else was basically a low life clerk. Isn't this supposed to be the other way around? Shouldn't it be that the increase in decent career options would mean less stress on the kids?


Guess that's another question we'll never have the answer to.

Grown ups: Why can't you folks just let us be for crying out loud. Why does everything end up with if you get such and such grade you can have this or that? Are we being taught to bargain for everything in life from the beginning? Don't we deserve anything just because of who/what we are? Kids? 


Why do you folks always have to bring up the subject of marriage in everything? Isn't there life apart from marriage? When do we live? First, you pressurize us to get good grades. Then you pressurize us to get admitted into the best university in India. Then you pressurize us to get a annual CTC equal to Ratan Tata in the campus placements. Then you pressurize us to nail the best spouse in the country. The you pressurize us to have the best kids in the whole world and then want us to start the same cycle on them.


What about us? What about our feelings? What about what we want? What about what we don't want? Maybe we don't want to be an architect. Maybe we don't want to be the number one cardiologist in the world either. Who cares anyways? Maybe you do. We don't. Like seriously.


Do you folks ever realize that most of the times you want us kids to succeed is to show that Auntie that your kid got better grades than her's? Why does it matter anyways? How does it matter anyways? It does not matter to me or to that other kid who got better grades. Why do you grown up's want us to perform just so you can show some other adult who's boss?


There are more things that we care about than what you want us to do with our careers and marriage. Like seriously. We could be more concerned about not being ragged on the first day of university. We may be more concerned if our seniors would just let us freshers be when we enter college. We may be more concerned with you folks being alright if were to finish the credit in our pre paid mobiles sometimes before the month is up. We may be more concerned with you folks being alright if we skipped a random boring lecture once in our entire college life and going out to watch a movie. 


And if you're so concerned with our staying out late at night and the city not being such a safe place, then why don't you grown up's do something about it? Why don't you get together and do something to make the city a safer place for us kids? For once go and pressurize the government to perform, rather than stressing on us to be back home before it's dark. As if no one has ever been raped/murdered/harassed/kidnapped in broad daylight before.

To hell with your career plans, to hell with your marriage plans. I don't care if all the uncles and aunts in our family are either doctors or engineers or architects or lawyers, I want to be a clerk for the rest of my life because I enjoy it.


Stop preaching Mom Dad. Please. Get a life. 


Let. Us. Be.






Tbg adds: This text has been deliberately typed in a genderless manner. Can you make out if this is a girl or boy?