When my father was about my age, his idea of hanging out, was tea and chow mein in Shyambazar. My idea of hanging out is hitting Inox with a few of my friends and getting one of them to pay for me. The same goes for most of the other people of my generation, except of course, those who are left with the bill. Anyway, the point of this is to say that the more things change, the more things say the same. Our fathers used to bunk class and go off to the local cafe, we bunk classes and go off to the local cyber cafй. Respected chairperson, judges and my dear friends, the “generation gap” as we call it, is not so much a gap as it is a parallel path. They lead to more or less the same place, a strange place called “success” but they go through slightly different places on the way. It’s said that all roads lead to Rome, what that proverb neglects to mention is that each one of those roads, start at different places and follow different routes. It is the same thing with the lives of our parents and our lives. We’re learning the same lessons as our parents, we’re making almost the same mistakes, and some all new ones. Yes, I admit the times are certainly not the same, nor are the conditions. But is it really that different? Are we really so different from our parents? Do we really not understand each other?
I don’t think so. Sure at times, what they think is totally alien to us. When my father told me that his favourite activity during the pujas was literally walking all over Calcutta seeing the various pandals, I said “You’re joking right?” My idea of a fun puja is checking out the local food stalls with my neighbours. And if I find it hard to understand him them, imagine how I feel when he says with a tinge of pride that he would regularly walk from Shyambazar to Dalhousie. I suspect he feels pretty much the same thing when I talk about Nokia’s latest mobile phone. But then again he understands perfectly when I say that Beckham’s the reason England lost Euro 2004.
Now that’s no to say that we’re not different from them. Of course we are, and some of us are proud of that. For some of us “Dare to be different” has more meaning than “Yeh dil mange more”. We swear by Nike and Hawking and Eminem. Our parents swore by Bata and Newton and Sinatra. Our grandparents swore by the local cobbler, Jagadish Chandra Bose and Bankimchandra. It’s not our fault, it’s not their fault, it’s no one’s faults. It’s just the changing times. We’re adapting the way we best can. If that means following a different path from our parents, then so be it. Darwin’s golden rule was “survival of the fittest” We’re merely trying to win in the game of the life, and maybe someday the parallel paths will meet.