These days, I have started developing a feeling that I am
stuck in some kind of a time warp. Let me elucidate. Time warp can be thought
of as the idea of a change in the measurement of time, in which people and
events from one part of history are imagined as existing in another part. In
simple words, time warp could also mean that I am rather old-fashioned in my
behaviour or opinion. I can see that this feeling is nothing unique or new. Each
and every generation in the past, present and future (including mine naturally),
must have acquired it or shall be possessed by it sometime or other. If that is
so, it should have been natural to assume that our generation’s time has come
and it is just our turn to grumble, whine and complain about young people, how
they behave, dress, work and do things? Things, we think as incorrect or as most
inappropriate. If being in a time warp is such a natural feeling that comes to
every generation, sometime or other, shouldn’t we (that includes me) , though
grudgingly, accept it and keep feeling grumpy and disgruntled all the time? Why
then do I get this feeling of being stuck?
The plain reason for this kind of ‘locked up’ feeling suffusing
my mind is my gut perception that the changes happening around me are not necessarily
unwelcome and given a second chance, I would rather whole heartedly welcome and
enjoy them. Or speaking frankly, I rather envy the young generation of today
for having and enjoying all the good things that people of my generation only
thought in dreams. Let me make an effort
to list down a few things at which I have this feeling of resentful
longing. But, before I do not, I should
also list a few customary things we enjoyed in our youth, but no longer can
hope to indulge in them. The first and foremost is the clean, fresh air that we
breathed and how things including water were unpolluted and fresh. However my list of good things cannot be
stretched much further.
I am a product of the socialistic India of the Nehru era,
when that happy feeling of being freed from the yoke of British Empire was all
pervading. In a nationalistic fervour, our elders decided that we should be
educated in our mother tongue and need not acquire any knowledge of English,
with the unbelievable result that I learned my ABCD, while in 8th
standard. The other day, I watched my granddaughter (age 9) speaking on mobile
phone, with a total stranger. Her confidence and expression was so amazing. I
remembered that I could not even speak on a telephone (landline) till I was
fourteen or fifteen. Speaking confidently in English, I could do, only much
later.
But, that was just the beginning. Slowly for us, all windows
opening out to outside world closed.
Leave aside foreign travels and goodies; even books published outside of
India, became so expensive that very few could afford them. The only link that
kept us informed about the world outside India were the Hollywood flicks with
their peculiar way of projecting family and society values.
When I graduated, it was the time of Indigenization and
saving foreign exchange. Nobody thought of free trade and things like that.
India was always short of foreign exchange and it always beats me, how suddenly,
after the decade of nineties, the same country could collect a stockpile of
more than 300 Billions of US Dollars. As Engineers, we were supposed to find
local substitutes for everything, with the result that we produced things that
were too expensive, shoddy and did not perform as expected. Obviously, after
imports opened up, no one would touch them with a bamboo pole even. Our indigenous small industries died their
logical and natural death around time, when a new millennium began.
Anyway, let us leave things of the past and come back to
present. Other day, I travelled on the expressway between my home town Pune and
Mumbai in a plush car. On the road I saw a plethora of car brands, which, in my
youth, I had seen only in photographs in glossy magazines. Obviously, these
magazines were subscribed by a rare few. No common person could afford
them. With all those BMW’s, VW’s and
Audi’s zooming past me, I remembered my old rackety fiat and our ultimate
luxury product, the Ambassador. I
reached Mumbai in two and half hours flat in air conditioned comfort, a far cry
from those six or seven hours in sweltering heat and dust. Yes! I do envy the
young generation for their swanky cars and expressways, something, that we had
seen, in our youth, only in Hollywood films. The same can be said about two wheelers. I
remembered my old 150 CC ‘Lambretta’ and how it broke down often embarrassing
me on the road. The list is almost endless. I remember the old vinyl record
player now being replaced by ipods and so called old box cameras with black and
white films (colour films were too expensive then) replaced by digital cameras.
The blue coloured inland letters that we wrote to communicate with friends and
relatives, slowly getting replaced, first by SMS and then by ‘Whatsapp’.
But, it’s not the materialist things enjoyed by today’s young
people that I envy much. When I managed
to get admission to an engineering college, my options were civil, mechanical,
electrical engineering or electronics. Civil engineers worked on construction
projects, mechanical engineers worked on shop floors with dirty, oily hands.
Electrical engineers took up jobs with state electricity boards and finally
ones, who chose electronics worked either with all India radio or overseas
communications centres, again Government departments. Those, who could not get
admission to engineering or medical colleges, faced even bleaker prospects.
Commerce graduates became clerks and remaining graduates became lowly paid
school teachers or at the most lecturers in colleges. Compare this with the
wide spectrum of fields that are available today. My granddaughter even with a
very high score chose the arts course. She told me that today arts graduates
have wider choices available for future careers than their counterparts
choosing science.
When I landed upon my first job, everyone advised me to
stick to it, throughout my working life. That was the norm then. Today,
I see people changing jobs as if they are changing clothes. This is possible
just because jobs are available in plenty. A person, who is a miserable failure
in academics, unable to get any further than tenth or twelfth standard
schooling, can easily get a job paying reasonable salary in a call centre or
data entry job and do extremely well
later.
Perhaps the most envious aspect of the life of today’s young
generation is the freedom they have. Young couples decide to remain childless
on purpose. In earlier times this was just impossible. People can give lots of
time to their hobbies like trekking. They also have their individual spaces
even in martial life with no interference from the partner at all. Today’s
young generation can freely travel to any country of the world
Perhaps my readers would now realise that today’s young
generation have the best of opportunities and every possibility to lead a great
life. The older generation can only sit quietly and watch. Neither their bodies
nor capabilities fit enough to cope with exacting requirements of today’s
world. My case is not any different. During
decades of seventies and eighties, of last century, I did have a few golden opportunities
to visit foreign lands. I remember myself wandering along the avenues lined
with shops with big window show-cases. I would often look at the goodies like
cameras and television displayed there. All I could do was window-shopping as I
had no foreign money because Government would never sanction it and secondly
even if I had managed to buy a thing, it would be subject to a huge customs
duty, while entering in India. As a bystander
in a time warp, I have exactly same feelings, as I watch the young generation
enjoying their life. Only thing that I can do is to envy them.
18th November 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment