Yesterday night I wasn’t feeling sleepy. After restlessly tossing in bed for sometime in the hope of getting a good sleep, I finally gave up. My cell phone showed 2:30 AM. What the hell was my first reaction. After sitting still and glaring at the darkness for sometime I decided to turn on my laptop and do some time pass. For people like us the word time pass is now confined to laptop, internet, chatting, orkutting etc. I always wondered why orkutting is not yet added in the dictionary. With recession seeing mass impacts and inclusion of ‘Bangalored’ in dictionary, orkutting is next to follow. Anyways that’s a topic for separate discussion.
So I logged in to see if some friends are online, of course the only hope I had was to find friends who are outside India . Or if insomnia has a mass strike too the way swine flu had then I could find my friends in India too. Unfortunately insomnia still has to catch up. Seeing no friend online was quite a disappointment. God!!! Now what? Suddenly something caught my attention. I saw my cousin online and his View my webcam at 2:30 AM was enough of a draft to snatch away my remaining slumber. And yes I am not being melodramatic and impulsive; the only reason for this bizarre reaction was that my cousin is in class 5th which means he is only 11-12 years of age.
I buzzed him and asked what is he doing? This is how our conversation went.
Me: Hey. What’s up?
My Cousin: Hey di. What keeps you awake this 2:30 ;-)
Me: Well. I should be the one asking this question.
My Cousin: Yeah…right. Well I am chatting with my friend.
Me: Hmmmm…is it not too late for that.
My Cousin: She is in US so I have to match the time.
Me: :O how come you have a friend in US.
My Cousin: She is my online buddy.
Me: Ohh ok. So what are you talking about? And what’s with the webcam?
My Cousin: Sorry di. It’s too personal to tell.
Me: Is anyone aware that you are up so late.
My Cousin: What are you talking about? They are going to reprimand me bad if they’ll come to know. Please don’t tell them.
OMG!!! Personal!!! Was my first reaction after this conversation. When I was of his age I didn’t even know what personal implies. For me computers were only meant for learning BASIC language and paint brush. Online buddies and webcam was a far cry. And I didn’t even dare to dream about doing something without telling my parents.
I decided to do the RCA of why there is such an enormous difference in thinking pattern of youth today. RCA!!! Uff these IT jargons won’t leave me alone even in the middle of the night. Btw RCA is Root Cause analysis. I could think of many reasons like – Impact of western culture, peer influence, increased nudity and profanity in cinema etc. All these reasons don’t even need further justification or explanation. And infact parents today are well aware of all these factors and they do try to prevent their kids. But I personally feel that the main reason for this drift is that parents of today are not able to spend much time with their kids. So when it is the time to imbibe values and teach culture to their children, parents are busy earning, working, partying, socializing and traveling. They are not able to give sufficient time to their children but they do provide swarming resources to them by fulfilling all the demands. This is making matters worse.
My chain of thoughts was broken by the alarm. It was 6:30 in the morning and time to get up. I wasn’t feeling too bad about the sleepless night as I at least gave a thought to a problem which I’ll be facing soon when I’ll have kids.
Advancing is not bad. We cannot expect things to be the same as they were twenty years back. This will be indicative of stagnancy and non progress. It is a great achievement to see children of today well versed with technologies like computers, internet, media, cellular phones. What is missing is the wisdom to distinguish between what is good and what is evil. If we elders can inculcate this sense in the coming generation, I see a bright future ahead of us.
Sunlight
6 years ago
The solution to the problem is not stopping them from doing things. Its more in making them wise enough to understand what is wrong and what is wrong! Let them decide what they want in their life!
ReplyDeleteAnyway Chill Maadi; Your kids wouldn't face this problem :)
Live with ur parents and kids together... when u r busy with job atleast they can teach ur kids those things which they taught u!!
ReplyDeleteThat's Serious! Another point in the case is that there are things that we've done that our parents (or may be elders) had never thought of. This is what's often cliched as generation gap. I can see some striking differences in my and my younger bro's gen. And it's just a difference of 4 years.
ReplyDeleteSo things like these are bound to happen. I agree with both Raj and Rishi on this. The best is to give a lot of counselling to your young ones as and when you get time.
Realizing a problem is first step towards solving it. Going Great!
Hey, i have something different to say here. We are heading towards western culture and that is also a culture unlike ours. You cant simply say its bad, its disastrous. Things like these are common to western culture. The point here is that when we all are heading towards the western culture much more willingly then how can we force our childern to be traditional. Childerns are juz followers of adults. Mostly the imitate there elder's. So as said by Raj, let them decide the good and bad things for themseleves as we do for us.
ReplyDeleteHey just happened to bump on your blog while browsing, my initial reaction is that you have great writing skills. am really impressed with this blog where u actually bring about the changes that are bringing about in our NextGen. Actually while this may be true, that our NextGen is attracted towards a different set of values and culture and show more affinity towards the Western culture. However me as an optimist, would like to believe that this is a passing phase. The confidence brews from the fact that despite so many invasions (the most a culture has faced) and about 100 yrs of Ghaznis'n'Ghoris rule, 800+ years of Mughal rule, 200 years of English rule, the Indian culture has flourished without a grimace and in fact in this flat connected world, even the West public are in fact are realizing that the elements of Indian culture - be it Yoga, Ayurveda, Indian Arts and even the Indian film industry - are the better than their counterparts. So chill out, the Indian tradition and culture is here to stay and prosper. However I would make a point that there would be a few things that we would pick up from other cultures and rightly so. Our Nextgen would very quickly understand what is right and what is wrong because of the strong values that we have imbibed. Another point of contention, we as budding youth, did we not pick up new technologies, new values apart from what our parents and elders taught us, and the fact that we are concerned about the survival of Indian ethos and culture, tells you that the legacy would continue.
ReplyDelete