Ever wondered what the hell an alien would look like? I can’t help but think that maybe they are already amongst us and have mixed so well that one can’t really tell the difference. No I’m not going the Men In Black way and suggest that Dennis Rodman and Michael Jackson are aliens. They are really the pits of humanity, their talent (or lack of it) notwithstanding.
I was shooting in a school and I hate shooting in schools. There are children all around and some how I think that they are looking up to me and I am letting them down big time. Kids they can say the strangest things and make no huge deal about it. A seventh grader was telling to me about life. For a large part of the conversation I assumed that he was spilling the beans on some cheat codes on Second Life. Imagine my surprise when I realized that he must have thrown some pearls my way and all I could think of was a video game!
The scary part is when you come across as a kid who is bordering between confidence and supreme stupidity. Trust me the sad part is that there are many who fall in this category and the chances of bumping in to their likes is high. I met this kid who was the President of some school.
Firstly who the hell coined a term as fancy as President of the school? I was ok with the word ‘Captain’; I thought Head Boy might not be…ahem… correct in this internet savvy day and age. I could have made peace with ‘Leader’ but this president is a little too much. Secondly he walked the walk and surely talked the talk. He was so cocky that I felt ashamed and for those of you who know me personally, you know this is serious! This kid spoke a language that our head boys and girls spat in the 80’s and I can’t get over the notion that they talk the same way. This ostensibly means that they teach the same way which now in the light of new evidence purports that there is no growth whatsoever. Scary thingy!
For those of you who are keeping the count, thirdly, this guy told me a couple of times that he was busy. How the hell can you b ‘Busy’ in school? While answering my questions so correct, that I couldn’t help but lament the death of innocence. You might argue that a 12th standard kid won’t be innocent anyway but you get the drift. Suddenly my mind raced back some 20 years and I could see myself in a school auditorium and addressing a packed hall on a damp Saturday afternoon. ‘My name is Gautam Chintamani and I will talk for the topic…science a boon or bane? Ever since the beginning of time science has been a double edged sword and every boon is shadowed by evil it accompanies...yada yada yada’. As this dude spoke all I could hear was the science boon or bane speech coming.
My problem is not with the kind of person he has turned out; life will give him ample opportunities to retune his alignment. The problem is when school ‘Presidents’ are given so much of attention and have people eating out of their hands, they tend to lose the big picture. They start taking things for granted. I remember my school captain was the kind of guy that every college would have loved to have, he was the kind of guy every teacher wanted for a son. He was in the science stream and the only time we met he acted shocked. He wasn’t pissed off that I had opted for commerce without Mathematics. I would have been OK with that. Why? For one I loved the reaction people had when they learnt what yours truly was doing in school.
No. He was shocked as to how could a school allow such a wired combo! He told me that he’d do I.I.T., and then he would attend M.I.T. Well a few months ago that idiot was still out of IIT and very far from MIT. A year later I learnt that he had joined the NDA and now I think he was with some BPO. I don’ mean disrespect for NDA and BPO’s here but this guy was so cocksure of things because everyone listened to him and look what it did to him. There was this other girile in my class. She was just a year old in the school and yet she was made some Prefect or something. I was short-listed but my own classmates didn’t know me so you can imagine why I never got ‘drafted’. Now this girlie was so right that noting could go wrong around her. She was like magic. Things got politically corrected as she walked along the class. She was so happy that she had ‘responsibility’ that after studying for ages she is now doing the country proud by servicing foreign business clients. In other and not so irregular words, she is riding the BPO/ Call Center wave.
I was shooting in a school and I hate shooting in schools. There are children all around and some how I think that they are looking up to me and I am letting them down big time. Kids they can say the strangest things and make no huge deal about it. A seventh grader was telling to me about life. For a large part of the conversation I assumed that he was spilling the beans on some cheat codes on Second Life. Imagine my surprise when I realized that he must have thrown some pearls my way and all I could think of was a video game!
The scary part is when you come across as a kid who is bordering between confidence and supreme stupidity. Trust me the sad part is that there are many who fall in this category and the chances of bumping in to their likes is high. I met this kid who was the President of some school.
Firstly who the hell coined a term as fancy as President of the school? I was ok with the word ‘Captain’; I thought Head Boy might not be…ahem… correct in this internet savvy day and age. I could have made peace with ‘Leader’ but this president is a little too much. Secondly he walked the walk and surely talked the talk. He was so cocky that I felt ashamed and for those of you who know me personally, you know this is serious! This kid spoke a language that our head boys and girls spat in the 80’s and I can’t get over the notion that they talk the same way. This ostensibly means that they teach the same way which now in the light of new evidence purports that there is no growth whatsoever. Scary thingy!
For those of you who are keeping the count, thirdly, this guy told me a couple of times that he was busy. How the hell can you b ‘Busy’ in school? While answering my questions so correct, that I couldn’t help but lament the death of innocence. You might argue that a 12th standard kid won’t be innocent anyway but you get the drift. Suddenly my mind raced back some 20 years and I could see myself in a school auditorium and addressing a packed hall on a damp Saturday afternoon. ‘My name is Gautam Chintamani and I will talk for the topic…science a boon or bane? Ever since the beginning of time science has been a double edged sword and every boon is shadowed by evil it accompanies...yada yada yada’. As this dude spoke all I could hear was the science boon or bane speech coming.
My problem is not with the kind of person he has turned out; life will give him ample opportunities to retune his alignment. The problem is when school ‘Presidents’ are given so much of attention and have people eating out of their hands, they tend to lose the big picture. They start taking things for granted. I remember my school captain was the kind of guy that every college would have loved to have, he was the kind of guy every teacher wanted for a son. He was in the science stream and the only time we met he acted shocked. He wasn’t pissed off that I had opted for commerce without Mathematics. I would have been OK with that. Why? For one I loved the reaction people had when they learnt what yours truly was doing in school.
No. He was shocked as to how could a school allow such a wired combo! He told me that he’d do I.I.T., and then he would attend M.I.T. Well a few months ago that idiot was still out of IIT and very far from MIT. A year later I learnt that he had joined the NDA and now I think he was with some BPO. I don’ mean disrespect for NDA and BPO’s here but this guy was so cocksure of things because everyone listened to him and look what it did to him. There was this other girile in my class. She was just a year old in the school and yet she was made some Prefect or something. I was short-listed but my own classmates didn’t know me so you can imagine why I never got ‘drafted’. Now this girlie was so right that noting could go wrong around her. She was like magic. Things got politically corrected as she walked along the class. She was so happy that she had ‘responsibility’ that after studying for ages she is now doing the country proud by servicing foreign business clients. In other and not so irregular words, she is riding the BPO/ Call Center wave.
Maybe this is really evolution.
Maybe the kids today are way smarter than what you and I were.
Or is it that after a life of intelligence I can now spot aliens amongst us?
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