While reading Pradeep Magazine's wonderfully crafted "Not Just Cricket", I couldn't help but wonder if I ever decided to write a semi-memoir of our times, which events could I select. For Pradeep, and his generation, which incidentally is the slice of time shared by my parents, India matured from its teenage to adult life. To think of my country, not as what I have seen being drawn in Geography textbooks, but as fragments of diversity (more as pieces of a jigsaw), is a bit unnerving. I was born at a time when the country had just seen the last two of its Prime Ministers (one serving, one not) assassinated; but by the time I joined school, India had opened its doors to the world. Colour poured in through the television sets into our lives, via One-Day-International cricket matches, video-games and Bollywood. I grew up so blinded by colour that I detested anything black-and-white, a feature that would be reversed in two decades or so.
Pradeep experienced an India where Hindi cinema had Dilip Kumar's stoicism and Guru Dutt's ambition. He shared an India which overcame food shortage through resilience, planning, and faith. It was an India of the brutalities of the Naxalite movement; it was an India of nationalization of assets; an India of Allauddin Khan and 1971. I wonder if 60s' India could foresee that a mosque would take central stage in a secular country a couple of decades later; and that lines would someday blur between being a citizen and a refugee. I can't help but wonder whether we deserve a Dilip Kumar today singing "Apni azaadi ko hum hargiz mita sakte nahin...ek dhoka kha chuke hain, aur kha sakte nahi".
I think the crisis of my India lies both in the colour, as well as in its lack, thereof. While television sets acted as cheap psychedelics for the mass, the lessons in our textbooks still remained black-and-white (introducing us to morals and ethics). Today I find it disturbing that even though the two events took place at around the same time, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai made a much deeper and longer-lasting impression on me than the Kargil War! While this might sound very romantic and aesthetically pleasing to some ears, but for a thirty-plus me, this truly sounds disappointing. While colour indeed led to ambition for Gen-X, I would argue that this ambition was hollow; it was selfish -- with no sense of cooperation but instead attached to a chalice of competition.
What are the biggest achievements of this adult version of India that we are truly aware of? What are the new firsts? I belong to a generation of Indians who have been hypnotized into feeling a false sense of security. When a democracy is reduced to choosing the lesser evil, what does it tell us about the state it is in? I wonder if we really possess an Indian-pride! Episodes of chest-thumping and killing each other in mass riots do not lead to a pan-national sense of unity. I grew up with an Indian cricket team which was just starting to assert its presence in the world silently, until Ganguly decided to take his shirt off on The Lord's balcony. That was a moment of pride for the country; a sentiment that resonated with the entire population. Today's India and its cricket team confuse arrogance for pride, and therefore fails to command either love or respect even with so many great exploits. However, on the brighter side, people from the Scheduled Castes (SC) can today be fearless and refuse to eat food cooked by a Brahmin cook (in retaliation to a SC cook losing the job). That's the India we must not forget to be proud of.
As students in millennial India, we got an advanced education, for next to nothing, that should have cost a fortune in the so-called great universities of the world. It is frustrating then that one still has to step out of the country, prove oneself (whatever that means) capable of working in 'first-world' states, to be considered eligible to contribute in his/her own backyard! This calmly portrays a bleak reality - a lack of creative pride in Indians. We, who are brainwashed to be 'ambitious' in schools, are in reality being trained to only be second-tier workers. Indeed the focus needs to be on making leaders - not only in elite institutions, but in EACH school, college, university, and thereafter. We need to introduce crisis identification and management in the curriculum. While some problem solving skills are taught in different schools, hardly any serious thought is being given to the real problem of problem identification. Moreover, our children should be allowed to express themselves in extempore situations. We have to question the fundamentals of our education system. Rather than focusing solely on written examinations, there should be sufficient weightage on group discussions. Leaders need to be able to convey their message effectively - they must learn how to speak in public, and not just to write in private, in seclusion.
We can create future leaders, but it has to be left to their intelligence, what country they would like to build for themselves. Whether they decide to live in a country that bans books, or allows freedom of ideas to percolate should be their choice. But today, this very choice is incumbent upon us - on you, on me. While my mind refrains from banning any idea from the intellectual stand-point, I am happy to debate our choices together. If we do not engage each other into debates for securing a better future, we would be doing a dis-service to this young-adult nation of ours, that seems more interested in adultery than in maturing into a grown-up. For example, we need to exercise patience when a fellow citizen does not stand up for the National Anthem. This person is not an anti-National, rather he/she has a questioning mind - a mind that is far more beneficial for the country than one that has been drugged into submission. We should learn to live with questions lest we have to ask the same ones in the mirror; alone and helpless. We can probably add to the finite time that has been attached to us only by venturing beyond ourselves.
The India I grew up in suffered from terrorism. As citizens we do take immense pride in our Intelligence and Security agencies -- they have indeed managed to keep us safe. While we had nothing to do with Covid-19 to start with, we still took the hardest blow in the entire world. Yet, we held on, came together and helped the government vaccinate more than a billion of us. There is something eternal about our land, our ability to forgive, to accept and to move on. I do not know where our roots lie, or from when our history commences. But it feels good to know that we are one and the same - irrespective of our skin tones, castes, food habits or languages. Whatever be our past, we still ARE. The future looks to us with uncertain eyes. It is upon us whether we paint it black-and-white; or realize that every possible colour rests within the spectrum of life.
