Is it just me or as you get older, your parents start acting like unreasonable teenagers who are either always glued to their phones or busy binging episodes of Crime Petrol in the middle of the night? And then suddenly you feel like the responsible one who has to call out their screen time.
Well, if you’re a 90’s kid (now full-blown adults), I’m sure you must have felt this way at least once if not more. And if you haven’t, brace yourself because if you’re social-distancing and self- quarantining while living with your desi parents, you’re going to sense the shift in being the responsible one.
Trust me I speak from my own personal experience.
Two days into sitting in my isolated cocoon (commonly known as my room), I was enjoying working from home. While almost the entire nation is on the verge of a lockdown and we are consciously trying to minimalise our contact with people, my parents were getting ready to attend a wedding.
A WEDDING. I’m pretty sure the whole concept of crowds originated from a BIG FAT INDIAN WEDDING. Let me visually define it. Thousands of unknown people from all walks of life attend the wedding in an open or enclosed place.
Avoiding physical contact with people on weddings is impossible. Badon ke pair nahi touch karo toh offense le lete hai, close friends ko hug nahi karo toh they think you’re acting pricey and how the hell do you dodge that NRI uncle who’s visited all the seven continents?
I couldn’t believe I was the one yelling at them and begging them not to go. So, when I made the effort to talk some sense into my parents and told them to ditch the wedding because it was quite dangerous, they said:
You’re just being paranoid. Itna toh kuch bhi nahi hoga. It is just a wedding.
I swear to god, in that moment I felt like my parents and I had a weird Freaky Friday kind-of-role reversal. And suddenly I was supposed to be the adult briefing them about the dangers of this virus-struck world, while they were acting like stubborn unmanageable teenagers in the body of 50-something-year-olds.
I mean I don’t know why but most of these boomers and Gen X’s are taking this deadly pandemic so lightly. Like now, in the times of corona is when they decide to ditch their WhatsApp university and carelessly move out of their hibernation to enjoy the outside world.
It’s like all of a sudden, now that they don’t have the option to explore open or crowded spaces or accessing the gym, they feel the need to start going for morning walks. Like it’s a great initiative but why now? Why do you want to do things you’ve been told to avoid?
When everybody is supposed to be on house arrest, that’s when you decide to physically socialise with your buddies instead of catching up with your friends over the phone? I get it, WFH hai, lockdown hai but health bhi to apni hai!