I am pretty sure you have seen the “average Indian boy” at many places — the innocent boy playing cricket on the road; the teenage boy doing crazy stuff to impress his girl; the college boy sitting in class thinking about his pointless life; and many a times the boy in the mirror…
Let’s just call him “the Boy”. As a care free small boy, anything was possible. With a blanket behind him, the Boy would become “Superman”. With the broom, he would become a wizard. He believed in himself and there was no fear of failure. But things became a little different.
In his formative years, the Boy gets interested in sports and music. He dreams of becoming a cricketer or a musician but his parents enrol him in mathematics and science tuition instead. The Boy is told that marks scored in Std X and XII board exams are all that matters. His life becomes mechanical and the people around do a good job in killing the creativity in him.
Though the Boy sees a lot of girls as he grows up, there happens to be one special girl for whom he falls for. He does insane stuff to impress her. A small smile on her face brings butterflies in his stomach and twinkling stars in the hot afternoon sky.
For some reason, it never lasts. The girl gets busy in her life and the relationship breaks before it even actually begins to exist. But every time the Boy thinks of her, his heart beats twice as fast.
He pursues engineering but his enthusiasm slowly decreases. Thanks to our education system, scoring more marks is more important than actually understanding the concepts.
Over time, he realises what is right and what is not. At one point, the Boy realises that he has grown up. And one random jobless day, the Boy just thinks what if he was still a kid or had pursued a career in sports or had pursued that special girl. Time flies and life moves on…
The writer is a III Year undergraduate student at IIT Madras
