Wednesday, 10 January 2024

Beware of Inscrutable Instructors:

The task everyone takes seriously is to instruct someone else, necessary or not. Since birth, Hennu had endured the instructions from parents, relatives, and friends, each relying on their own personalised handbook. He decided to bring out a compendium, including personal experience and gathered intelligence. His lofty aim was to leave a ready reckoner to guide the hapless victims of present and future. This daunting task took him months of research and another two months to draft, redraft and finalise this work. After all, he felt that he owed this much – to give back what he had received.

Fearing a misstep in their efforts to orient the child in the right direction, parents draft and implement a list of ‘dos, “don’ts”. They cleverly insert some friendly advice about making good choices leaving out specifics which have troubled them as a child. It is a revised edition, from their respective childhood days. At that age, the child takes it in good spirit or merely endures it. Few rebellious children resent such instructions, considering them motivated and resist them by initiating counter measures.

When children reach the teenage mark, the parents encounter mild to outright rejections to instructions - even from children, who were earlier happy to go along. The parents working on the assumption that this duty is a lifelong commitment fail to notice these early warning signals. They persist with their instructions and keep waving the big red flag. Little they realise that, like an enraged bull, the children are being goaded by them to breach and trample over parental controls. 

Reaching the teenage barrier, these children come out in the open and declare independence. New recruits strengthen the existing rebellious army. Skirmishes across the parental line of control are constantly staged, leaving the parents emotionally pounded and shaken.  Only a few years from now, the possibility for a truce might emerge.

Next in-line instructors are the self-appointed relatives. They presume to have more leverage, due to an acceptance factor, with the instructed. The exchange rate for this ‘leverage’ varies depending on which relative is instructing - maternal or paternal, grandparents or uncles or aunts! Keeping this acceptance factor in mind, they open handbook of instructions and stream them in the gap between the tutorials given buy the parents. For the receiver, it is like the boring ads shown in between an equally boring movie. 

Another category of well-wisher is the dial-a-friend type instructor. Sometimes, driven to despair by the continued resistance encountered, the parents themselves seek this help. This is a parental ploy, in the guise of back-channel diplomacy. Parents still want to pass on their instructions through this backdoor. Like the camel and tent story, this invited help continues the exhortations – ‘join this course’, ‘apply for that job’, and “ask the Neighbour’s son for help”. This friendly instructor does not let go without selling an appropriate marriage proposal. How would they leave a golden chance to recite instructions from their own handbooks?

The ‘child’, even though now in twenties, does not have any shield to duck under these friendly fires from the rank and file of instructors, lobbed like grenades. These instructors leave nothing to chance or to personal choice from - study, profession, love affair, marriage, luxuries in life and even after-life.

After marriage, a new instructor gladly, along with the old set, takes over – the better half. All those harrowing experiences of parental and relatives’ instructions will be of no avail to face the barrage of instructions that assails the ‘child’, after marriage. This continues unabated even after retirement. No compendium worth the paper it is written on will contain solutions for the victim. 

The last straw on the camel’s back is loaded by sons and daughters. This set of exhaustive and exasperating instructors take complete command of everyday life of the “child” - unrelentingly and unabashedly. When they operate as a team, not even the UNSC will dare to call for a truce to save the ‘child’ from the barrage of instructions.

Hennu was not sure. Who will wear the hat and start instructing if the ‘aged child’ is in a home for the elderly!  Hennu knew very well that at the end of the day, individuals will have to work out their own strategy and best approach, of course depending on the freedom they have!

Footnote: Hennu completed this compendium in secrecy for fear of repercussions from his family members.

1 comment:

  1. A real life count, inevitable experience in every one's life dear Hennu.But the in the end the other guy will be thinking the you are behind the travesty . Honestly It's unavoidable and depends on the way one looks at it. Everyone is at the receiving end in some way or the other.only to be passed on to the other unconsciously at every stage of life.Neither Hennu nor I can escape from it. Take it easy dear and enjoy.
    Well said author and Good going

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