GEN NEXT: POINT -COUNTER POINT
By Manas Paul
You may not like the way they ride high power motorbikes zooming past crowded thoroughfares often without helmets- or you may get increasingly irritated at their funny spiky hair-dos. But trust me; they are not as gone-to-waste- or as dumb as you tend to believe. They are the new generation youths who take on the life with all might and spirit, which you did not dare to in your time.
In your early years you spent your days climbing trees, playing football ( not ˜soccer') in muddy fields, time and again getting engaged in fierce dog fights with your mates and when you were in good mood you rode your prized possession a Hercules by-cycle with your friend sitting on the handle bar for miles together. You came back home sweating and tired and by nine o'clock you dozed off to a world of intense sleep- your books lying scattered on floor mat or on bed. Night was by then deep dark outside.
I am sure you did not like your school books then, but I am equally confident that you read all those good ol' books- 'Thakurmar Jhuli', Sukumar Roy, Upendra Kishore Roy Choudhury or Parashuram and traveled to an imaginary world of funny weird creatures, flew with them in a dreamland for hours. You might not have been interested with geography, or the word ˜Africa' might not have evoked much excitement in you, but I know you really liked Bibhuti Bhusan's˜Chander Pahar'. You gulped down Sashdhar Datta's Mohan Series, Swapan kumar's Dipak Chatterjee or Niharranjan's Kiriti Roy- no less great than Sherlock Holmes- used to fascinate you and you thought one day you would also a become "detective'.Now after, say, 40 to 50 years you resent that the next-Gen boys and girls do not read those beautiful books. And as such they do lose their childhood, you feel.
But perhaps this is not an absolutely correct observation per se.The next-Gen boys and girls have their own childhood, as much beautiful and dreamy and playful as it was yours.When I was a child growing up in sub divisional town of Kamalpur I was convinced that there was a 'ghost' in the huge banyan tree across the river Dhalai. I believed in 'Petni'- white clad widow-ghost who moved behind our kitchen at night asking in her typical nasal tone for a piece of fish from my mother.
But to be frank, I did not believe in Santa Clause. He did never rouse any interest in me. Even at my age of eight or ten I was pretty sure Santa was a hoax. The young boys of Subdivisions are, trust me, very smart when it comes to something that is alien to his own environment. In a sense, my childhood was limited to my own world of fantasies with 'local characters' like ghost, Upendra Kishore's Tuntuni or Majantali Sarkar et al . I was happy with them, despite my travels with Gulliver or Tom Sawyer or with the sea-voyage in search of Treasure Island or to kill the killer Moby Dick, or spending years with Robinson Crusoe. Those were great, captivating, but those were not mine.
My childhood certainly has a definite and everlasting impact on me-I still do not find Harry Potter much convincing. A good reading no doubt. but not convincing. I had my own ideas of 'witches' when I was a youngster.But now look at the boys in their teens or yet-to be teen. They can accept anything that is interesting“ no matter where it is or from where it has come. Their childhood means no boundary; their fantasies play not only in their immediate environment but can reach even up to Hogwarts School.
Once I asked a small girl of eight about Harry Potter. And the girl beamed with a toothless smile. She had read all the massive Harry Potters and endlessly talked about the stories of the magic world. She was convinced..
"Uncle, can I also join the Hogwarts and become a wizard, I want to practice witchcrafts too", was her final statement.
Her cousin “again a small boy of say five years- believes Santa Clause brings gifts for him during Christmas.
"As soon as he awakens he searches for gifts everywhere.˜He becomes restless until he gets the chocolates that we keep in socks for him", his mother said.
"And when he would go to Sipahijala he would invariably ask for the Rein Deers".
Grown up and they are now in a different world- a world of global knowledge through Internet.I first saw a TV when I was in Class XII during the Asian Games. And, my first encounter with a Computer was in an Indian Airlines Office. It was amazing what the 'TV like machine' could do. By that time I was already out of college. And now ? The baby grows up with the Tom and Jerry in the Cartoon Network. And when he is in Class II or III he had already learnt about CPU, monitor and basics of computer applications. From there his journey to internet and the world of information and knowledge is smooth. Very smooth. By the time he becomes a teen the world is at his fingertip. He has already got an email Id , he talks to his friends through computers and he reads supporting articles for his examinations in internet.
You may ask : Yet, he has not read Manik Bondopadhyaya. He does not know much about Sharat Chandra or Bankim Chandra. True, there is a gap 'indeed a huge gap- in his knowledge about Bengali literature. But can we blame them? Do we have a good, modern library in Agartala that would cater to their demands? We always resent we do not produce an IAS or IFS. But where is the library that would support them in becoming an all India service officer?
Still, the new-Gen boy certainly knows a lot about 'symbolism in arts' thanks to Dan Brown and his celebrated 'Da Vinci Code'- which I did not know when I was of his age. He might not have read 'Gora'- but he had read Malgudi Days, he did not read Upendra Kishore but he did read Ruskin Bond.
The point is they are a different generation in their different world.
As I said, you do not like the way they ride their motorbikes, but tell me when you were young did you have a motorbike at all ? Yet, you had your own style with your Hercules or Humbar speeding it up and often throwing away your hand in the air balancing the cycle with legs only. The reason : Same, the spirit of youth.
You despise their spiky gelled hair, but remember how you fancied lock-curl on the forehead a la Biswajit. You feel discomfort when the young men move in the public wearing only 'three quarters'- but you also had your own tight trousers in early seventies that needed a second man to pull it out ?
The new generation is certainly smarter than that of ours. In our younger days we used to smoke- almost all, many times only to impress the girls. Nowadays, the boys seldom smoke and the girls do not like it. Those days we seldom spoke to girls -directly-even of she was our class mate. Boys were boys, girls were girls- all separate in their groups playing and talking their leisure times away. Boys were too shy to speak to girls- even if they so desperately wanted- because it would be a subject of leg pulling for friends. And whenever a girl came near you to say something 'your knees would inevitably give in. We could not make a girl our friend. But this is not the case with the neo-Gen boys and girls. They are free in their choice and conscience.
(This article was written in 2007)
By Manas Paul
You may not like the way they ride high power motorbikes zooming past crowded thoroughfares often without helmets- or you may get increasingly irritated at their funny spiky hair-dos. But trust me; they are not as gone-to-waste- or as dumb as you tend to believe. They are the new generation youths who take on the life with all might and spirit, which you did not dare to in your time.
In your early years you spent your days climbing trees, playing football ( not ˜soccer') in muddy fields, time and again getting engaged in fierce dog fights with your mates and when you were in good mood you rode your prized possession a Hercules by-cycle with your friend sitting on the handle bar for miles together. You came back home sweating and tired and by nine o'clock you dozed off to a world of intense sleep- your books lying scattered on floor mat or on bed. Night was by then deep dark outside.
I am sure you did not like your school books then, but I am equally confident that you read all those good ol' books- 'Thakurmar Jhuli', Sukumar Roy, Upendra Kishore Roy Choudhury or Parashuram and traveled to an imaginary world of funny weird creatures, flew with them in a dreamland for hours. You might not have been interested with geography, or the word ˜Africa' might not have evoked much excitement in you, but I know you really liked Bibhuti Bhusan's˜Chander Pahar'. You gulped down Sashdhar Datta's Mohan Series, Swapan kumar's Dipak Chatterjee or Niharranjan's Kiriti Roy- no less great than Sherlock Holmes- used to fascinate you and you thought one day you would also a become "detective'.Now after, say, 40 to 50 years you resent that the next-Gen boys and girls do not read those beautiful books. And as such they do lose their childhood, you feel.
But perhaps this is not an absolutely correct observation per se.The next-Gen boys and girls have their own childhood, as much beautiful and dreamy and playful as it was yours.When I was a child growing up in sub divisional town of Kamalpur I was convinced that there was a 'ghost' in the huge banyan tree across the river Dhalai. I believed in 'Petni'- white clad widow-ghost who moved behind our kitchen at night asking in her typical nasal tone for a piece of fish from my mother.
But to be frank, I did not believe in Santa Clause. He did never rouse any interest in me. Even at my age of eight or ten I was pretty sure Santa was a hoax. The young boys of Subdivisions are, trust me, very smart when it comes to something that is alien to his own environment. In a sense, my childhood was limited to my own world of fantasies with 'local characters' like ghost, Upendra Kishore's Tuntuni or Majantali Sarkar et al . I was happy with them, despite my travels with Gulliver or Tom Sawyer or with the sea-voyage in search of Treasure Island or to kill the killer Moby Dick, or spending years with Robinson Crusoe. Those were great, captivating, but those were not mine.
My childhood certainly has a definite and everlasting impact on me-I still do not find Harry Potter much convincing. A good reading no doubt. but not convincing. I had my own ideas of 'witches' when I was a youngster.But now look at the boys in their teens or yet-to be teen. They can accept anything that is interesting“ no matter where it is or from where it has come. Their childhood means no boundary; their fantasies play not only in their immediate environment but can reach even up to Hogwarts School.
Once I asked a small girl of eight about Harry Potter. And the girl beamed with a toothless smile. She had read all the massive Harry Potters and endlessly talked about the stories of the magic world. She was convinced..
"Uncle, can I also join the Hogwarts and become a wizard, I want to practice witchcrafts too", was her final statement.
Her cousin “again a small boy of say five years- believes Santa Clause brings gifts for him during Christmas.
"As soon as he awakens he searches for gifts everywhere.˜He becomes restless until he gets the chocolates that we keep in socks for him", his mother said.
"And when he would go to Sipahijala he would invariably ask for the Rein Deers".
Grown up and they are now in a different world- a world of global knowledge through Internet.I first saw a TV when I was in Class XII during the Asian Games. And, my first encounter with a Computer was in an Indian Airlines Office. It was amazing what the 'TV like machine' could do. By that time I was already out of college. And now ? The baby grows up with the Tom and Jerry in the Cartoon Network. And when he is in Class II or III he had already learnt about CPU, monitor and basics of computer applications. From there his journey to internet and the world of information and knowledge is smooth. Very smooth. By the time he becomes a teen the world is at his fingertip. He has already got an email Id , he talks to his friends through computers and he reads supporting articles for his examinations in internet.
You may ask : Yet, he has not read Manik Bondopadhyaya. He does not know much about Sharat Chandra or Bankim Chandra. True, there is a gap 'indeed a huge gap- in his knowledge about Bengali literature. But can we blame them? Do we have a good, modern library in Agartala that would cater to their demands? We always resent we do not produce an IAS or IFS. But where is the library that would support them in becoming an all India service officer?
Still, the new-Gen boy certainly knows a lot about 'symbolism in arts' thanks to Dan Brown and his celebrated 'Da Vinci Code'- which I did not know when I was of his age. He might not have read 'Gora'- but he had read Malgudi Days, he did not read Upendra Kishore but he did read Ruskin Bond.
The point is they are a different generation in their different world.
As I said, you do not like the way they ride their motorbikes, but tell me when you were young did you have a motorbike at all ? Yet, you had your own style with your Hercules or Humbar speeding it up and often throwing away your hand in the air balancing the cycle with legs only. The reason : Same, the spirit of youth.
You despise their spiky gelled hair, but remember how you fancied lock-curl on the forehead a la Biswajit. You feel discomfort when the young men move in the public wearing only 'three quarters'- but you also had your own tight trousers in early seventies that needed a second man to pull it out ?
The new generation is certainly smarter than that of ours. In our younger days we used to smoke- almost all, many times only to impress the girls. Nowadays, the boys seldom smoke and the girls do not like it. Those days we seldom spoke to girls -directly-even of she was our class mate. Boys were boys, girls were girls- all separate in their groups playing and talking their leisure times away. Boys were too shy to speak to girls- even if they so desperately wanted- because it would be a subject of leg pulling for friends. And whenever a girl came near you to say something 'your knees would inevitably give in. We could not make a girl our friend. But this is not the case with the neo-Gen boys and girls. They are free in their choice and conscience.
(This article was written in 2007)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis article is so occupying that I remain open mouthed each time I go through it.keep writing, Manasda
ReplyDelete