Lazy Initialization

A well-dressed, rather well-fed kid with thick glasses on his eyes walking with his gray-haired, grand-fatherly father is becoming an increasingly common sight in our postmodern establishments and colonies. When I see them - the kid and his arthritic father - I feel more and more certain of the opinion that the generation gap is increasing with every generation. I wonder how often they talk, the kid and his old father. And how much they share, or understand, when they do.

On the other hand, at 30 something, SM - one of my good friends - is young enough to play football and dabble in photography, while surviving in an industry which is full of hopeless workaholics. For a man who is married and whose son is old enough to be in intermediate, his youth is a refreshing sight.

He got married when he was still in his teens; when he was still innocent and his wife was still charming. Today, when his innocence and her charm has depreciated, he says he regrets his marriage, but only to the extent any married man does. Not more, he smiles. Perfect marriage is a myth anyway, he says with his post-marriage wisdom, and it is idiotic to wait for the perfect match. Early marriages might be old-fashioned but at least they allowed the couples to adjust with each other before they are stiffened by rigor mortis.

He feels satisfied that he can connect to his son much easier than many fathers of his son's friends. After all, SM is still a young man! And he is hopeful that he will be able to take his passion - photography - more seriously once he gets rid of his fatherly responsibilities, in next 5-10 years. But what about the grand-fathers?

Late marriage leads to larger generation gap and adjustment nightmares. But that's not all.

Deprived of sex, men and women lock themselves in their private rooms, where they indulge in their sweet sex-thoughts. We corrupt ourselves with an abandon, fearing nothing but exposure. The civilization converts a man into a metaphor - we know what to show and what to hide. Under the aegis of a fetish called career, we abstain till we get sick with what we abstain from. But it's alright, since it's an individual choice - to be or not to be (a pervert). But unlike physical sickness, perversion is not completely individual - it has social consequences.

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Nityanand, the IITK graduate and a GE engineer, who was caught last month by US police in case of cyber-pedophilia, might not be less conscientious than you and I. He was just less lucky than us - he got caught in his private room act. He did chase a child, but does that make him a child-chaser, a wolf? Was he an inveterate pervert who just happened to be good at Math? Perhaps not, perhaps he was a regular pervert like you and I, but got caught in his weak moment.

Whatever, he will be known forever as a child-chaser. He was chasing a child, wasn't he? But what was it that chased him? What was it that played tricks on his mind. What was it that took him near the edge, and in that weak moment, pushed him down, making him a random victim - when he was found fallen, his face looked distorted with lust. He looked like a deterrent.

The idea is not to go too close to the edge. The idea is to realize that if you deny drinking clean water when you are thirsty, you will end up drinking dirty water when the thirst becomes irrepressible. We have collectively chosen to deny clean water. That's why we are flooded by dirty water everywhere. Now the dirty water is leaking into our homes. What do we do now?