The good boy wakes up at 5 am in the morning, i.e., before sunrise so as to appease the sun god in order to solicit wealth and prosperity, he has no idea why he has to do it but was asked by his mother and so he does it. The good boy simply does what he’s been told. He’s calm, quiet, introverted, reserved and quick to be subordinated. His parents are his gods; which was told to him by his parents themselves. The primary tell-tale signs of a good boy are that he never disobeys those who are in authority; he respects wealth, power and prestige. He performs tasks with no foreseeable knowledge or understanding of the aforementioned task. The good boy lives in a vicious circle. He’s been indoctrinated to believe that to be a good boy is crucial in life and in the process of being a good boy he has to surrender his ability to revolt or rebel, it’s a perfect circle, round and round it goes, preying on the good boy’s mind.
The good boy never rebels, “rebellion is for goons and thugs”, his father once remarked. There’s not a single morsel of rebellion left in his body. Efficiently brainwashed. Productively indoctrinated. Every elder is a self-professed god, and he’s a god-fearing boy, because to be a good boy you have to be a god-fearing boy. He has no self-confidence, how could he? The good boy is sent to school at the nascent age of two or sometimes even at one and a half, if the parents are desperate enough. The school is a sacrosanct institution where gods descend upon earth disguised as teachers to help you annihilate the last rebellious cell residing within your body for a lowly salary of 40 thousand per month.
The good boy studies Mathematics, English Literature, Social Science, Science and a 2nd Language of his choice, just kidding. The good boy has no choices in life. The good boy gets bullied. The good boy gets humiliated by his teachers. The good boy is afraid to ask the teacher whether he can relieve himself in the washroom or not. The good boy makes his urinary bladder suffer. The good boy was given birth so as to increase or rather cement his parent’s social prestige in the society. He has no sense of purpose or direction. He operates akin to a horse blind to his peripheral view, only a tunnel vision up ahead, for miles to come. The good boy is given a checklist at the tender age of 10; it’s an informal checklist, never formalized into a document. The checklist begins with the single point objective of scoring really well in his exams, though there are various roadblocks.
At around 13 or 14, the good boy enters what is called adolescence, at that point, his body starts secreting a lot of testosterone, which causes him to rebel intermittently and sporadically. But the parents have found a loophole, to make the good boy shut up and slave away, they throw a video game CD at his pimple-laden face, or sometimes a bicycle when the Diwali bonus arrives. The good boy subterfuges his adolescent rage and rebellion, under the carpet of his new bicycle and an obsolete 7 year old video game CD, which is not even compatible with the version of Windows on his computer. But he doesn’t complain, good boys never do. Hurtling through time and space with no one to talk to and no shoulder to cry on, the good boy grows cold and distant, full of self-hatred.
The good boy is 16 now; he just got done with his 10th Board exams and has some free time on his hands. His parents give him two choices for the path ahead; engineering and medicine. The first choice he’s ever been given. The good boy wants to be an author, he has always wanted to, ever since he was 12 he read everything he could lay his hands on, from his father’s self-help books to his mother’s vogue magazines. He once did even try to beg his parents to buy him a book for his 13th Birthday, but he was brought down to earth with a scornful look and all he got was a face that displayed thinly-veiled contempt and disgust with the following remark “story books are for children, you are 13 now”. The book in question was “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins, which was about atheism. Good boys are not supposed to read such atheistic trash. Good boys are religious. He instead got an “Arihant Mental Maths Practice Book” for his Birthday that year, with a wonderful remark from his father “this will help you more in life”.
The good boy slaves away for his engineering entrance exam, with robotic precision, he solves problems on his notebook, of calculus and 3D geometry. The good boy is productive and efficient. The good boy’s eyes are dead, no sign of life or joy. Productivity is what his parents and teachers ask him to engage in; everything else is a waste of time. He browses YouTube to find some solace, but he’s lambasted with new-age educational influencers who tell him that cracking this exam is the greatest hurdle he can possibly surmount, and that after doing so his life will be “set”. So the good boy does exactly that. The good boy studies engineering, computer science. “Other streams are for failures”, his chemistry teacher said with disdain.
The good boy is commodity brought to earth to be compared and sold. He is frequently compared to everyone from his relative’s children to his school friends. The good boy is only able to get into IIT-Patna, which was not good enough for his father, who constantly berated him for missing out on IIT Bombay and how his colleague’s son Rakesh got into IIT-Bombay and would earn 4 times more than the good boy.
The good boy cries, he cries alone, he bangs his fists against the stone-cold cemented walls of his 12 by 8 room but then he remembers the old Hindi adage “Acche Bacche Rote Nahi”. The good boy consoles himself, he has been since he was 8, when his father reprimanded him for crying and slapped him in front of his friends at school for wetting his pants. The good boy lives for others; he doesn’t know who he even is. The good boy has no self-identity; he has no self-respect. The good boy rubs his fingers along his eyelids the moment his eyes begin to well up. The good boy doesn’t even let the teardrop fall down.
The good boy completes his degree with all his might and diligence, but ends up with a 7.8 GPA which is somehow dismal in the eyes of this society . The good boy is Pathetic. The good boy has no courage. The good boy hates himself. He wears his father’s old suit, stitched for his father’s wedding reception 23 years ago for his job interviews. He earns a decent 58 thousand per month, much more than his teachers who humiliated him 8 years ago. But it’s not good enough for his father, who calls his salary “theek-thaak” with a wry foxy smirk on his face.
The good boy now has 2 years of experience as a Software Engineer working for a big MNC. But the good boy has been broken from inside. The good boy has no friends. No girl looks at the good boy. The good boy is alone. He cries himself to sleep every night wondering what life could have been if he had gotten into IIT-Bombay like Rakesh. The good boy buys a rope; he ties it into a hangman’s knot, courtesy of a YouTube tutorial. The good boy stands on his bed, fitting his head into the knot. A flashback occurs; his mind races to the time when his JEE results were 1 week away. “BREAKING NEWS”, shouts the anchor- “an 18 year old JEE aspirant commits suicide fearing failure”. The good boy’s father sees this and switches the T.V off muttering slowly “Sala maa baap ke paise barbaad karke chala gaya, darpok kayar”. The good boy stares hard at the rope’s neatly tied hangman’s knot and thinks hard, “will I still be a good boy in my father’s eyes if I kill myself?”
PS: No part of this story belongs to my own life, I am much more fortunate than the good boy. It’s what I’ve heard and seen my school and college friends go through.
Heart-touching article