My helper was in a pensive mood that day.

As was her routine, once she starts talking while she takes the mop in her hand, only when she mops the whole apartment, will she shut her mouth.

 So long as she talked something interesting, I didn’t mind her rattling away. But what happened to her today? She was so silent.

“What’s wrong with you today? You have never opened your mouth? All’s quite well and nothing to gossip about?”

She looked worried now.

“Amma, my son hasn’t come home for the past two days. Two days back, I fought with him and asked him to go out of the house. He left somewhere and hasn’t returned back…”

I could see tears in her eyes.

“But what happened? Why did you scold him?”

“He wants a motorbike...”

Motorbike? But she can’t even afford to buy a cycle! She has been complaining now and then about her inability to meet the demands of this poor teenager. He had wanted a pair of jeans, a cooling glass and then a cell phone. But then, a mother is always happy in pleasing her child. So she borrowed money here and there and managed to fulfill his wishes. He was roaming all around wearing those jeans and the cooling glass.

But now, he wanted a motorbike. It may be a normal desire of a young man, but how could she explain to him that it was beyond their reach?

He had gone to school for perhaps two or three years. Since he did not attend school properly, his name was struck off from the register. She got him a job in a mechanic shop.

 Whatever it may be, it is natural for a teenager to dream of a better life – a poverty-free life.

The screeching sound of the mop got me back to the real world.

“Doesn’t he have a cycle? Or does he walk to the shop?” I asked her.

“Yes, he has a cycle and has a cell phone also.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“He says he loves a girl in the neighborhood. His friends told him that only if he has a motor bike, the girl will notice him. ”

“Where does she live?”

“She is a rich girl, amma. Her dad is working in a bank and she is doing her plus two in a school nearby...”

“Does she love him?”

“She doesn’t even look at him.  This boy’s mind is corrupted, amma. That’s why we had a fight two days back! I told him to stop this love nonsense and go to work….but he says he will die if he doesn’t get her. I shouted at him and he left the house in anger. Now I don’t know what’s happened to him.”

Tears threatened to come out of her eyes. I felt sorry and helpless. All I could do was to listen to her ranting.

She finished her work and left.

She came back in the evening to do the household chores and started doing her work silently.

“Has your son come back?” I asked her eagerly.

She nodded quietly as if to say yes.

This was what happened.

He had left the house that night and went and stayed in his friend’s house.  Next day, he had taken a motorbike from the shop where he worked, , followed the girl and expressed his love.  She immediately complained to her dad who took action and beat the boy black and blue.

He had returned back home with face swollen and with lot of bruises and injury.

What has influenced this boy to get into such kind of infatuation? I wondered.

My helper said that ten days before, he had watched a tamil movie in which a boy working in a mechanic shop loves a school-going teenage girl and elopes with her.

She was blaming the movie for her boy’s misdeed. But all said and done, it is unfair to fully blame the movies alone for this kind of influence on teenagers.

It is sad that these people live in a society where they are not able to differentiate between the virtual and the real…