Crossing over to the other side

Stoned, Shamed, Depressed

by Jyotsna Mohan Bhargava.

Harper Collins.

Pages 269.

Rs 399

Priyanka Singh

‘All my friends have a phone, why can’t I have one?’ is an agonising plea, of the several that would follow, parents dread. Withholding it makes a parent instantly unfriendly, unreasonable, while capitulating to the demand will not be free of regret for handing the key to doors you’d wish they’d not walk through.

Parenting in these reckless times is as deeply frustrating as it is challenging. The value system lies turned on its head, imploded as it were. Restraint is a rusty relic. The easily bored ‘Insta’ generation is careening on thin ice, flirting with instant gratification to push boundaries that are disabling social skills and creating dysfunctional social beings.

At every turn is a dark temptation for a generation in a ‘frightening hurry to expose itself body and soul’.

With things madly spinning out of control, parents — themselves under the grip of all things media — are battling on multiple fronts: cyberspace, drugs on school campus, alcohol abuse, voyeurism, rave parties, circulation of nude photos, promiscuity, behavioural issues.

Sometimes victims, often times perpetrators, children, too, have more coming at them than they can deal with: self-esteem issues, peer pressure, burden of unreal expectations, competition, ‘sextortion’, cyberbullying, body-shaming, fitting in, even depression. They are sizing, and being constantly sized up for what they are, what they possess, how they look, in a world of near-perfect projections.

A future is a maybe, a contingent. All must happen ‘now’. Everything, every act is to impress the sea of audience out there — already half the battle lost. The warm comfort, the exquisite intimacy of smaller circles is long vapourised. The world is vast and exciting. In a rush to be adults, but without the accompanying responsibility, they can’t wait to trapeze ahead.

‘Smells like teen spirit’ was a chartbuster anthem for dispassionate Gen X kids. That was in the ’90s, when the world was still on the cusp of digital revolution. Apathy has since assumed eerie dimensions.

A sum of Rs 20-30 for a kick is too cheap a temptation to let go. Schools in the national capital are on the radar of drug cartels. Among the users are mid-schoolers, some as young as 12, who use drugs as ‘experience enhancers’, and also to ‘make studies bearable’. Abuse of ‘smart drugs’ like Alprax that help concentrate, and Mephedrone is common. Since it has no smell, it goes undetected, with the high lasting from 45 minutes to some hours.

It may well be the story of every city of India. Parents and schools can’t but be on maximum alert. The disturbing trend is at the door.

Intensively researched, ‘Stoned…’ is a handbook for parents and children, alike, with both playing a lone hand. It serves as a source book for the fermenting times, when cyber is the anonymous world teens wish to inhabit; where it is tough to be a parent, tougher to be a teenager. There is a delicate line between blooming and being blown over. Both must recognise the truth to find their way out, together.