Of boys and men

This post has been swirling in my head for some time now…and it’s Ashish’s baby. I’ve been wanting to pen it down, but for the thought that it might reveal too much. But it seems every son’s going through the same thoughts these days…and I don’t know if I’ll ever have them again. So this again seems to be destined as a post for posterity…something my blockhead son can go through when he makes a list of how he won’t be like his Dad.

And the list does exist. We guys probably started scrawling into them from the first time we were denied the 5 Star chocolates and the Police cars with flashing lights and sidey alarms…and we still jot down stuff when they go ballistic over the latest love marriage in the family, or the expense accounts, or the latest mark sheets. The whole list of ‘this-is-how-we-wont-act-with-our-kids’. And you may be 1 of those folks who claim your Dad is your true hero and your role model and what not….but dude…the minute he whooped your ass for something…I know what you did. It’s time to own up now. Just take comfort in the fact that, well…it’s a fact of life. A common folly.

And it’s been going on for a while, I suspect. My grand dad and my dad are polar opposites, so I’m guessing Pops too came up with a list in his time and stuck to it. And I’ve been sticking to mine so well that there were comparisons that the baton’s gone full circle….that I resemble my grand dad in not a few respects.

Then again…my younger brother has turned out pretty different from my dad. And from me. Do younger siblings have more than 1 list? I haven’t been able to gather enough intelligence on this…but would love to know. Davis does think I’m a blooming idiot…but then, so do most. Is the influence really strong enough to want to make him consciously change?

And why can I talk of this now? Cause well, it just hit me that the list is immaterial. That you do invent your own flaws, even if u think you’ve taken care of those of the previous prototype. Cause the father and son in this family finally seemed to have made their peace with each other. He (and you too, I guess) would opine that I’ve reached a long delayed adulthood. I’d rebut that he reached his too only now.

Dad isn’t the verbose, emotional type…and neither am I in real life…so there’s no chance of any overt changes in what happens between us. And given that this is probably the last vacation we spend together before the family moves to the US,…it’s happened just in time. We’d probably still be at each other’s throats at the end of these 40 days…but it’s cool in the long run. Buddy types now.

Bro too turned into a mini man somewhere in the last year when I was in the hostel…the dude's changed from a dumb cretin who did nothing to a dumb cretin who is an IT whiz and plays the guitar. He’s in between the stage where I could wrestle him, and where I can…wrestle him. Any brighter ideas abt what to do with a younger brother…do drop them in at the comments section.

I think we’d prefer going back to the stage where we would fight over first batting and over police cars with flashing lights and broken alarms. With Dad around the corner with a fresh can of whoop ass.

This adulthood business throws up wayy too many questions. How the teetotalers survive it is beyond me. And I’m in no hurry to find out.

Currently listening

Night swimming - REM