SunCorp

You got a fast car,
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we can make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere.

  Tracy Chapman’s lyrics came unnervingly to mind while reading about the tragic way in which Adnan Patrawala’s life ended—on a Saturday night in a fast car flanked by young boys claiming to be his friends but who strangled him for money.
    The murder of Adnan, too young to drive and much too young to die, at the hand of killers his age and from a similarly affluent background, has thrown up a number of searching questions about the lifestyle of youngsters in big cities—on speed with no limits for those who have the money to go the distance. Despite police efforts, Mumbai’s promenades are like race tracks for teenagers who tear past in cars pulsing with music after a night of shooting vodka at an expensive club.
    Adnan’s killing adds a more macabre dimension to the incidents involving youngsters on the loose, from Alistair Pareira crashing his Toyota on Carter Road to Abhishek Kasliwal being charged with rape.
    On the same spectrum, albeit at the lower end, were the gruesome Borivili murders by a gang of teenagers from broken homes, who wanted money to go buy dope and visit dance bars. Adnan’s killers too were young, rich and looking for money.

    Hopefully this is a rare aberration but psychologists and educationists caution that unbridled consumerism and lack of parental control are fuelling a dangerous trend that’s here and growing. Teens are ready to blow up Rs 250 on a tequila shot
    Parents are caught in a cleft between being parents and being ‘friends’ to their kids, between teaching values and sparing them what sociologists describe as ‘status anxiety’. “Often both parents are working round the clock at multinationals and drawing hefty salaries. They get little time with their kids and so give in to their demands for money,’’ says KC College principal Manju Nichani.
    Nichani describes the case of a student who came to college by car, but would park a little away from the gate as he was too embarrassed to be seen in just a Maruti. Lubricated as they are by confused parents, who often don’t know how much to allow and how much to deny, the disco becomes their stomping ground.
    Mumbai’s nightclubs are spilling over with students between 16 and 19 years.
    Many are regulars at up-end joints like Ra, Hard Rock Cafe, and even Prive at Colaba, which charges an incredible entry fee of Rs 10,000.
    Naturally, there’s easy access to alcohol. “At a fresher’ party for degree college students many girls got dead drunk at the disco and landed up necking random guys,’’ said an 18-year-old collegian. Teenagers think nothing of knocking back half-adozen tequila shots at Rs 250 a throw. Many spend over Rs 2,000 a month only on cigarettes. As for cell phones, a Nokia E-90, one of the most expensive models in the market, is more popular amongst collegians than it is with their parents.
    It’s not just the business class that suffers from affluenza, say teachers. Many parents from middle-class families invest in good schools, where their children meet the children of wealthy industrialists and businessmen and are influenced by the lifestyle that their peers lead.
    “Students are very conscious of their designer clothes, and know a Tommy Hilfiger from a Gucci,’’ says Navaz Batlivala, a teacher at JB Petit High School, Fort.
    In addition to blowing their parents’ cash, many youngsters also make money on the side by working for event management companies. “When an event management company hosts a party at a club or disco, they pay their agents (usually young college-goers) in excess of Rs 30 for each guest they can bring to the party,’’ said a student.

Whats happening is a taste of things to come in the future, if this trend does not stop at a point, it is going to get dangeruous and beyond control !!!!!