Youth: The perennial foolishness

 

Youth is blunderous and foolish; of altercation and itching adolescence.

It was another physically uplifting and mentally relaxing Govardhan parikrama. On the way back in the afternoon we get into a shared car from Govardhan chauraha. It’s an Ertiga, a seven-seat vehicle.

For such car pools, they squeeze three passengers on the front seat by the driver’s side, four on the middle seat and three at the back. At 200 rupees per passenger it fetches 2000 rupees for ten passengers who are packed so tight that there is hardly any space to even shift one’s bum by just a millimeter.

I’m squeezed on the front on a little pad put on the hand-gear panel, one passenger each on both my sides and the driver to the right of all of us. To allow any meddling with the hand-gear I have to give the best of my effort, fixing all my energies on the toes that are continuously trying to get a better position to make the tensed body slightly relieved and keep it short of the breaking point in terms of mind and body both.

The wiry young driver fits in the little niche available to the extreme right on the car’s front seat. How does he manage to drive from so little a space is a miracle in the art of driving.

The middle seat has three passengers, an old woman, a young girl and a young man. The young man bristles with irritation and unease when the driver tries to force down the customary fourth passenger.

The young man is cozily fitted with the girl. He doesn’t want any intruder. The driver tries to put the old woman between them and then force another male passenger by his side on the left.

The young man panics seeing the chance of losing the cozy feminine proximity. He throws the typical male chivalry. ‘I’ll pay for two seats. Don’t let anyone in now!’ he flaunts his bravado.

I don’t care about money, he wants to show, confidence oozing from his bearing. The girl must be surely impressed.

The backseat has three passengers including my brother.

The boy strikes a conversation with the girl. ‘I think I know you,’ he says. ‘Are you from that locality, near this place, around that square, the grey painted house?’ he strikes gold in acquaintance. Yes, she is from the house he mentions.

I don’t think it’s a chance meeting. He seems to have planned this journey; must have been following her itinerary through some means, maybe some informer in her circle of friends. Most probably, he has been following her and now trying to pass this meeting as a chance occurrence.

He seems a very smart guy; knows how to build up a conversation with a girl. I’m from this and that, near your house, we stayed in a rented apartment, I saw you on the roof, you are maybe Sudhir’s classmate, he was my classmate in another school near that place. He seems to have done his research.

We are listening. She is doing B. Tech. He has joined his father’s business.

The conversation is progressing well. The driver and the boy between me and the driver get itchier with each sentence flowing from the girl’s mouth after the initial temerity melts and she starts talking comfortably. My young neighbors cringe visibly as the conversation at our back involves smiles and laughter.

Aah, the evocative idioms of youth! Unabashedly comparative, relative ethos of adolescence! I can feel the hormonal storms of jealousy boiling in the bodies near me.

Youth is so foolish. It takes everything so-so seriously. And personally.

The two boys in front feel as if their masculinity is tarnished when the girl is taken away (they feel sure of it) by another boy even though they don’t know any of the person involved in the talk emanating from the middle seat.

The driver and his neighbor share a collective identity as the ones who have lost a girl to a feral cat who has no right on her. A rival tomcat is courting a girl! How is this possible given their own handsome self in the near vicinity!

Oofs, the cross-pollination of affection!

The two boys in the front seat get fidgety with the passage of minutes. Youth is so-so execrable. The driving turns more and more brash. The driver is now driving like it’s a serpent at full speed on the busy highway.

I know that he is trying to assert his masculine endowment through heroic, dangerous driving. Or maybe he is trying to scare the couple by taking utmost dangerous turns.

The other boy is egging him on. They didn’t know each other before this journey started. But now they are close friends in their binary as the losers who bear the ignominy of a girl being whisked away from their clutches by a third thug.

The other boy is speaking as if he is drunk, like a heartbroken majnu who doesn’t care about life anymore; a loser in love who is ready to face even a violent death provided the rival is also crushed to pulp on the highway.

Every time the boy and the girl strike a new topic of conversation, dangerous driving touches a new high.

Not able to bear it anymore, the offended driver takes out a pouch of cheap stimulants available in the market like food ration, chews at its corner, spits out the plastic piece with disgust and squeezes the semi-fluid concoction into his mouth.

It gives an instant high, they say. With this new bout of intoxication he does his best to add one more number to the teeming list of road accidents in India.

The fat old woman shouts that she has to see her grandson’s marriage. She engages in a hit and run verbal duel with the driver.

Meanwhile I keep praying silently—I have to invest the entire pilgrimage’s punya to reach home unscathed and not get mauled like a worm on the highway.

It was a big relief to get out of the car after a couple of hours of missing dangerous crash on the busy highway by a hairbreadth dozens of times.

Well, we nearly turned into a casualty of hormonal storms clashing foolishly among the young people.