Of shocking, unhygienic and unhealthy habits
| Date :29-Sep-2019 |
By Vijay Phanshikar :
“Though I see all that every day, I am not in a position to get over it. A young fellow in our neighbourhood does not take bath for days on end. He does not bother about washing his clothes as well, or polish his shoes, or clean his mobike, or shave, or even trim his hair for months. He smells from a distance. He looks awful, but is not bothered. I tried to talk to his father about this, but the man just shrugged his shoulders, looked dismayed, and walked away. What kind of habits have many of our youngsters developed? However, I am fortunate to have at home a youngster who has clean and healthy habits. Despite this, I am not able to go past that fellow in our neighbourhood”. - THE sadness in the caller’s voice could not be missed. He wanted to help that fellow in his neighbourhood, and therefore approached his father, only to no avail. Yet, the caller, perhaps a man in his fifties, felt concerned.
“I know many, many young people -- boys and girls -- with such dirty habits”, he said as he hung up the phone. On quite a few occasions, such experiences about dirty, unhygienic habits of youngsters have come to be commented upon in ‘Loud Thinking’. During my countless interactions with young people all the time, I realise that some of them are a wonderful lot, while many, many others among them, somehow, develop habits that can no longer list them on ‘good’ categories.
This certainly is saddening, which I can affirm from my own experience, and also from the calls and messages I receive from many people throughout the week. At least, I do not have an effective answer to this malady -- of unhygienic and bad habits of our youngsters. That many, many of them do not maintain good standards of personal hygiene is one side of the story. The other side is that many, many of them get addicted to wrong things such as alcohol, other drugs, tobacco, and totally wrong and absurd sexual behaviour. At least, I do not know how to face this menace, and how to help those young people out of bad habits and addictions. That makes me inwardly very sad, very bad. For, no evidence is available to prove that people with such habits get happiness anytime.
They may get some good job, some money, and only a hint of success. But such people are never likely to get happiness -- which is the goal of all human activity. But what can we do to help them out of this grossly undesirable way of life? That is where I fall silent, having failed to find an effective solution. For, as my experience tells me, no amount of talking soft -- or tough -- with them helps. Those youngsters -- boys and girls -- are just not bothered. They reject counselling. They reject good word. They reject soft advice. They reject you if you wish to talk to them some sense.
Of course, we must blame ourselves for all this muck -- we, the larger society. For, aren’t we the people who allowed in our midst lots and lots of undue, unworthy temptations to lure the weak-minded among us into wrong direction? Aren’t we the people who did not sense trouble in our homes when our kids slipped from the right path for the first time? Aren’t we the people who allowed the monster of television in our homes? Aren’t we the people who did not mind handing over mobile phones to our kids who did not know how to differentiate between what to see and hear and what to avoid? Perhaps, in the answers to these questions we may find an effective response to the challenge of saving many a youngster from straying into wrong direction.