Young and Responsible-the new cliche.

The other day we had a late night conference to attend, and we had flown into Mumbai a bit early for the event, leaving my friend and I with some time to spare. We dared the rush hour in Vile Parle to get some work done in Andheri before returning to our hotel. The 'work' was shopping! (I remember a wag saying, "what you like doing is fun, what you don’t is work")

On our way to Andheri, we hired an auto whose driver was in his fifties and had been into that line of work for a considerable length of time-we reckoned this from his laid back attitude. My friend is a junior who works with my ex-boss now.  Though we were anxious about managing to get there in time, we were delivered without any hassle to our destination.

We spent some time mixing work with pleasure (just sipped a glass of cold coffee ). On our return we hired another auto whose driver was perhaps not even in his twenties. He drove the auto as if he was on a  grand prix circuit. I commented to my my friend that the previous driver was like my ex-boss: experienced and measured in his driving, while this one was like my young colleague,  energetic and fast. Thanks to the driver's  incomplete knowledge of the major roads we overshot our hotel by about ten kilometers before we took an equally long road back, and finally reached the hotel, late by an hour in our estimate.

All the clichés about the young being inexperienced and careless came to my mind. Somehow, the conference that we attended later that night made us forget the unease we had with the young auto driver.

But the next morning that image of the young brat came to haunt me again as I saw two very young and handsome looking pilots climb up to the cockpit
from the ferrying vehicle at the airport. I wondered what would happen to all of  us passengers if these two flew the aircraft in the style of the auto driver  of the previous evening.

To my very pleasant surprise the flight was very comfortable right from takeoff to the stop after the landing. Had I not seen the pilots coming up, I would have felt as if  veterans  were flying the plane.

As I called a taxi to drive me home, the same experience repeated itself: young driver and owner or the taxi,  courteous, measured, sane driving, and a car with clean interiors.

Sometimes a cliché might as well be rewritten for the better, I thought to myself.

The young are also the future of mankind: the torch bearers. Also, the leaders of today, whom we look up to, were young themselves, sometime  back. All the young can not be irresponsible, just as  all the seniors may not be sensible, all the time!