Yesterday on my walk in the evening I encountered two young teenagers who looked on the verge of a very emotionally volatile eruption. My sixth sense caught this from the corner of my eye as I passed them, and so I turned around to go back to them to ask if anything was the matter. I was taken by surprise at the adult parameters of intimacy that they established as their relationship; and the high pitch of the drama that held them captive and unaware of how bizarre it appeared to an onlooker. A fifteen year old girl and an eighteen year old boy.....both still in school and yet ravaged by dysfunctional behavior brought on from their own compulsions to accelerate their emotional experiences beyond what is comprehensible for their teenage years.
The boy displayed to me his right wrist already slashed from a previous encounter of depression with his paramour, and spoke of his girlfriends acid marks that were self inflicted as evidence of her love for him. I had sent the girl home (hopefully to her parents) who was in the process of dumping this boy, and sat on the pavement to console and hear the scared bewilderment of an incoherent young boy unburdening himself.
I knew that my intervention would perhaps only postpone their inevitable need to indulge in more dramatic scenes of rage and passion, that either or both would feel obliged to enact, as the script of their love story. I have witnessed far too many young teens who become sexually promiscuous who become worn down by the pressures of living their lives too fast.
Warriors of bleeding hearts, Indian society has no real place for these young people who are still really children at heart. They are ensnared by their own emotional curiosities to play act the Romeo & Juliet - Laila & Majnu dramas of love.....and fall off their own radars of capabilities without ever giving themselves a chance to discover how to enter into a world of adult maturity at a pace more in keeping with their ability to comprehend its complexities.
My heart felt so sad to see this weeping child with so little confidence in his future. Attempts at suicide are often known to be cries for help. Unmonitored, many children, especially those who study in schools that are not designed to give individual attention to their students, go astray not because they want to; but because children often don't know how to protect themselves from destroying the real freedom of their adolescence.
Today on my walk I avoided the street on which I sat with this young boy yesterday. I knew he would not be there today but his memory would have been there for me. I hope he is buried in his books for his twelfth board exam that he said he was preparing for. I hope that today the bleakness of yesterday is less intense. He plays the drums, or so he told me; so maybe he is jamming with his friends somewhere. I hope he knows that I am rooting for him to get on with life; and that instead of tears he needs to bring the joy of happiness back into his eyes once again.
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