Homework in a Jiffy

So. It’s about time you sat down with your text books. Time to slog a little, immerse yourself in facts and formulae. The day’s started late, you should probably get something done before you break for lunch.

You haul your ass off the sofa, turn the TV off and slam a pile of books onto your bed. Ha, how disciplined of you, you think as you flip through your notes. What work ethic. You just dragged yourself away from the new season of Modern Family. You’ve got your priorities in place.

‘Nuff of that. To work. Which chapter was it? Mechanics, lenses, fluids, viscosity… oh lookie, it’s that doodle you drew the other day. The shading is pretty cool, even if you say so yourself. Sheesh, and here’s Nilam’s obscene remark about what it looks like. That girl has such a one track mind. She’s a bit of an idiot. But you should call her and ask how things are with that pathetic boyfriend of hers. She was upset yesterday. And she’s nice to you, even if she’s a tad dim. She has a sense of humour; actually she’s a lot of fun. God, she’s actually a nice chick, Aish and the rest just judge her for no reason. What’s she done to them? She was helping with their math the other day (ungrateful schumcks) . Jeez, you should probably call her about this chapter anyway. Bloody formula. If you can’t make head or tail of it, how the hell are you supposed to use it? You scowl at the rows of drills and word problems across the page and dial Nilam’s number.      

Shit. The project. The project. How could you forget? Nilam’s an angel. You’re going to run away with her when all this is over. The world doesn’t understand you. Nilam does. You guys are soul mates and evidently, you are bisexual. Good, you can bump off the pathetic boyfriend. This explains why you hate him so much. Some weird Freudian thingy. Who knew?

Anyway, point being, that you and Jo and Meera and Manish have a project to submit and how in the name of all that is holy and good in the world are you ever going to get it done?

Six thousand phone-calls later, you’re pissed and hungry and finally on your way to submitting that project. Research topics have been designated and everyone knows what they’re doing. Why does Manish fuss so much? If he’d just shut up in the beginning, you’d have been spared about five thousand and seventy three of those phone-calls.

Hell, you’re exhausted and you can’t work on an empty stomach. Refuelling is in order. And you feel like peanut butter.

You open the bread box and figure you’re out of bread. Lovely. Because everyone makes sandwiches without bread, right? Does Flipkart do groceries too? Bread with cash on delivery? You wish. To the shop then.  

When you get back, it’s lunch time, and you’re thinking that that was the most pointless excursion ever. You could have been working when you were haggling with the cashier over a plastic bag. God. Lame. So lame. A  morning wasted.

Ah well. The notes can wait. At the moment, your parents have put together a lavish pizza lunch with garlic bread and whatnot. And dessert is a surprise and who cares about the physics test anyway? And you can probably manage the bio and chem work on the bus ride to school tomorrow. You’ll make Nilam help.   

Clone Wars

Why are you doing this? Whatever it is you’re doing. Stop for a second and give it a thought. Are you doing it because you want to? Or because somebody else wants you to? Ha. Or is it because you think somebody else wants you to?

 It’s that bunch over at school, you tell yourself. I mean, they never said explicitly that you should do the things they do, but hell, you’d fit in better if you did. You’d have more to talk about with them for sure. You’d gel with the group better if you’re more like them.

Peer pressure. Goddamn peer pressure. Wanting to be someone else. Wanting what A or B has, wanting the same score as C so that others will value you as much, wanting to be as popular as D, going to the same tuition class as E and basically running through the whole effing A to Z of things you absolutely have to be. Gosh, when you put it like that, it sounds so shallow somehow. Like does it make sense that you have to get that latest gadget everyone else is flaunting to feel secure and accepted? Or that pair of coloured skinnies (how long can you remain glued in blue). Or download that tv show. You’ll steal hard drives for it, I mean, they’re always talking about it. Always. You need to know what the hell it’s all about, never mind if your parents think it’s inappropriate. Jeez, if they have it, it must be ok, right?

But then you stop to think. Why exactly do you have to do all that to fit in with your friends? Can’t you just hang out with them? When do you get to be yourself and settle into your skin and forget about the skinnies. Be friends because you like—no love—your friends and not their things? Because they shouldn’t love you for your things either, right? Do you need Grey’s Anatomy to keep your friendship afloat, for Christ’s sake?        

The Snitch

You   know what’s hard? It’s hard to do the right thing. To do what you know is best. For your friends, for you. When you’re walking up and down a thin dotted line called The Fence, (alternatively, Moderation). You’re teetering around wondering which side to put your foot down on.

Well. The problem is, your friends have already chosen a side. They know where they stand. They know they’re standing in the cursed space a million and one people will call The Wrong Thing To Do. They don’t see it that way. It’s not such a big deal, dude. Chill. Chill dammit, chill. Just leave them alone. They’ll sort their fucked up selves out. Somebody will make sure of that. Somebody else can rat. Somebody who’s not their friend.  But you can’t bring yourself to believe that. Unfortunately, you kind of know which side of the line you’d pick if your friends weren’t looking, watching to see what you do, if you’d tell. You’d stand safely in The Right Thing To Do, and say Hell, I did what I had to. I did the best thing I could possibly do.

Ah, but you didn’t, did you? You know that. You broke the loyalty code. The goes-without-saying-keep- your-mouth-shut-code. You’ve gone and landed yourself in a royal mess. You’ve spilt the beans on your friends. Let’s try that again. You’ve spilt the beans on your friends. Shit.

See? You know and they know that you did the right thing, but who cares? You gonna get bravery medals? Morals-in-the-right-place medals, perhaps? Yeah, you wish. You sold your friends out, you get nothing for that. You get a whole lot of bitching behind your back. Fake smiles. The cold shoulder. Why would they hang out with you, I mean, you can’t even keep a goddamn secret. They were just having fun and you went all, I can tell right from wrong…gotta stick by my moral principles on them. Who the hell do you think you are, anyway?

Suppose though, that someone else had ratted them out. Then what? Then, they’d somehow trace it back to you and suddenly the whole freakin’ world’s turned on you, pointing fingers and chanting you knew. You knew and you didn’t say anything.

Is it worth it? Really? Any of it? Is it worth losing your friends, worth the reputation of snitch? Is sticking by what you know to be right worth it? Even though it’s best for everybody in the long run? They’re not going to thank you, thirty years down the line. So what are you talking about? When will this shit you’ve put yourself through become worth it? When will it extend beyond the lukewarm fuzzy feeling in your heart that says At least I know; at least I know that I did what was good for everybody?  Considering that morally you did the right thing, shouldn’t there be a nice pedestal that you can mount? On which you can stand tall and confidently yell Hey y’all. I did the right thing.      

  

Bandar Shah’s Other Hideout

From Kavya’s Writing Book

One monkey caught my hands and held them behind my back. He twisted them and brought them up so that my palms touched my ponytail.

“Watch it, you stunted australopithecine! That hurts!” I snapped. The monkey grunted in reply and pulled my hands up higher. I winced but didn’t bother saying anything this time.

On my right, Richa and Aditya were being yanked along by another monkey who had them by their hair. He was slightly taller than the others and wore a huge bead amulet on his left arm. His eyes were smaller and meaner than the others’ and his mouth was contorted in a terrible snarly smile. There was something about him that gave me the idea that he was the leader or whatever of the monkeys. I was right.

We marched on till we came to a door. It was like one of those huge wooden double doors you find in forts.

And now if you don’t mind I will stop writing because this is just some Ramayana meets The Planet of the Apes and crashes into The Jungle Books shit and it’s so not going anywhere.

The Social Whirl

Oh My GOD. Jesus effing Christ.

Some weeks are insane.

There’s tuitions and then music class and then you come home and figure, shucks, the test (!) and then you call Megha Nina Tanya and ask have you studied and they say yes and no and only the part about RNA and then you plunge into your books and don’t sleep till two and nearly miss the bus the next morning and the test goes great but then Nik threatens to dump you and you sort of break down and then Nina and Sonali say let’s go to Com Street and shop and cheer you up and you love them when they ditch you because the basketball coach is being a bitch and wants extra practice and then in the most random fashion possible you decide to organise a surprise birthday bash for Megha (and also for Nik’s ex cos’ they share a birthday) and immerse yourself in a flurry of phone calls for a few days and accidentally call Megha and invite her and then she gets into hysterics and you feel like an idiot and decide to call the whole thing off because who wants a bloody party anyway and why the hell should you organise it and when you tell Elaina it’s off she breaks down because Maneesh had just ditched Rhea and now she’ll never know if he was going to ask her instead and you say whatever and she says god, you’re so pissing off and you say I don’t know why I was setting up a party for Nik’s ex anyway and then she calls you a stupid retarded confused shmuck and you hang up and sulk till at tuition the next day when a new guy joins and he’s unbelievably cute and you and Sonali giggle about him and he throws you a ridiculously gorgeous smile and you half die and then you feel like shit because you have Nik and how can you look at another guy like that and you get on a guilt trip and sob and the cute guy asks what’s up and you coldly ask him to disappear and Nik turns up and gets all possessive and what the hell are you doing arm in arm with him and you say nothing and he says keep it that way and then he takes you out for coffee with a couple of the girls and his ex and you glare at him icily for the rest of the evening and smile at the cute guy the next day and he asks Nina out and you think damn and get to music class and learn a new composition and see ma’am’s cat lolling on the sofa and think jeez I wish my life was like that and then you grin. Because you secretly don’t.   

Are you a young kidult?

Jeez. It’s annoying being in between. Being neither here nor there. You’re not a kid, but you’re not quite an adult either. Where do you slot yourself?

Don’t bother. They do it for you anyway, right? The adults, grownups, whatever. They decide when you’re a kid, when you’re a ‘mature person’. As and when it’s convenient.

If they feel like disallowing something, you’re a child. Too young to be doing this, not old enough to be watching that, not ready to be going there. “I don’t want you kids parading around alone. Without an adult, that is.” “This movie is completely inappropriate. Give it a few years.” So fine. You’re treated like you’re ten. You can make it work. And then you figure you can’t yell, you can’t throw tantrums, you can’t make unfair demands and pull long a long face and hope to get what you want. Nah. Only kids can get away with that.

You’ve gotta be a “responsible young lady/man”, “set a good example for the younger ones”, “be reasonable, act your age. You’re nearly an adult, no?”  That’s what teenagers do.

Um, but you just like, said the other thing, that I’m too young. That I’m a kid.

“Young adult, ma. Now go keep an eye on your brother for me. I’ll see you in the evening. You can watch TV or something, just don’t watch any violent films, HBO’s been playing a string of ridiculously gory ones this week. God, the way they make action films these days…and just walk Ceaser at four, but don’t stop and talk so much to those boys across the street, baby, they’re quite loutish…”