Remembering the Past Image

Around twenty years ago, the West was *the* place to be. Everybody loved following western culture. Everybody loved adding the unfamiliar western twang and slang to whatever they spoke. And most importantly, everybody loved being remembered as a “Westernized” person.

The culture of my country, India, is perhaps one of the oldest known in the history. The amount of scriptures, prayers, gods, languages, dialects, traditions and beliefs that India has can’t be matched by any other country.

And for a lot of time, we wholly took pride in our culture, until the advent of Westernization. And since then, our people have begun to abandon our cultures to adopt the westernized ways of living. Joint families were replaced by nuclear families. The respect of elders has slowly started decreasing. People have become shallow and have started caring too much about their social image and status.

And this is where we went wrong. The West never taught us all this! Sure, these things more frequently do happen there, but we conveniently ignored the efforts the Westerners take to keep their families together, the amount of time they spend with each other, how they follow their cultures such as Thanksgiving dinners and celebrating their festivals with gusto. We never picked up their love for sports or their sportsmanship and their drive to be a prospering country in every field possible.

The ironic thing is that the West is curious to learn about Indian cultures and traditions. People travel thousands of miles to come to India and be amazed and refreshed by the meditative, enigmatic atmosphere that is found in every city of India. The foreigners know more about our culture more than we know it ourselves!

Why have we given up on our culture? Is it because a sarod is not as funky as an electrical guitar? Is it because most Bollywood films are Hollywood copies and hence, we see everybody as a wannabe? Or is it simply because it is easier for us to act like we’re cool and amazing than to follow the rules of living a good life?

I’m not saying that the changes have been entirely bad. A lot has changed in this country for which we must thank the foreigners because, without these changes, we wouldn’t have been able to cope with the New World. But I think while we’re busy adopting an awesome way to live life, we must pay attention to not leave behind our intuition, our cultures, our rich heritage and most importantly, we must remember a past image of our true selves. Because only when we know where we come from, do we know where we can go.

Finding Oneself

I love watching TV shows. From Chuck to Criminal Minds, from Seinfeld to How I Met You Mother or from Touch to Grey’s Anatomy, I watch everything. Without watching Coupling and The Wonder Years, I never switch off the TV.

It’s fun to see the awkward situations people get themselves into in sitcoms. It is interesting to see unusual cases being solved in those crime shows. And thriller shows just make everyday boring life slightly appealing.

But do these shows really entertain us? Or do they make us realize everything that we can’t do in our normal lives and help us live our dreams through them? Is watching these shows making us miss out on the special moments we could have experienced in our lives?

I recently got my TV connection. Before that, the last time I had watched programs on my own TV was almost four years ago. Yes, I didn’t have a TV connection for almost four years. My dad had had it disconnected so that I could study with one less distraction.

Of course I hated him for doing that. I mean, it’s a supply of entertainment, a source of time-pass, a means to do mindless activity after hours of mumbo-jumbo studying. All my friends would discuss the latest episode of Castle, while I didn’t know what the heck they were talking about (no, I didn’t watch it online because I couldn’t – I had a connection that had a speed of 112.5 KBPS).

I used to play the piano in class four, but I got bored of it by class five so I discontinued playing. But during these years of no TV, I played the piano to relax. I also started reading books, too. And, most importantly, I learnt to play the guitar on my own (I hate taking music lessons. It doesn’t make sense to go to learn music twice a week – you don’t learn anything worthwhile in an hour packed away among heaps of others in the class).

Today, when I have college admission interviews, I feel like I have more to present to the Board than what I would have if I watched TV all those years. Those four years made me discover so much about me that I feel more confident as a person and when I talk to people, I think I make a good speaker. In fact, if I wouldn’t have had all that time, I wouldn’t have gotten interested in writing either!

These days, I watch TV because only creativity inspires creativity. It freshens me up and changes my mood from the study (read: war) zone it is in to the person who composes music and loves writing. I’m not saying that my dad was right in disconnecting the TV because there surely are more ways to discover the real person that we are. But, I think I don’t have any regrets or anger because I’m happy to have found myself.

Identity Issues?

Earlier this evening, I saw a guy with brightly-coloured streaked hair walk by my dad and me in the mall. As in India, streaked hair is still an uncommon sight, it caught our attention.

“Look at his hair,” my dad said. “What need is there to colour one’s hair? It’s understandable if you colour it when you grow old – although, I still haven’t done it because for me, looks don’t matter. One should age gracefully.” I nodded along to show that I was paying attention to what he was saying.

“But these young people,” he started off in his previous (and most favourite) vein. “Everybody wants to look cool, everybody wants to look different. Why these people have so much identity crisis, I don’t understand.”

I immediately rooted for the poor teenager who’d walked past us not five minutes ago and didn’t even know that somebody was ill-talking about his choice of hair colour. “These days, people are very artistic and they take a stand for things. They denote their difference in opinions—”

“Being artistic is fine. But attracting unnecessary attention is not. If you do good work, people are going to recognize you. You don’t need to look like a parrot or walk in slim-fitting clothes. You…”

I tuned out of the conversation since I knew how it would go on. Instead, I began to wonder. Is today’s generation really just a show-off? Do we really care so much about shallow things like our looks and the number of relationships we have?

Being a musician myself, I sometimes wish to colour my hair, because I think it goes with the image of the band and all that. But is that the real reason behind my wanting to colour my hair or not? I mean, am I subconsciously looking for ways to attract attention to myself? Despite of how I think I’m so mature, am I, in fact, a very shallow person?

I don’t have any answers.