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Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury

Doing their own thing The youngsters are most comfortable when their self-regulated wavelength matches

Clad in blue jean shorts and a black singlet, hair pegged back with a pin in a ponytail that often tingles her shoulders, 16-year-old Jyotsna screams: “I want another pair of jeans.”

The teenager’s brows furrow, fair cheeks redden, jaws twist and chin convulses as she enters into a fresh argument with her mother Shruti. “What’s the point when you already have a load of them,” disagrees the older lady. Angry Jyotsna’s lips scallop and her face threatens to crumple like a brittle sheet of paper. “Don’t I have the freedom to wear what I like? I am fed up with this interference. I want it and that’s final.”

When you are a teen and bored to death, you often have precious little to do other than giving your parents a taste of the Dante’s hell.

Karthik is an 18-year-old with a bling in his ear and his locks cascading down onto his shoulders, making his parents and grandparents look like they belong to middle ages. He struggles with his classroom lessons, tanks in some of them, goes riding on motorbikes, jumps traffic signals and enjoys himself on the dusty lanes of the city. But he has a smarty-pants way of maintaining ‘my own style’ despite protests.

Teens of this generation tend to ride roughshod over parents’ wishes and wants. They like to have the last word. They have the choices,bucks and brands.“An argument starts with anything and gets into a scream fest,” says Praveen. This is a commonplace in households that have children in their fiery teens. The oft-tried ‘let’s-give-the-kid-some-sense’ safecracking scheme turns into a blood sport of emotional flings and darts, with mostly parents licking their own wounds. “It is always her word that matters, leaving her father and me helpless,” says an exasperated mother of 15-year-old Anjali.

From dresses to lipstick, books to friends or for that matter, from whatever they want to how they get it, teens give their parents jitters. “Unless I give in, the argument festers,” says a vanquished Vignesh, who has given up on his two sons for their constant badgering. “My father would spank me if I retorted,” he recalls. “But now if I don’t give in to their demands, all hell breaks lose. We used to be all ears to our elders but these fellows act big,” he complains.

Bidding aloha to their parents’ advice, majority of them have rescheduled their priorities where web and friends fill the role played by parents.

Regardless of their shapes and sizes, teens are peculiar species unto themselves. They are too grown for a vigorous kick on the hindquarters or for a resounding slap on their backs (they don’t put up with that treatment anyway), and not grown enough to have some sense drilled into not-so-hardboiled skulls. Added to the parents’ predicament, they are already larger than life in their stillborn worldview in their heads. “Most parents are nosy parkers,” gripes 16-year-old Sujana. “I can always rely on the web to find out what is the best thing for me and the latest trends in the fashion circuit,” she says in a matter-of-fact way. In the pestering sweepstakes, teens are finding new ways to upset best laid plans of parents. “It feels chic to have your way,” gushes Himesh. Meanwhile, Jyotsna is ready to go out and she yells: “I will buy more jeans, no matter what.” Teens have the first word also.

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