256 shades of gray

I seem to have made my name as a whiner. I am known to have a negative opinion of everything Indian, and I see no good in the people of the nation nor do I hold out hope for change.

Having so established my credibility, this once I feel like talking about all that is positive.

In the 70 odd independent years that my country has seen, not all that has happened has been bad. While the misplaced Indian youth still considers the amazing stadium of cricket a symbol of national integrity and fight on Confessions pages about IPL teams, the distinctions of religion, caste and languages is significantly minor in today’s youth.

Thirty years ago, an inter-caste, inter-religion or inter-lingual marriage was shunned or an aberration in the least. Today’s metropolitan generation doesn’t care a fig.

Indian popular music has evolved through an era of emancipation and very little remains unexplored. Undoubtedly, there are good and bad confluences, and the Bollywood music genre has seen a fair share of both. Yet, Indian cinema, despite having fostered stereotypes, has managed to extend an arm to every part of the nation, truly overcoming the barriers of a national language that had been unable to do so for over half a century.

Our very urban youth of the metroplex is confused, floundering through a mass of parental and societal expectations, while at the same time daring to dream of a future of his or her choice. We know the right from the wrong, although failing to resist environmental pressures at times.

We may not know the true meaning of an agnostic or an atheist but we’ll call ourselves that anyway, because we refuse to conform to the traditional barriers of religion and rituals.

We are ready to break away. We are confused and messed-up and everything good and bad in 256 different shades of gray. But we know we desire change. We have identified what is wrong, even if we haven’t yet found a way out of it. We are ready to try something new. We are non-conforming to any of the crazy isms of the world. We’ll try out everything to see what works, we are that desperate to leave a better legacy to our children than our forefathers did. We will stumble, fall and some of us will choose to forget the unhappy turmoil of haziness as we hit the big Three-Oh.

For most of us, though, we will march on. Looking for more ways to change what is wrong. Knowing some will work and most won’t. Until we find the best for the nation, the world, and our children. We are, indeed, a very fortunate generation.