Amongst the several breaking news items that have sporadically hit TV screens and newspaper fronts in the last 10 days, a recurring one has been the tragic death of Abhishek, a young boy who got washed under into a drain in heavy rains. Much has been said about how it is another reminder of how our big cities lack the most basic of civic amenities, like safe drainage.
In events that followed, Mr. Vivek Menon, a Lead India finalist/nominee (no clue what it was, I wasn't in the country, and I don't see any person who's changed anything in society after winning Lead India, yes, your presumption is right, I don't attach any credibility to the contest) apparently said that Abhishek’s death had failed to draw any sympathy or support from the BBMP. He called for the resignation of BBMP commissioner. He also allegedly said that a criminal case must be filed against the commissioner. I say apparently, and allegedly because I have googled for the last 10 minutes (and I am a very, very good googler) and found no direct article that states Mr. Menon said so. The only article that seems to have a reference to the same is one in the Bangalore Mirror (well, the next time I want hypothesised news, I know where to go) and this article in the New Indian Express about BBMP officials coming out with a sign of unity (really?) against the statement. That they were reacting to a statement that I find no verifiable record off is amusingly irritating for it was a waste of valuable work hours.
Let us assume for this single paragraph and the next that he did say all those alleged comments. This is a major reason why the Lead India thing never really appealed to me. It wasn't that it was piloted by what I feel is the most deceptively marketed tabloid in modern print media history. Or that it was trying to find someone with Indian roots by asking them questions in english. The very aura I got from the contest was a very elitist, groupist kind of setup where the judges apparently seemed to be 100% aware of what it takes to lead India. The fact that something that was supposedly of that much of a grass roots level idea, is now so very forgotten, and continues on the internet (accessible to 2% of India) takes away even more credibility. (Anyway, I'll stop now lamenting about reality shows and the like, getting back to what I was saying) A person of Mr. Menon's alleged intelligence (actually, I've met him, he seems to be quite intelligent, albeit disappointingly yuppie at times) should know better than to call for the resignation of the chief of an organisation that has a crisis in hand. How does a resignation solve anything?! The boy's still dead, the drains are still a mess, and you're not Prime Minister Mr. Menon.
Next I want to talk of the media's hounding the BBMP too about it. I just tuned into the normally very sweet sounding Vasanthi Hariprakash bellowing on NDTV how this whole episode wreaks of civic negligence, and wondering very loudly whether civil governing bodies in India will ever wake up to the tragedies of day to day life in India (one thing is clear: if it wasn't for civic negligence, Abhishek might have been alive today. ). Maybe the BBMP deserves every bit of flak they're getting. Over the last 5 or 6 years, the work efficiency has visibly dropped (Couldn't we have the BATF back please?! Pretty Please!!). On my street also resides the local BJP MLA, and the drains that were opened for desilting (very conveniently) coinciding with the onset of the Lok Sabha Elections still remain opened. That's how many ever days from much before April 23rd, to today, June 10th. A couple of years back, a friend of mine fell into a gushing open manhole, and survived very narrowly (He held on very tightly to the rim of the manhole, enduring heavy rain, as his then girlfriend used the might of woman-power to pull him out.). But there is an urgent need for perspective here. Why are intelligentsia joining in, in unintelligent bashing of the administration, when EVERYONE are to blame? If Mr. Menon truly had a grass roots view of India, he'd know that our drains are in that bad a shape because we keep them that way. Every plastic cover that someone oh so "cool"ly throws away on the street contributes to it's many clogs. Would our drains really need so much desilting, if people stopped the very disgusting habit of keeping a pile of construction sand right in the street, and making sure it was fully exposed in the rainy season? Why is it our divine right to divert every flowing liquid from our houses into a stream in front of our houses, when actually the drains are there only to carry water off the street. But no, instead of very efficiently harvesting the rain water from our roofs, we push it into the storm drains, and push along with it scraps and leaves from the streets, including the nice big coconut branch that just fell, and the 6 finished packs of chips that our fat obese unhealthy kids just threw away. The BBMP is elected by us, they are, in a very cliched way first among equals, supposed to be doing in an organised way what the citizens need. It is a mark of how immature we are, that they seem so clueless. Instead of citizens and the authorities standing shoulder to shoulder in the quest for progress, here, the BBMP needs to be a teacher in a nursery class (very crude language coming up) with kids crapping in their pants before they come to school, and the parents then taking the teacher to task for rashes on their kids' butts, amongst other things. Why have we become so selfish? So unwilling to take up responsibility, unwilling to face the consequences of our very horrendous actions.
The truth is that we, the people of Bangalore killed Abhishek. With every bit of plastic thrown away, we dug a watery grave for a small child. There are small children around us, and I don't see them learning not to litter, so we're probably going to see this for long.
I do not think Mr. Vivek Menon said what he supposedly did (I hope not. Hope he could clarify.). If he did, then it only unfortunately validates my very pessimistic understanding of, if things are going to change. But no reason why we shouldn't hope that they do. For the BBMP to not go on strike, to be very strict with litterers, for people to do their bit to keep the drains, amongst other things, functional. It gets very lonely, not to mention frightful to try and tell a stranger not to litter. I've been laughed at for picking up after some idiot who dropped a plastic bag into a drain, yelled at, for telling him not to. And, very cinematically, spit at for saying that he didn't belong to a city he littered. I'm not a Gandhi. A leader who could instill in the minds of millions, what he believed they should think and do. Well, not yet atleast. So until I become one, could my friends please help me out?
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
The New Generation Gap
It's been a thought of mine for quite sometime now. I'm almost certain about it though. I too am at the opposite end of a generation gap now. No longer the youngest in any of the standard demographics, I too am now guilty of being at complete odds with young people (well, younger than me) doing things I didn't imagine would happen so soon.
Back in high school, my english teacher, Mrs. Radha Murali had said when one refers to a generation the time span they're referring to is 30 years. 3 decades. If this numeric interpretation of the word "generation" is purely linguistic, then we probably are coming to a time where it has to be redefined. Now 24, (well, 25 in a few months) I've been feeling like there's a whole new generation out there that's come in just a few years after me. A louder, more talkative, a more thrifty, consumerist, set of people that seems so inclined to leaving the country for good, sometime in their mid-20's.
When the first year's joined college that year, the usual stream of events that follow the occurrence ensued. Amongst the ones who had just gotten a rung higher into the second year, most guys were sieving the herd to spot all the pretty girls, a lot of the newly "seniored" looking for which of the silent lambs they could push around for a joke or two, the oldest in college, the final years couldn't come to terms with just how naiv- I mean, young the first years looked, and the in-betweens, the third years... myself included, couldn't get over how different things had been just two years earlier.
It was around the time, maybe 6 months or so into it, that cellphone rates had fallen across the country. "Hutch" had already made an incredible impact with it's "Hi" ads, and become incredibly popular thanks to a son of a bitch. Compact, cheap, durable cellphones were a norm rather than exceptions. And for some reason, almost as if responsive to the overdose of electronics in campuses, cash registers everywhere were ringing with splurging teens visiting multiplexes to clubs to the newly popular malls. ("They're soon going to be everywhere", we were told). I was almost dumbstruck. Almost, because there's almost Nothing that will make me speechless (except maybe people telling that they're getting married, and this seems to be happening with an astonishing regularity these days, but more on that in the other blog maybe)
Here's the part where I feel old. Almost no one in a college of 3600 students, had a cellphone when I just joined. In a little over two and a half years, almost none was without one. But the difference it made seemed glaring to me. We didn't walk around with a phone worth 3 or 4 thousand in our pocket, we did so with bus charge for the day, and a few extra one rupee coins for the one rupee coin booths on campus. (And, they had to be the correct kind of coins, others wouldn't work). Parents didn't hound us on the phone at half past 4 in the evening trying to get us to come home. Friends (that word really meant a lot) kept appointments, and didn't call last minute to cancel. And when we sat in class, as the lecturer or professor taught us, we daydreamed and chatted amongst ourselves like decent students. Not hide a phone and message people in weird languages (w r u, I m 4 nt 2 der da cnt b dis easy- does anyone really understand that?!)
And let me not even start on our culinary expenditures. In the second year of Pre-university college, I spent 200 rupees on treating my friends on my birthday. A couple of years later, in engineering, I spent almost the same amount. We had filter coffee. It should almost be expected how shocking and unbelievable it was, that somehow, another two years from then, people were quite comfortable with spending about ten times that much (-at least, at least 10 times). Yes, salaries had gotten better over those two years, but a lot had gotten cheaper too. Computers were priced at half the rates for twice the better configurations (thereby being 4 times cheaper!). We had emailed each other, and downloaded scores of mp3's (at least 3 a day) on superfast 56Kbps dial-up internet (I used to get a pristine 4KBps download speed sometimes you know). At only around 800-1200 rupees a month (depending on how long you stayed online of course) we got to use Napster for the then not-illegal downloads, Hotmail and Yahoo were by far the most popular email options of course. We were still fascinated by how fast this new "Google" search was. Soon it transpired that spending 1000 rupees for that ridiculously low amount of data transfer was outrageous, and even more outrageous were single digit KBps download speeds. The same hotels stayed with hardly any change in the prices (Inflation was low back then.. Different governments you see.. hehe) From 5 rupees per minute (damn, that's cheap) for an outgoing call to talking for 20 minutes with the same amount, everything had suddenly gotten cheaper in a matter of months. So why were people spending so much more than ever before?!
I should clarify that I am by no means referring to a single age group of people, the changes I talk off, I see in people of all ages.
It's cliched of course to say how much easier it is to keep contact these days, what with messages, and with 3G, video conferencing. It's even more cliched to say, that as easy as it has become, it's become rarer that people actually do keep in contact. Even when random accidental meetings happen, the very environment that has made everything so much easier, seems to take over conversations. Maybe I'm being an absolute surd (irrational) about this whole issue, change is after all a good thing. In the last three weeks I have witnessed four weddings, two engagements, and two divorces. Have we perhaps changed so fast that we don't deal with it ourselves? Don't get me wrong, I had; a PC-XT (40MB Hard-disk, 256KB RAM, don't even ask me what the supposed processor speed was), above said dial-up connection, and 2 rupees in my pocket that, if spent, would be seriously frowned upon; as a teenager. So I'm glad as anyone else for all the high speed stuff we have today, along with my many favourite restaurants (expensive). But as the purist in me occasionally surfaces to Tssk Tssk at the state of affairs today, it angers me to no end to see people spend 300 rupees on crassly commercial movies in overpriced and pretentious multiplexes. Even with 200 bucks worth of flowers ordered online, endless messages exchanged over the phone and on various instant messaging modules, it pains me to see people unable to conduct full fledged conversations in person, without being intoxicated with one thing or the other.
Again, I should say, maybe this is just paranoia, a culture shock of a very weird kind. But somewhere I'd like to believe that the times haven't changed the fact that other people should be more important to us, than the amenities that help us keep in touch. I can't help but be saddened when losing a cellphone is the reason (maybe even an excuse?) someone's just completely gone out of touch with me for a year... What? There weren't friends in the world before cellphones and the internet? With such disdain shown about personal relationships, it's hardly unexpected that very few people have any sort of connection with the bigger things in life. Caring about a country's future. The fight for the environment. Humanity and kindness in the face of adversity. Why would you care for a stranger you've only just met if you stopped caring for a friend because you lost your cellphone?
Like I said, this seems to be the case with people across different ages. Is the New generation gap more to do with the availability of resources than how old we are? Hope this gap doesn't turn from being one between generations to one between humanity itself...
Back in high school, my english teacher, Mrs. Radha Murali had said when one refers to a generation the time span they're referring to is 30 years. 3 decades. If this numeric interpretation of the word "generation" is purely linguistic, then we probably are coming to a time where it has to be redefined. Now 24, (well, 25 in a few months) I've been feeling like there's a whole new generation out there that's come in just a few years after me. A louder, more talkative, a more thrifty, consumerist, set of people that seems so inclined to leaving the country for good, sometime in their mid-20's.
When the first year's joined college that year, the usual stream of events that follow the occurrence ensued. Amongst the ones who had just gotten a rung higher into the second year, most guys were sieving the herd to spot all the pretty girls, a lot of the newly "seniored" looking for which of the silent lambs they could push around for a joke or two, the oldest in college, the final years couldn't come to terms with just how naiv- I mean, young the first years looked, and the in-betweens, the third years... myself included, couldn't get over how different things had been just two years earlier.
It was around the time, maybe 6 months or so into it, that cellphone rates had fallen across the country. "Hutch" had already made an incredible impact with it's "Hi" ads, and become incredibly popular thanks to a son of a bitch. Compact, cheap, durable cellphones were a norm rather than exceptions. And for some reason, almost as if responsive to the overdose of electronics in campuses, cash registers everywhere were ringing with splurging teens visiting multiplexes to clubs to the newly popular malls. ("They're soon going to be everywhere", we were told). I was almost dumbstruck. Almost, because there's almost Nothing that will make me speechless (except maybe people telling that they're getting married, and this seems to be happening with an astonishing regularity these days, but more on that in the other blog maybe)
Here's the part where I feel old. Almost no one in a college of 3600 students, had a cellphone when I just joined. In a little over two and a half years, almost none was without one. But the difference it made seemed glaring to me. We didn't walk around with a phone worth 3 or 4 thousand in our pocket, we did so with bus charge for the day, and a few extra one rupee coins for the one rupee coin booths on campus. (And, they had to be the correct kind of coins, others wouldn't work). Parents didn't hound us on the phone at half past 4 in the evening trying to get us to come home. Friends (that word really meant a lot) kept appointments, and didn't call last minute to cancel. And when we sat in class, as the lecturer or professor taught us, we daydreamed and chatted amongst ourselves like decent students. Not hide a phone and message people in weird languages (w r u, I m 4 nt 2 der da cnt b dis easy- does anyone really understand that?!)
And let me not even start on our culinary expenditures. In the second year of Pre-university college, I spent 200 rupees on treating my friends on my birthday. A couple of years later, in engineering, I spent almost the same amount. We had filter coffee. It should almost be expected how shocking and unbelievable it was, that somehow, another two years from then, people were quite comfortable with spending about ten times that much (-at least, at least 10 times). Yes, salaries had gotten better over those two years, but a lot had gotten cheaper too. Computers were priced at half the rates for twice the better configurations (thereby being 4 times cheaper!). We had emailed each other, and downloaded scores of mp3's (at least 3 a day) on superfast 56Kbps dial-up internet (I used to get a pristine 4KBps download speed sometimes you know). At only around 800-1200 rupees a month (depending on how long you stayed online of course) we got to use Napster for the then not-illegal downloads, Hotmail and Yahoo were by far the most popular email options of course. We were still fascinated by how fast this new "Google" search was. Soon it transpired that spending 1000 rupees for that ridiculously low amount of data transfer was outrageous, and even more outrageous were single digit KBps download speeds. The same hotels stayed with hardly any change in the prices (Inflation was low back then.. Different governments you see.. hehe) From 5 rupees per minute (damn, that's cheap) for an outgoing call to talking for 20 minutes with the same amount, everything had suddenly gotten cheaper in a matter of months. So why were people spending so much more than ever before?!
I should clarify that I am by no means referring to a single age group of people, the changes I talk off, I see in people of all ages.
It's cliched of course to say how much easier it is to keep contact these days, what with messages, and with 3G, video conferencing. It's even more cliched to say, that as easy as it has become, it's become rarer that people actually do keep in contact. Even when random accidental meetings happen, the very environment that has made everything so much easier, seems to take over conversations. Maybe I'm being an absolute surd (irrational) about this whole issue, change is after all a good thing. In the last three weeks I have witnessed four weddings, two engagements, and two divorces. Have we perhaps changed so fast that we don't deal with it ourselves? Don't get me wrong, I had; a PC-XT (40MB Hard-disk, 256KB RAM, don't even ask me what the supposed processor speed was), above said dial-up connection, and 2 rupees in my pocket that, if spent, would be seriously frowned upon; as a teenager. So I'm glad as anyone else for all the high speed stuff we have today, along with my many favourite restaurants (expensive). But as the purist in me occasionally surfaces to Tssk Tssk at the state of affairs today, it angers me to no end to see people spend 300 rupees on crassly commercial movies in overpriced and pretentious multiplexes. Even with 200 bucks worth of flowers ordered online, endless messages exchanged over the phone and on various instant messaging modules, it pains me to see people unable to conduct full fledged conversations in person, without being intoxicated with one thing or the other.
Again, I should say, maybe this is just paranoia, a culture shock of a very weird kind. But somewhere I'd like to believe that the times haven't changed the fact that other people should be more important to us, than the amenities that help us keep in touch. I can't help but be saddened when losing a cellphone is the reason (maybe even an excuse?) someone's just completely gone out of touch with me for a year... What? There weren't friends in the world before cellphones and the internet? With such disdain shown about personal relationships, it's hardly unexpected that very few people have any sort of connection with the bigger things in life. Caring about a country's future. The fight for the environment. Humanity and kindness in the face of adversity. Why would you care for a stranger you've only just met if you stopped caring for a friend because you lost your cellphone?
Like I said, this seems to be the case with people across different ages. Is the New generation gap more to do with the availability of resources than how old we are? Hope this gap doesn't turn from being one between generations to one between humanity itself...
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