HARSHAL PUNIYANI AND HIS METAL PINS

I know a boy called Harshal Puniyani. He has been a student with me for the past 2 years. He is a boy that people of my generation should not like. He has a pierced lower lip and wears a metal object in that silly hole. I am told by many of his friends that there are other holes too which I do not know of and there are other metal objects there too! Why should one mutilate ones own body only to put foreign objects in it, especially when one does not belong to the fair sex where this madness is allowed, beats me completely. It is irrational, stupid, silly. That is what I think. For Harshal, the things may be the other way round. It may also be that for people of his generation, this is what signifies “cool”.

No previous generation likes the next generation. To them, the younger generation is a symbol of callousness, frivolity of attitude, unethical behavior, and disregard of rules that have become sanctified over centuries. The youth knows the attitude of their elders. So it rebels. Actually, youth must rebel. For every movement, rebellion against anything and everything being one such movement, there must be a symbol or a group of symbols. The frequency with which the foreign metal objects are getting embedded in the flesh of the males of the young generation makes me believe that this silly thing is the symbolism that the youth has chosen.

So for Harshal, these metal objects may be a way of wearing his rebellion on his sleeves (lower lip? Other places?).

Harshal also does not study much. His grades are nothing to write home about. I have a lurking suspicion in this regard too. Over the two years I have gradually come to a conclusion that he is actually quite intelligent and only his apathy for study keeps him from improving his grades. Or, is it that this too is his way of rebellion? Rebellion against the idiotic system of judging students’ ability by his/her capacity to mug up particular portions and vomit them in the examinations.

But for all the metals in his body, he is particularly well behaved with his elders. No rebellion here. When his friends are in need, he is the person they remember. Also, he has gone out of the way many times to help them. A perfect gentleman then.

It is the Harshals of this world that tell me not to recoil at the sight of the otherwise repugnant piercings. It is Harshal who reinforces my utter belief in the capability of younger generation to take things forward from here and take them forward well. It is he and the likes of him who tell me that symbolism of rebellion will change with generations and will be as repugnant to the older generation as the previous symbols, but that these are just symbols. They are doing just the same that I did when I was a part of the younger, rebellious generation. And I am good, am I not?