CHEAP THRILL & GREAT PERIL: Short essay

CHEAP THRILL & GREAT PERIL

Great peril. This is more relevant not only to school children, but to college students and the adolescent, as well. To cite some instances, foot-board traveling in buses and trains. To them, no matter how crowded a bus or a train is, there always room for one!

Even buses and trains packed like sardines never deter them from jumping on to it. Even if there is room inside, these boys would hang on at the entrance, unmindful of the danger involved.

Why do they behave so? It is a cheap thrill to them. Some usually do so. Their idea is to attract the attention of the watching eyes. At times, to showcase their so-called guts and adventure to the girls!

Statistic shows that the foot-board travellers, mostly young boys, invariably, met with accidents, while some are run over, others losing their limbs.

One day a teenager, dressed nicely, wearing costly watch, gold bracelet and gold chain, was standing at the entrance of the local train. He invited his death as his head banged against a signal post en route. The next moment his grip on the stanchion slackened, he fell down!

Someone pulled the alarm chain and stopped the train. Later this youth, bleeding profusely from the head and was unconscious, picked up by some and laid inside the vendor bogie. At the next station he was laid at one corner of the platform and the train proceeded.

Meanwhile, what happened was that, when the stretcher-bearer took him to the govt, hospital and his parents were alerted, the doctors in the hospital declared him “brought dead!” Meanwhile, someone had stolen his wallet, watch, gold bracelet and chain!

Which black sheep had stolen them from the youth’s corpse, no body knew. His cheap thrill ended in great peril. More than anything else, he had lost his dear life. What a pity!

A great saying says, “Youth is an illness cured only by the passing years!” Douglas Mac Arthur, former American General had said, “Youth is not entirely a time of life: it is a state of mind.”