Seventy-five per cent of the country is below the age o twenty five. Sunil is representative of this group-a generation that expects something better than their parents had. If they don't get it, they will be angry. And no family, no country, can withstand the anger. and no family of its young.
It is an exact and precise hell, the life of an unemployed young man in India. For eighteen years you have been brought up as a son; you have been given the best of what your father can afford. In the household, you eat first, then your father, the your mother, the your sister. If there is only so much money in the household your father will do with half cigarettes, your mother wont buy her new sari and your sister will stay home, but you will be sent to school. So when you reach the age of eighteen, you know your worshiped family's expectation behind you. You dare not turn around. You know what is expected of you; you have been witness to all petty humiliation they have suffered to get you to this place, You need to deliver. Your sister is getting married, your mother is sick, and your father will retire next year. It's up to; you carry a heavy burden of guilt from your childhood for having heedlessly taking the best of everything. So when you go out your matriculation certificate or your BA and find there are no jobs. The big companies have stopped hiring or leaving the city altogether, and the small companies with hire only relatives of the people already working, and you family is in Raigad or Bihar and has no influence here-you will look for other ways of making money.
You will look for other ways of assuring your family that their investment wasn't lost, you can take beatings, you can take rejections, but you cant face your family if you don't do your duty as the son. Go out in the morning and come back at night or go out at night come back in daytime if you have to, but take care of the family. You owe it to them, bringing; its your Dharma.
- Powertoni(77-78)
- Maximum City by Suketu mehta
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