Sorry "Uncle" !!!

Ouch ! It hurt ! :(

So on Friday(1st August) afternoon, I was headed to office to meet MATC and have a talk about my next project and somewhere along the way, there was this kid in some school dress asking for lift. He may have been of 8-9 years. I pulled over and got him onto my bike as his destination was on my route. A few minutes later when he got off, he expressed his gratitude saying "Thank you Uncle" :((

That hurt. I stood there for a couple of minutes pondering over what just happened. Someone just called me uncle ! Am I already that old ? For God's sake, I am just 25(ok in another 10 days I'll be 26). Uncle sounds so old !!! It sounds like an entire generation has passed by ! I am from a previous generation ! :((

I looked back at my childhood and realised that the kid was a reflection of my childhood too. When I was of his age, I would call anyone who seemed even decently old enough "uncle." My thoughts wandered to thinking about what all those ETs(executive trainees who joined NTPC right after engg and would have been of my current age) would have felt when I addressed them as "uncle"s some 15 years back. Maybe that's why some of them preferred correcting me then and asked me to call them "bhaiya"(elder brother).

Life has its own way of teaching you :)

I take this opportunity to apologise to everyone and anyone who may have been hurt in someway or another as a result of my calling them "uncle" when I was a kid and not really understood their feelings. Sorry "Uncle" :)