Today’s Hindustan Times has this piece on the front page – Sherlock Holmes has a dandiya job – which means ‘parents hire sleuths to stalk flirty youngsters’ as they go around whirling and twirling to Phalguni Pathak’s dandiya music this Navratri.
“They want to know who their girl is with, whether she is having sex,” said Rahul Nanda, CMD of Tops Security. A mother of a sixteen year old is worried because a gynecologist friend told her about abortions rising after Navratri. Also, the report says, parents approach detective agencies – who then send detectives dressed as dandiya dancers – when children start behaving differently. Go figure that out.
Now you may naively ask, but why watch her and report if she is having sex? I mean, just what does that achieve except to keep your score card updated. Why not just talk to her – ask her questions, give her answers, advice, even warning. Elementary, my dear Watson. We are Indians, we do not talk about sex, not even to our partners, forget children. Heck, we do not even have sex. It is God’s Will that we are a nation of a billion plus people – all born as Divine Blessing.
hmm… interesting… we gotta stop thinking about a few things and really do them…
i wonder how many MMS clips would be made out of these detective agencies !!!
and i wonder what good this would do that parents !!!
On similar lines Rashmi has blogged on Youth Curry…
It’s high time parents start talking rather than shelling out money to pry on their own children! Is it wiser to find out that their child is doing something wrong and dangerous or prevent it??
sigh!! mother and I used to fight over a hundred concepts, sexuality included. both parties had to learn ad-hoc how to phrase sex related terms to get across to the other generation. father would assume the role of a learning partner, without me realizing it, with anything he wanted me to understand! if only many more parents were as friendly and sensible…
Parents snooping,sending sleuths after their kids,its a moral dilemma and will continue.Today’s supposed
wayward kids will do the same when they become parents citing there was no such moral
degradation during their teens.
That is pathetic. I agree what one will do other than follow.
It is the duty of the parents to be friends with their children, know what they want and tell what is acceptable and not acceptable.
Hiring sleuths…indeed…
I think we have a broader past-o-mania problem. Ironically, we keep telling ourselves and anybody else who wants to listen that we were glorious in the past, we were scientifically advanced, culturally superior, socially englightened and sexually creative (what with the KS and temple sculptures etc). And the greater the past grandeur, the shadier the present. It’s almost as if we will not match, let alone exceed anything we allegedly did the past.
So we have the Marina beach moral police, the Shiv sena culture police and now, teenage promiscuity detectives. As long as most of us learn about sex only during our suhaag raat, this will continue.