Being brought up in an industrial town can be a bit taxing for a 15 year old boy. For once, his career is already decided, not by him or by his parents,but by his society.
In a town full of engineers, the only 2 respectable professions that are considered suitable for a boy is "Engineering" or "Medicine". To even think of Commerce or Arts was sacrilege. The common comments we heard were that those subjects are for weak students and no self respecting boy will go for them. The girls had freedom to go for whatever the heck they liked, but for us it was like an open and shut case. Even my father had succumbed to the notion. I remember once , when I had come home after getting a pathetic 42/100 in Chemistry in class IX, and he thundered," Babu!! If you don't get 90+ in your X Boards and are hence unable to secure admission in DAV , I am not going to waste my time and money on any other school, and will pack you off straight to Jaunpur, where you will look after the cows and report to me daily the volume of milk and ghee,we get out of them!"
Ohh boy!! what a start to teenage life...
To subsequent readers:
ReplyDeleteThe packing off to Jaunpur thing is just a key phrase to indicate that Shrikant Singh's ass is in deep shit. After a point of time,noone including him paid any attention to the threat and he did his stuff anyway- though the phrase remained in vogue till college.
Come to think of it, it would be interesting to have seen a school friend shipped off to some god forsaken village.