Late "lessons"?

Some days at work are “revelation” times for me. I work with people who are almost 10 years younger than I am and get an insight into their minds from a very close perspective. Sometimes their thought process endears itself to me, sometimes I am shocked and at other times I just can’t help but wonder.

The women at my work place eat together, generally. And hence, lunch times sometimes turn into “girl talk” times, if you know what I mean. And just the other day we suddenly turned our attention to the guys at work, wondering aloud how they were hardly any guys who we really wanted to get to know better. The general consensus was that such guys were few and far in between, when one of us suddenly said, “Oh there are a couple of nice ones at office.” That was enough ammunition for the others to pounce on her. So, she had a crush on someone? And who was it? She refused to reveal the name. And as is wont, we started reeling out the names of all the possible “available”, “good” guys at work. During this process of “elimination” when we came to a particular group of boys she suddenly said, “Chee, they are all younger to me.” So, I asked, how does that matter? And she replied, “But how can you have a crush on someone younger?”

This was far beyond me. Yet, I tried to see her point of view and asked her why. She did not seem to have, what to me should have been, a “logical reason” to say so. She just believed it was not the done thing – you just could not be attracted to someone younger. Mind you, here we were not really talking of being infatuated with someone about 10-15 years younger than you are. She is all of three and twenty; and the guys were probably a couple of months younger to her, maybe just about a year. Not quite deterred by what she said I gave her examples – Demi Moore and closer home Sachin Tendulkar; even closer I told her that hubby was considerably younger than I was. She just looked at me as though I was a weirdo from another planet.

Further talk with her and others in the age group revealed more to me. A few wanted to get married this year; the few married ones told them they should consider finding their own husbands. And the answer I heard often – “Oh, it is so difficult to find someone of your own caste to fall in love with.”

Now, I know I am dumb. I just fail to understand this. I always thought love was about two individuals – liking and respecting one another for who they are, sharing a relationship that went beyond any societal constraints and obligations. Caste, religion and age – what do these have to do with love and attraction? It is beyond me now; and it just didn’t cross my mind when I was in my twenties either. A few “important” lessons that I never learnt while I was growing up; they surely seem to be taking me by surprise now.