Being difficult, & effortlessly at that

GIVEN assorted accounts of family and friends, I was a fairly obnoxious child. Memory, needless to say, fails me on that count. As both my parents were teaching, there were several times that I was left in the care of the people employed by them. The cook, apart from his chores in the kitchen, was expected to feed me. That I’m told was an agony which should not have been inflicted on man or beast. He would tell stories of his village, he would dance, and he would sing, and he would try and teach me the simpler steps of a naati; all for the sake of a few morsels sliding down my throat. Of course, I don’t recall a moment of this torture that was inflicted by me on a daily basis. Come evening, and my father took on the feeding duty. His stories were of his own childhood, and other assorted inventive and fanciful tales that took me past supper. I recall many of those stories and if memory serves me right, I ate vegetables and dal and loved every tasteless bit — all because of the stories that went with them. Or did I?

But this, I’m sure, was nothing compared to some toddling beasts that have crossed one’s path over the ensuing years. Some have left a passing mark on one’s clothes and an indelible mark on memory. Some years back, on the Delhi-Chandigarh Shatabdi, a couple of feet of mayhem rocked the carriage for most of the three-and-a-half hours that it took the train to reach the destination. With admirable energy, the child emptied passengers’ food trays, shouted and screamed and a fairly aged couple, very politely, requested the parents to ‘look after their child’ as one of them was returning after a heart surgery. This was the moment when one did not know whether to dislike the child or the parents more.

More gravity may be given to the latter. The parents decided to go into an orbit as high and wide as a coach of the Indian Railways would allow. They outdid their child in screaming that ‘no one had any right to stop their child who would do what he wants.’ Oh dear, oh dear. While one is more than willing to grant that the parents may have had their reasons for doing what they did or that the child may have had issues that were not apparent to others, yet, a public place is a public place and the public has the right to expect what is right in a public place or for that matter, in public transport. At that moment, had honesty taken a visage, a large number of passengers (certainly, I) could have happily flung that family out at the nearest platform.

Obnoxiousness moves to a higher and far more exalted plane when it travels from childhood to adulthood. When a sense of entitlement moves seamlessly from diapers to dentures. At Shimla’s ‘Scandal Point’, there is an old shop that started long ago as a fruit seller. It has gone on to sell some select groceries and meats and has a counter for confectionery and items like pizzas and soups. Occasionally, I stop by for a bite and something to drink. It was on one of those occasions that amusement arrived, without being asked for.

A Very Important Person (VIP) and his personal security officer (PSO) entered. The VIP told the PSO something and the PSO went to the counter to pass on the message. The reply came back via the PSO. This back and forth went on for several minutes while all other activity in the shop was forced to a standstill. When the curtains came down on the show, the VIP wanted to buy cheese and could not deign to speak to the person selling it.

This may be preaching to the choir, but if leaders and supposed pillars of society are weak-kneed, and yet carry baggage that the Messers Freud and Jung would have delighted in, where does it leave the rest of us who have to buy their own cheese?