Helicopter Parents

Disclaimer: This article does not aim to promote stalking and staring in any sense. Just simple plain humor. No offence to the women community, I have nothing but respect for you!

So when I willingly decided to get a Master's degree in Public Administration from Indira Gandhi National Open University (I.G.N.O.U), I had no idea I was in for a big big surprise. When I reached my test center, that premises was flooding with ladies. For a moment I could not believe that our nation was having a skewed sex ratio. I almost felt like the way a lone women would feel on a crowded platform with smelly men wavering post midnight drooling full throttle.

After losing my senses for a while, it then occurred to me that this was a M.A exam. Something where you would find more women. This is not the small-town school I went to where people were still apprehensive about sending their daughters out. This is not IIT Kharagpur where you would see a female once in a blue moon and to top that she would rather turn out to be a non-male rather than a female. Kharagpur folk would be able to empathize with the aforesaid assertion. And this was surely not the campus of some paramilitary organization. But still all this seemed like a fairy tale and I feared that I would wake up any damn second.

But soon I got to my senses and moved past them with great difficulty. It's not my fault. I have never been at a place with such gigantic sex ratio. All of them drowned in their books and oh so nervous about a IGNOU exam where questions are so easy and predictable that even Pappu would pass with flying colors. Okay, I think I took it too far, not with flying colors perhaps. Among them there was one in a pink Salwar-suit. I don't know why she was there. She deserved to be at someplace better. I mean oh so beautiful. I think the couple of guys present there were all looking at her. And just when we thought that perhaps we could go to her and make small talk, out of nowhere came this huge old man and stood just in front of her blocking everything we had at our disposal. It was her father perhaps. Oh, and when I used "we" I meant all the boy fraternity present there and I speak for all of them as I am more than sure they felt the same way. It's a boy thing, you know!

But then there were other girls as well, so we felt that we not loose our morale over just one failure. And then it was Deja vu all around that school campus. All of them came with their parents. Most of them with their fathers who looked more like a Z level security commando constantly scanning the surrounding for possible signs of staring. They were everywhere. Getting them water, getting them juices, checking their roll numbers. I mean C'mon, give us bachelors a chance!

But on a serious note, yes yes "Serious", I do not like these Helicopter parents who hover around their grown up children and follow them like guards. I simply do not like parents coming with their "adult" children to entrance exams, especially those of beautiful single girls. Okay sorry, but that is the way it is. And it is not just about our inconvenience. They crowd up the place blocking space. They increase the panic levels in their children just by being there. And then at the end they wait outside the door with so much of expectation in their eyes, that it becomes difficult to take a sigh of relief post the exam. I find it hard to believe that why would graduates need the company of their parents to such exams. Moreover, I have seen parents coming to civil service exam with a pooja thali for crying out loud. I have nothing against the love and care they have for their sons and daughters but for God's sake please let your children grow up!