We often complain about progress in a lot of things in our life as citizens, as humans. We say the government has not done much for infrastructure, for education, for poverty, blah blah blah, yap yap yap, buk buk buk. Hold on!! Have we ever thought about ourselves? How far have we progressed in our thinking?
We are still the same old British ruled creatures who keep getting imposed up on. The only difference is, now the imposition is more to do with thought process and its outcome and not as much of slavery as during British rule. We haven’t progressed even a mile in terms of maturity in thinking, in thinking ahead, in adapting ourselves to the changing time and ways of living. We still take all the shit that people around us give, just because they think something is right, are we obliged to take it as they give it to us? Let’s stop taking it!! Who do they think they are? They aren’t doing any favor by sharing their wisdom or experience. They are, simply said, just dumping their own view on us by exhibiting it as a ritual or so. It’s a plain white ‘lie’, is how I see it.
Lets take a few examples of how things have changed in decades and how different things are perceived now vis a vis how they were being perceived in the past supposedly.
Disease – It’s easier to start with a topic that at least most of them would agree with me on. If someone would have uttered the word ‘cancer’ a few decades ago or for that matter even a few years ago, it would have meant only one thing to anyone whether literate or illiterate, the word would have only related to end of life, ‘death’ (whether soon or a little later). So generation over generation, people started believing in that and lost hope. Scientists around the world have been working hard to find a cure for it and thankfully to an extent there seems to be some relief and cure for some of them who caught this deadly disease.
But today if one utters the word ‘cancer’, ‘death’ is not the first thing that comes to ones mind, its dialysis, treatment, cure, hope or life that comes to our mind. To quote an example we can look at the story of Lisa Ray, we read and understand that she fought the battle and survives today trying to lead a better life. There are thousand such stories today and the numbers are just going to increase manifold in the coming days. I guess the older generation better start believing in the future and the youngsters who are working hard to make it a better one.
Cricket - Now coming to a sport that a large proportion of the country follows. If we would have spoken about cricket say 3 decades ago, we would have nothing more to talk about than test match, bouncers, West Indies, defensive batting and so on. No mention of the terms money, cheer leaders, doosra, sixers, 20 – 20, power play, day – night games (in fact soon we are gonna have day- night test matches!). It’s clear that with time, we have come a long way. A lot of things have changed and a lot more will change with time. But if we still keep talking about how a team batted for 3 days continuously in a test match and the match ended in a draw, people would laugh at that team and of course us; it’s not the way we play cricket now. So instead of complaining about how people/money have changed the game, lets take what’s more relevant today and how to make it better with how its working better today. The veterans have no other work, they have already retired, they are obviously expected to speak highly about the past, but how does it matter? They aren’t the ones who are gonna play the game now, are they? So it doesn’t matter as much as to what they felt like while playing the game then and what they miss now.
Communication – Our grandparents would tell us, we used to write letters and it used to take 2 weeks or so for it to deliver and so on. While our parents would tell us we used to make trunk calls and at times we had to wait all day before we got the line free and so on. Now with the launch of 3G technology, we can communicate live from anywhere at any time seeing each others face and for as long as we want. If an oldie still is against such stuff because he/she dint have access to it during their times, ask them to get a life now! We have it now, are we still supposed to listen to those people who don’t even have an idea about what we are doing, why and how?! Think of a scenario where instead of these oldies grumbling about the advancement and the way youngsters use it, start trying to understand it and use it for their own good. But no! They have to impose their thoughts (wisdom), don’t they?!
Marriage – Its one of the things that we are most backward in our thinking till date about. We to an extent have progressed in our approach with a lot of other things mentioned above, but when it comes to marriage we are still old wine in old bottle stuff. We have neither changed the wine, nor the bottle (if that sounds like a saying at all). Earlier it used to be 2 families getting together into a relationship through 1 person from each family and the affair would be concerned more with the families and not the bride and the groom whose lives were at stake ultimately, but the oldies wouldn’t care less.
Now marriages are more concerned with the 2 humans whose lives are going to be affected the most and we seem to think that’s the better way to approach this institute of love and life. But can we ever get rid of caste, khap, honor killing, sati, child marriage, female girl killing and so on? We have all these problems in abundance even today across the country. Can the thought leaders of such chauvinistic attitudes ever find a rational behind their acts? Where have we progressed in these issues yet? We are still many centuries behind with our approach to these issues of immense importance to every individual life on earth. It’s all just because of the thoughts of the older generation who are so myopic, that they don’t want to see progress; they can’t bear a better life for the younger generation, because they themselves haven’t lived one, how can they see their younger generations live happily after all?
Education – To my understanding, the older generations studied only for one reason – to secure a job. There was no other meaning to them when it came to education. It did not mean progress or innovation or growth or intelligence or wisdom and so on. All it meant to them was, ‘it’s going to secure me a government job’. A good proportion of people in the country have realized how important it is for them to enroll their kids to school, instead of using them for chores or working on farm or doing some kind of bonded labor. But there is still a majority of population spread across the country which doesn’t understand and realize the importance of education and how it can make or break lives in today’s context. Children are still used on farm or as bonded labor (agreed that in certain cases it is because they can’t afford it, but it’s not the same in all the cases, I guess we needn’t worry about it now though, RTE has just arrived). This requires a radical shift in thought and attitude towards the life of our beloved. Education would certainly lead to a better life no matter where one lives, what one earns or thinks like. Need I mention about the reservation system we have in our country that the older generation has believed in firmly for the last 6 decades and more, which is literally killing the country and its younger population in some way or the other. The more we dig deep into the reservation problem the lesser it is. It is such a big mistake the government has down in decades and more so lead by a lot of old generation power houses to seek votes of people whose lives they are working to not be better off ever, so that they keep getting their votes for ever by highlighting the reservation favor.
We need a huge thought revolution (like the green revolution), which puts sense into millions of people who are fooling and billions of them who are being fooled by a lot of bigoted people. We need to adopt progressive thinking, the world is changing a lot for the better and even more for the worse, but we need to still adapt to it for the better, by not staying regressive. If we stay regressive worrying about the world getting worse, we’ll get no where, we need to understand that first.
It’s a humble appeal from a novice to all the oldies out there (across classes, castes, generations, colors, genders, regions, professions, literacy levels) – Please kindly stop imposing yourself and your thoughts on the younger generation. They don’t need your wisdom; it is no more relevant in today’s context. So kindly get with them and acquaint yourselves with the current trends and try to work together for a better life both for you and them.
Today’s Favorite Line – The older I get, the younger I want to be and the younger I am, the older I want to be. That’s life!!
Today’s Favorite Song – Man in the mirror (Michael Jackson)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment