JOTTINGS OF AN IDLE MIND

“For last year's words belong to last year’s language

And next year’s words await another voice”-T.S.Eliot

In a few hours, we will be bidding goodbye to one year and welcoming another. It is that time of the year when we all like to look back, review the days gone by , make ‘resolutions’ for a new beginning and look forward to something better. But honestly, will there be much of a change?

 I feel I will be spending another evening before the idiot box surfing through the channels…but I doubt whether Mr Arnab Goswami or Ms Barkha Dutt will give us much peace or food for thought. There was a time when I remember spending a quiet 31^st evening watching the world events being covered in a programme called the “The Year That Was” and later following up with a New Year’s Eve special telecast.  But those days are gone. Peace has been completely erased from our drawing rooms ever since Ms Dutt and Mr Goswami have taken over our lives. I simply marvel their infinite knowledge – from Medicine to Literature, Law to Economics, Politics to Poetry, Environment to Entertainment, Terrorism to Gay Rights, IPC to Psephology, Computers to Climate Change, Free Basics to Human Rights. There is no end to how much they know, how much or how loudly they can talk, hear only what they wish to hear, not take into cognizance what they don’t wish to. They are like Gods sitting in judgement. They can never be wrong. In channels like the BBC you find each person covering a particular area of news, a specialized field that they cover. Here they are omniscient. Their favourite panelists are equally erudite and omnipresent- they make sure that they are shown in every channel on a particular day. Once I heard the great Ms Shobha De making a statement in one channel and then doing a complete u-turn in another in the span of an hour. Do they take us to be complete idiots sitting in front of the idiot box?

So I will surf again and probably end up watching reality shows in which little girls and boys are made to shed tears in front of the entire country for making a small mistake in a particular note or for missing a beat or step. We are, however, very careful to see that children are not graded in their exams, their marks must not be declared, their merit must not be proclaimed. The reason- children might be psychologically bruised. But what happens, I wonder, to young children who participate in reality shows, pressurized by their parents and mentors to perform well, and are rejected for not being good enough. They are shown crying on national television.  I wonder who takes care of their scars. When we were kids, no one spared us- not even the Oxford-Cambridge educated relatives, with their ultra sensitized minds. I remember their favourite question was how much did you get in English and Math? I still remember blurting out the marks for the umpteenth time in front of a huge crowd at a wedding or even at a restaurant while enjoying one of those rare ‘eating out’ moments. School education cannot be graded but talent, which is more subjective, can be. Good to see that people are more sensitive to children’s issues nowadays but why so selectively?

Then I surf again and, may be, end up watching serials….even if you watch one, after a gap of two weeks, the story would not have moved by a millimetre. The scene would still be the same. While Pakistani serials, which follow a storyline, get over in 25-30 episodes, our ‘mega’ serials continue to go beyond 25000 episodes. My only appeal to the makers of these serials is please have mercy on us…please spare us those monster mothers-in-law, those scheming sisters-in-law, those utterly moronic heroes and the super-bleached, white-washed heroines who have to look fair, even if the story is that of a dark girl struggling to stand on her own feet without succumbing to the  pressures of social stigma or dowry, on all occasions. I am sure the world over great writers, litterateurs and playwrights must have left behind some good short stories, novels or plays. Can't they be adapted to make better serials?

Sometimes, I feel our culture and our languages have been reduced to the three ‘A’s- Awesome, Amazing and Anyways. If you just know these three words in English you can make your way through today’s society like Shaw’s Eliza Doolittle. You ask a youngster in any city in India any question the reaction is always ‘amazing’. Their answer to almost anything is always ‘awesome’. If you follow a conversation (you cannot avoid it since all around you, be it the bus, the train, the road, the restaurant, or what I call the modern Temple of Athena, The Mall, people are perennially talking on their cell phones) you will hear at least 25 Awesomes, 50 Amazings, and finally almost all conversation will end with ‘Anyways let’s meet up some day’.

And if it is a young Non-resident Indian you are talking to, there is only one response you will be able to elicit. Whatever you ask, the answer is always ‘Good’. Perhaps they think we are incapable of grasping more than that. So I guess it is best to bid such a person ‘Goodbye’!

On the subject of vocabulary, I was once asked by a senior relative, who had spent some years in Great Britain, what I was wearing. In standard II, with my limited vocabulary and completely in awe of ‘phoren’ returned relatives, I had replied that it was a checked skirt in cotswool. The gentleman had pronounced that my knowledge of English was indeed very poor, and was told to remember that it was called a plaid skirt. Later, I was advised to converse and interact more often with my peers in English. I nodded, wondering whom did he mean by my peers? You see, unlike today’s kids, we did not have the smartphones.

Smartphones remind me of an interesting conversation I was witness to in the elevator the other day. A young mother, armed with her smartphone, was asking her five -year old boy, what he had written on MJ. The boy, whom not too long ago I had seen crawling in the foyer and learning to take his first unsteady steps, had recently been admitted to an ‘International’ school. In response to his mother’s query the boy gave the most indifferent look. He made it clear that he had no clue to what she was talking about. The mother started lecturing him on how he should not resort to rote learning but he should have, at least, remembered what his teacher had made him write on MJ. All the time the smart mother was checking her smartphone and asking him if he had written that MJ was the King of Pop and that he owned a house called Neverland. Smart education is indeed going a long way –all the way to break-dance!!! Then the smart mother drove away in a smart car with her ‘not so smart kiddo’ sitting next to her in the front seat but even as she pressed her feet on the clutch and accelerator, her smart phone remained glued to her ears!!

I know my article reeks of intolerance, impatience and cynicism so, like everybody else on New Year’s eve, I, too, must make some resolutions to reform myself. Till then wish you all an awesome New Year party, an amazing 2016 and, anyways, the New Year always holds the promise of a better tomorrow.

“What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning”-T.S. Eliot

DS