18 till I die...

I do not know why ‘18’ is considered to be the most significant digit everywhere may it be the US or the UK or the Asian continent. It is considered to be the edge of everything that converts a kid into an adult. This limit specifies that he goes to jail instead of the child correction facility. Suddenly his all wrong doings are regarded as sins. He looses a lot on good qualities such as innocence and truthfulness. He migrates from cuteness to corruptness. Now he does not look he stares and he does not follow but stalks you. I was 18 once and that did not change my saneness then. I was 19 once too but even that didn’t make me change my realizations about the political empire and its rulers then. Now, four years after the magical figure is crossed I still consider myself uneducated or rather inexperienced when I look at the girl next door. She has just mastered the teenager phase of her life. Still she is much more mature and simplified (by simplified I mean she has thought upon and solved most of the catastrophe). My brain is unable to swallow the thought that if somebody commits a shoplifting act on his 18^th birthday is he entitled to a different punishment that he/she would have got the day before. How fair is that? Or this means he should have had shoplifted a day before his birthday so as to just take a flying visit to the child correction facility.
The reference of the Delhi MMS case here brings me to another point. How old is old enough to be an adult? Here the word fast holds its meaning in the truest sense. Students have so much exposure nowadays that they are 18 before they are 18. They watch everything that there is to watch/learn on their personal computers or televisions sets. Cool is defined by the way one dresses or the attitude he/she carries. Driving a four wheeler before you are 18 is not a crime unless you are caught. But you cannot have your own car before 18. Nobody gets a driving license before they are 18. It does not matter even if you can drive when you are 16. Many minors who get caught in a ‘not for them’ cinema halls can teach the man double their age present there about the difference between HIV and AIDS. And we still count the magic figure.
It’s like specifying a territory boundary, it actually isn’t there nor does it really exist but has to be marked so as to differentiate. No matter what age we specify as a golden age to be considered an adult it’ll always be just a boundary… nothing more!

PS:: All that has been penned here is just a controversial squib and I am not urging anyone to think on this topic because nothing will change, not us, not them not even (y)ours lovingly the Indian constitution. This article just provides a little material for reading just like any matrimonial or classified ads in every newspaper.