The grey concept of teenage is the darkness the age, the phase, brings with it. There is want – a want to be cared for, concerned too and loved back. There is a dilemma to choose. Every teenage becomes a Hamlet suffering existential crisis. We want to be on our own and at the same time want to be belong to. Want to feel special, gifted, independent, and important. There is pressure to prove ourselves on every front, academic, social and most importantly an incessant struggle going on inside, a compulsion to be a fit, a match. Fear of failure and reverberating feeling of “good for nothing” becomes a constant companion as there is competition, comparison. Neha dwells on the trial and tribulations of turbulent teenage years, in the weekly column, exclusively for Different Truths.
A birthday card with beautiful roses and prickly thorns seem more natural to me. I love grey to wear for white gets dirty too readily and black retains the Sun. Grey, the apt colour to stand with teenage, as I believe, because these are the years when we are neither white nor black, we are the grey ourselves. We are a new moon to be eclipsed with crooked eclipses of adversity and teenage is the platter which serves us the delicacies of experience. The grey teenage is the base coating on the life canvas, a beautiful blot bearing the mystery of a monk to get explored.
Pacing up with all the various changes, a teenager needs an extra of everything, be it love, care or pizza. Turned a sceptic and rebel, a probing faculty is always at work to solve all the five W’s and one H questions. It is the time when we feel anything and everything – a hurricane, tornado, tsunami; the super sensitive heart of a teenager. Faith, reason, emotion, each surges up and hauls over a teenager to turn him in a beautiful mess. Growing up is really difficult.
The grey concept of teenage is the darkness the age, the phase, brings with it. There is want – a want to be cared for, concerned too and loved back. There is a dilemma to choose. Every teenage becomes a Hamlet suffering existential crisis. We want to be on our own and at the same time want to be belong to. Want to feel special, gifted, independent, and important.
There is pressure to prove ourselves on every front, academic, social and most importantly an incessant struggle going on inside, a compulsion to be a fit, a match. Fear of failure and reverberating feeling of “good for nothing” becomes a constant companion as there is competition, comparison.
Success is white, all resplendent glow but the scenario of failure is grey, dark, a cul-de- sac at the dead end of which lies a vicious cycle of drugs, booze, betting, flings and much more to grope us in and to hold for long.
Every life has three gunas (attributes), Satva, Rajas, and Tamas. Rajas, the guna imbibing action and passion overcome Tamas, ignorance and leads a soul upward to the highest guna, Satva. The teenage like Rajas in working is the age to gain experiences to explore the latent potential we hold. There is art, music, sports to overcome that darkness, light to drive us out of that dark alley, family and friends with soft touches to soothe the pain and rashes if experienced ever and mentor to guide us to our destined deserving place.
The quest should be for the next. Teenage is soft to hold the coming adulthood firmly. It teaches us to love the self, to say “No” to evil, to harmonise all the existing differences in the self. It bestows us with a critical eye to analyse and then to accept it bravely and proudly. The 
age which is not meant for regret but to live in many folds with doses of Glucon-D whenever required and to remember it with a wide grin on lips like an idiot hopelessly in love with the self.
Believe me, dark too is beautiful, nothing to be ashamed of. It teaches us what ‘Light’ is. Mistakes are the lessons and teenage is the opportunity to know your curves and edges. Persuade your demon to befriend you.
Glorify your white, accept the black and be grey, the way we are, an imperfect soul striving for perfection, enjoying the road called the teenage.
©Neहा Kumari
Pix from Net.
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