Rajiv Karran
This happened to me on a flight from Hongkong to LA in 2003. I was sitting in the economy class section of the flight next to a scrawny, timid looking Vietnamese guy. The flight was a long haul flight, and after a few rounds of whiskey, the conversational mood in me took over, and I started this conversation with this Vietnamese guy, who I put around to be around 18-20 years in age. I mean this chap didn’t have any signs of hair growth on his face and his skin looked like that of a baby. Our man was not very keen on having a conversation, but I prodded him and asked him on the reasons for his visit to LA. He kind of very impishly told me that he was going there to meet his fiancee and was likely to get married pretty soon. This sounded amusing to me as this guy didn’t look a day above 20 max, and after a few rounds of whiskey, I do tend to put on my worldly wise, full of wisdom, intellectual garb. I lectured him on life, about marriage and stressed more on the dangers of marrying so young. I advised him to give the marriage idea a thorough think over and told him he’ll be better off if he got married around 30. To this guy’s credit, he did not bat an eyelid and politely listened to every word I said. After a good 30 minutes, I asked him casually like, “so, what’s your age? 19? 20?,” and that’s when I saw any signs of any reaction on his face. His face literally drained white and with his teeth tightly clenched he said, “I’m friggin 45 and how old are you?” I didn’t have the guts to tell him that I was only 32, a good 13 years younger than he was. Needless to say, I didn’t even glance towards him for the rest of the flight, leave alone talking to him. From that day onwards, I rarely talk to strangers on the flight to topics related to age and wisdom. I specifically avoid people from the Mongoloid race. It’s not a racial thing, but that incident has installed an inferiority complex in me that I can’t seem to shake off. I got truly licked at 33,000 above the ground.