The Expectation Barometer

Old age quote: "Money is the root of all miseries..."
New Age quote: "Expectations are the root of all miseries..."

Right from the time we are born, we are subjected to this hideous pressure... A typical conversation over a new born baby....

Dad: "Hey... Look at his nose, Look at his nose... Just like mine"
Mom: "But his eyes are just like my dads..."
Dad: "He has a wide forehead... I am sure he will turn out to be brainy... " and in a low note adds "... like me.."
Mom: " cho cutey... cutey... cutey.... cho chweety chweety chweety..."

The poor baby is dazed... What if my nose turns out to be something different?? What if the wide forehead is a sign of premature baldness and not of intelligence?? What if I am not brainy and end up being just another software engineer?? What if mom keeps saying chweety chweety in front of my nursery home buddies?? Aahhh... its so much easier to be a grown up...

Then the kid starts growing up... He is sitting in the math class dizzied by the sheer volume of integers and numbers (both real and imaginary... wondering which lunatic came up with these concepts)... He quietly scribbles a line or two of poetry looking at the beautiful scenery through the window... And all of a sudden the math teacher has swooped onto his desk... He is brandishing a cane and picks up the book with panacea as the kid is dumbstruck!!

Teacher: (looking at the book) "The rays of sun touch me... I feel warm... I open my eyes... The sun is such a charm.. "
"The laddie wants to be a poet!! If you cant do your math, you cant eat your pudding... 3 spanks now laddie..."

Spank... Spank... Spank

And then Roger Waters starts playing his enchanted guitar... And all the kids start singing in unison.. "We don't need no education... We don't need no false control... No dark sarcasm in the classromms...... Hey, TEACHER!! leave us kids alone..." (If only real life was so easy)



The kids still growing... He reaches the portals of an engineering college (He chose this stream because he thought he can chill out yet land up with a good job working in an AC office with a fat paycheck. Poor paapa thinks "beta hamaara bada naam karega..."). He is forced to sit in class partly because of the HOD and partly because the girl he has a crush on attends class regularly... As and when the semesters and internals fly by the marks are going down hill not to mention the knowledge gained... But one "golden" lining seems to be the fact the girl has become close to him... He asks her out and Lo!! there they are sitting in a cafe looking at each other while a sip on a cup of coffee...

Girl smiling sheepishly: "I never though you would turn out to be so sweet... I mean, not many guys are like you... Last time when I went to the summer camp, one mean guy called me fat......................."

All the while the thought keeps buzzing in his head... " Hey... How do I tell her that i am not as sweet as she thinks she is... I am just a hypocritical love crazy purvert... How?? How?? Wait a minute... Why should I even tell her that...."

and then ends up saying: "Who says you are fat... You are just pleasantly plump... "

Then life goes... The kid is now a man... He is now working as a kansaltant, giving solicited worthless advice by telling clients the obvious facts in a flowery, data intensive manner... All that the kid is a virtuoso at making power point presentations and using jargon centric language... (He also occasionally writes few lines of poetry in the final slides of presentations that wins lot od nice and wows from the client)... And the protagonist is married now, the the same girl... We'll after all she found out the real "him" but "What the hell!! All men are so.." ... Surprisingly inspite of his busy schedules and night outs they are having their first kid... The father is damn excited.... Rushes into the OT , looks at the baby...

and says... "Hey, he has my nose...."

Life indeed goes a full circle, The Expectation barometer just gets passed from one generation to the other...

Respect