Kishore Singh: My son grows up

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Some years ago, when he had still not got his driving licence "" he shouldn't even have known how to drive then "" my son and a friend sneaked out of the house after midnight. On the way they'd purloined the car keys, and with the help of a driver whose palm they'd greased earlier in the day, they got him to drive them out of the gates, past the guard. Once on the highway, my son got behind the wheel and drove off to a friend's whose vigilant mum called the following morning to ask whether we knew the boys had been rollercoasting on the roads in the dead of night.

Of course, we didn't, and there was hell to pay. They were grounded, privileges withdrawn, chiefly because their first growing up act of bravado could have resulted in an accident, or worse. The car keys, though, still remained where they always had: on a peg in the kitchen "" we weren't going to start locking things up and acting paranoid. If our son was to grow up responsibly, he had to learn to overcome temptation on his own.

Not that he didn't try. Without listing too many of his misdemeanours here, suffice it to say he would sneak into the nightclub Elevate in nearby Noida (minimum entry age: 21) with gel spiking his hair to add height to a still-teen build. Did he smoke? I think not. Did he drink? Perhaps, but never at the nightclub, he swore. And some time last week, despite a good deal of peer pressure, he was able to say no, pick up his textbooks and turn his back (reluctantly, feeling like a prissy fool) on a party somewhere on the outskirts of Pune.

As everyone now knows, the rave was bust by the police, and a few short of 300 (mostly) students found themselves in the clink, being blood-tested for drugs, spending a few nights in the lock-up with little food, even less water, no mattresses, and in the company of hardened criminals.

Among those now out on bail are first-year students who the previous days and nights were with my son and his friends swotting for their final term exams. "There's a party on Saturday," my son had said when I spoke with him, "where lots of my friends are going." "Are you?" I asked him. "Naah," he said, "it'll go on till late, and I want to study." "It might be a good break for you," I coaxed him. "No, Popsie," said my son, "have you any idea how fat my course books are?"

In the event, he didn't go to the party (even though he had my sanction), but friends of his "" from the same college, the same class, even the same study group "" did. "They were there for the music," my son explained later, "they aren't into drugs "" they study with us."

That night, when they decided to dance to the music instead of pore over corporate law, they ended up paying a heavy price for their whim. Four days behind bars, manic calls from parents (most students were from outside Pune), colleges hinting at rustication, and a hearing set bang in the middle of their papers.

Many will not return to college "" they feel shamed, my son's friend explained to me. And as for the girls in their party clothes, would the police like to explain why they weren't allowed access to some clothes, so they ended up looking like the police and media version of that offensive term with which they were abused "" "concubines"?

As for my son, I'm glad his instinct kept him glued to his books that night. Maybe he did learn a lesson when he took the family car out on that illegal joyride a few years back.