To home or not to home.

I'm home. Well, I've been here for more than half a month now. Anyway, the point is, I'm home. Am I happy? Very. But its the discrepancies between my parents and me that's a turnoff. When I'm home, my Achilles' heel is not only the heel, but the face, limbs, crotch, everything, etc. I say this!, and my dad jumps and says no!that!. Sigh.

Two years ago, we got a broadband connection. Every family has their happy moment as someone from the telephone exchange comes and fixes the router and all. Its quite similar to when a family gets a new car. I was all glad when we got the connection. Since I had developed a habit at the hostel, that of downloading about 1.5 million gigabytes of shit everyday, I didn't bother to ask what the limit was.

One day, I was downloading a movie and my dad walked in.

Dad : Wassup?
Me : Yo. (I don't say that when its my dad I'm talking to. Though, I've started sending him \m/s and all in reply to his occasional How was your exam, son?s and such.)
Dad : What're you doing?
Me : Downloading a movie.
Dad (cold stare) : :|
Me : What!
Dad : Nothing. Just make sure you don't exceed the limit.
Me : How much is the limit?
Dad : 1.5 GB.
Me : Ah. No problem, dad. Won't exceed. Relax. :)

1.5 GB a day. Its less. But , I'll manage, I thought. So I started downloading lesser number of movies everyday. It was tough to manage. But I was doing good. I was keeping the download range between 1-1.5 GB per day. And that was good.

Then. One day, while I was having dinner with parents, this happened :

Dad : You're always on the net, son.
Me : Don't worry, dad. I'm keeping the usage in check.
Dad : I'm sure you are. I know you can manage with 1.5 GB per month. But what I meant was that you don't spend enough time with us.
Me (:O :O :O :O :O :O :O :O :O :O) : :O
Dad : Hmm? Don't you think you should be spending some time with your family? Help mom, help me and all?
Me : :O :O :O :O :O
Dad : What happened?
Me (meekly) : Nothing. Excuse me. I have to go to the bathroom.

I went to the bathroom and I remember having stared at my reflection in the mirror for a whole five minutes. Didn't help though. I had suddenly gone pale. As pale as a fucking white paper. What do I do now! WHAT! I went outside and continued with my dinner. I tried my best to look normal. Later that night we had an argument as to how I don't spend enough time with my family and how I'm always glued to the comp. I let myself lose the argument. That was not even on my worry list. What I was worried about was how I was going to face dad when he got that goddamn bill in his hands. Luck didn't even give me enough time to think over it. In a week or so, the bill arrived. I guessed it by the look dad had on his face when he returned from office. He was like Grr! and I'm uber-angry! and all.

Dad : Son. Come. Lets talk.
Me : Ok.
Dad : The bill just came.
Me : Hmm.
Dad : 7000. Extra.
Me : ...
Dad : How do u explain all this?
Me : ...

And it went on. It went on for longer than LotR. He was like Lets go ask them for the history. I don't know whether that's possible or not, but I sure didn't want him to do that. Lets just say there were some sites I didn't want him to know I had visited. So, there. I was in a fix. If I would have been a 4 year old with American lower class parents, my ass would've evaporated from all the spanking.

Such shit keeps happening when I'm home.

Ooh! Another incident! When I was preparing for all the design entrances half a year ago, I had asked my dad for a D-SLR. He was like You work hard and get admission in one of those design colleges and I'll buy you the best fucking D-SLR out there. And I was like Yay!. So I worked. I worked my ass off, just for the D-SLR. And I got into one of them colleges. So, a couple of days back, I was with dad and he asks me :

Dad : So, will you be taking your digital camera to Pune?
Me (looking at mom) : Erm.
Dad : What?
Me : What about the D-SLR?
Dad : What D-SLR?
Me : Umm, the one you promised?
Dad : I had promised for one only if you got into NID.
Me : WTF! (looking at mom for help) Mom! You promised!
Mom (looking at dad) : Yes. We promised.
Dad : Ok. How much does a D-SLR cost? 5-6k, right?
Me : Erm, no. About ten times that much.
Dad : _|_ then.
Me : :| :|

After some time :

Dad : Ok. U go there and study well. Show me in the first semester that you are serious about studies and then I'll buy you the D-SLR.
Me : Why not right now!
Dad : You'll get distracted.
Me : Dad! Its design I'll be studying. Music, arts, this, that, photography, travel, all of them go together.
Dad : No. Your top priority should be studies.
Me : :|

Gah!

Home for me is a battlefront. I'm on one side. And dad's on the other. Mom is the negotiator. Home's good. But there're times when I'm forced to ponder over whether this generation gap will ever get bridged or not. Is it always like this? Is this the case everywhere? I mean, I have the best parents ever. I have awesome parents. Awesome-max. Ah. But its this thing between you and your parents, when you say you need a bike and they say they did with a cycle in their times, that's irritating. If one has a talent, why not encourage it? Does everything, EVERYTHING, have to spiral down to studies? Is academia the only thing that's important? Whatever happened to extra curricular talent? There's so much of talent in our country that we can seriously be an awesome folk. We can have our own TV reality show of India's got talent!. But its this thing about academics nation-wide that's stopping us from qualifying for the world cup or having good metal bands and all that jazz. Fine. Us people and the old folks, we give giga-stress on academics. So we crap out highly intelligent people. But what's the good in that if they don't stay here and do something? That leaves us with a lack of people good at M.A.D. and a lack of people with smarts as well. I really hope something happens. Some good shit.

EDIT 1 : How the hell did I manage to drift off to patriotism from home issues? :O

Sigh.