My 6-year-old son and I were sitting in a quiet corner under an A/C vent in a supermarket, while my wife went around shopping. We had found two small stools and were talking about something that fascinates me — how packaging plays a major role in selling products. I was pointing at different biscuit packets, explaining how colors, fonts, and design make people choose one brand over another.
That’s when I noticed an elderly man — maybe in his 60s — walking toward us, pushing his shopping cart. He was dressed in a white dhoti like a temple priest, with a sandalwood mark on his forehead — the kind often worn by the Hare Krishna followers.
He had apparently been observing us from a distance. As he came closer, he looked at my son and said in Tamil,
“So, you’re having a good time with your grandfather?”
I didn’t bother to correct him. My son looked at me with a confused face.
The man switched to English and asked, “You don’t know Tamil?”
Another blank look from my son.
The old man shook his head and said, “Very bad, very bad,” and walked away, completely satisfied with his unsolicited moral duty for the day.
My son was still staring at me, trying to process why this dickhead had just called his father his grandfather.
I smiled and asked, “Did you realise what just happened?”
He said, “No.”
“Some idiotic stranger walked up to you, intruded into your space, judged you, and walked away as if nothing happened,” I said.
He nodded, still a bit puzzled.
Then I asked, “You know why I didn’t interfere?”
He said, “No.”
“Because in life, you’ll meet thousands of idiots like him. They’ll enter your life without invitation, say something stupid, make you feel bad, and walk out as if they did nothing wrong. You have to be sharp enough to roast them back immediately.”
He said, “Fine,” and went back to looking at the biscuit packets — as if the lesson had been absorbed and filed somewhere in his growing mind.