All my delusions of youth were shattered when I took my cousin shopping last time I went home. We went to this really classy place (according to my cousin) and I was busy shopping. However, after a while, I noticed that my cousin was hardly interested in anything and was just standing around, staring at the ceiling. I asked him what was wrong.
‘Nothing here really interests me’, he said. ‘Oh-kay’, came my skeptical reply. I wondered why. This place had some of the best garments collection in the city. So I asked, ‘then where do you want to go?’. ‘Oh, there is this place I like..’.
Half an hour later, we were standing outside this box-like room that called itself a garments store. My cousin went in and I skeptically followed him. Together with the boy at the counter, we filled up 3/4th of the entire “showroom”.
The moment I stepped inside, I was blinded by the dazzling lights, only to realize that it was the sunlight being reflected from the clothes there. There was metal everywhere. Every single piece of clothing had metal on it. Rather, there was metal in all shapes and sizes, with strips of clothing hanging from it.
He took a jeans with a few (thankfully) cloth straps and only 2 metal buckles on it. He showed it to me. Trying to appear supportive, I made a long ‘hmmm’ and suggested he try it out. His face eager, he made his way to the “trials” room and soon came out. I was, somehow, reminded of Joey pretending to be 19. Keeping a straight face, I nodded and said it looked okay. I was very careful in choosing my words. It was a tricky path to walk.
As expected, his choices became more and more unpalatable, until I had to put the brakes on a pant that looked like the love child of Denim and a chainsaw. A very wicked chainsaw. Deciding that I have had enough, I told him I would wait outside.
As I watched from outside, many “youngsters” came and went, all dressed in flashy clothes and heavy metal. I liked heavy metal but not in this way. A melancholic thought descended on me at that moment. Have I grown old? Has time and fads moved on, leaving me behind, a relic of the past? Is the desire to wear clothes made from cloth, that doesn’t have holes in it, old-fashioned now? I always used to pride myself at being part of the “youth of the nation”. Suddenly, I felt so old.