Generation Gap

Wow!!! A very well known phrase used by all of us at one or the other point in life. Have we tried to get the clear idea of where does this come from?

I hail from a traditional Marwari joint family (My father has 7 siblings, all their families stayed together until I grew into an adult). I had seen 3 generations living together while I grew up. My father and grandmother had differences in almost all walks of life. Starting with say - how much freedom should be granted to his newly married wife, how much and where should his daughter be completing her education to whether its ok to let her work and have her own financial and social independence.

I had seen my father struggling to explain this to her mother about how things have changed from the her time to his. There was a time when my grandmother did understand the differences and tried to come to terms with all the changes which my father proposed. With all due respect to everyone we stayed together for quite a long period as a big happy family.

Well things did change again when me and my cousins started growing up. We started seeing the generation gap between our parents and us. Our perceptions of life changed, our friends circle changed. As we grew up we realized we think so different than our parents and at points it used to become so difficult to make them understand why there are differences and how should we deal with it.

The reason was very clear our parents and we grew up in a different social culture. Today I am staying in a different city than my parents because of my job and hence have a very different social culture than what my parents have in my native. His social culture is mostly people of his age group ,similar cultures and traditions and very probably similar fields of work.

My social culture consists of my school-college friends,collegues, networking sites etc. I have people of different age groups, different cultural backgrounds, different fields of work. I interact with a more diverse group than them. I am bound to have a more diverse perception of life than them. Now if there are some topics where our thoughts don’t match or we don’t approve of each other’s actions about some situation it is very very natural.

This is a very common problem of most of us in India. Indian society itself is going through so many changes because of the new technology, new ways of communication, and the economic and social reforms going on in every walk of life.

A possible solution I could think of us why not give little more push towards making our circles overlap? Instead of blocking them away from our day to day life updates why not include them in? We all live out of Gtalk/Orkut/Facebook/Twitter now a days. Why not include our parents there as a friend along with the endless list of friends we might have? Why not let them have a sneak peak into what goes on in our lives?

Agree there might start some fights or privacy intrusion but can we not try to talk the differences out? I just felt that if we give them a sneak peak of our social culture they probably can get an idea of where does our ideas come from when we speak. Who knows we might be able to empathize with each other a little more.(Read as “ trying to fit into each other’s shoes and feel what we go through daily” )

I know I know I am going to get lots of bashing saying that’s insane it is just going to increase the problems as they might have problems in so many things we say/do in our social networking site… But if we want to really bridge the gap we need to start somewhere. I might be wrong in my idea here but this could work also right? I thought we can give it a try atleast…. If we can genuinely bridge this gap won’t our life be more of fun.

Let us try reducing the use of this phrase rather than increasing. I am sure 20 years from now we might also face similar generation gap with our kids… Who knows this experience today might reduce that future gap which we can anticipate?

Think over it…

Have a wonderful Christmas !!!
Happy New Year!!!

All Izz Well

Very recently I heard this song from the most awaited film of the year…

“Jab situation ho out of control, hot ghuma ke bol --- All Izz well”

This was all I could remember from the song…

Conincidently this is year in my life when I faced many situations I felt everything is out of my control… There were moments I crashed badly and there were moments when I wondered over the miracles happening within me… Today at the end of the year when I look back I have all mixed feelings. I do not know which of the situations I should give more weightage to as both kinds of situations led to equivalent effects on me and shaped my thinking ability in one way or the other.

I could see lots of random moments & comments when put together form a direction where I can look towards. It feels as if this randomness was probably planned by someone somewhere for me.

Just a few examples:

• I had always feared about going abroad to settle down each time my parents looked for some prospective NRI grooms for me, this year started with the global recession where markets in west crumbled down badly making my parents rethink their decision of finding a Non Resident Indian for me J
• I so wanted to change the way I have been living for last 2 years when I was given the biggest thrash by a stranger who came in my life for a shortwhile and broke me down to pieces. When I was putting down those broken pieces back I saw some of my biggest strengths which I had forgotten about completely.That’s when I seriously started considering my long lost dreams of working towards my higher education.
• I used to get so bogged down by the small small good/bad things of daily life that I could not see beyond them. That’s when I saw a message somewhere “How does it matter 5 years from now”

The point I am trying to make is whenever I saw I am stuck up in a mind-boggling puzzle I saw a random comment made by a random person giving me ways of solving it. I had seen a movie sometime back where an American replublican is chosen by God to become world’s saviour. This guy had joined government so that he can change the world for a better place. This was the reason GOD chose him. It was amazing to see the various ways he/his family were receiving signals from GOD, about how can he achieve his goal in life.

I do not remember the name of the movie but yes that definitely gave me a signal that one should take cue of every small thing that may go unnoticed because who knows which form you get your answers!!!

I do not say I have stopped crying or stopped getting bogged down in life but yes I have seen a change in me/my surroundings. I can see that these changes are all related… I have failed whenever GOD wanted me to learn a lesson the Hard Way….. I have succeeded when I had almost crumbled down to be not able to get up again if I do not get that support..

I have learnt a lot in this year and somehow I see that people around me also have a similar general feeling about this year…. Well this movie I talked about in the beginning is coming out at the correct timing I feel… When people have gone through so much we see a new way of looking into life.. Look at it as “ All Izz Well “

One more signal J Did you realize??

Is it not amazing???? Just try this with yourself who knows u also start realizing those signals which someone is throwing at you. U might understand some intriguing concepts you have always wanted to know more about..

With that I turn down my pen to start a new weekend, to look for a new signal, to look for a new way to come out of my failure, to learn a new way I cannot succeed, to see a new light in my life

Enjoy!!! After all “All Izz Well”