East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet - Rudyard Kipling
As if trying to prove the famous lines of Kipling wrong, we have been trying our best to emulate the West. Beginning with our daily dressing up – i.e. ‘grooming’ in modern vocabulary and coming down to our foot habits, music, movies, reading .. each of the activities in our daily life seem to have been influenced by the west. Today a chart topping music number in hindi or regional language sounds the same as their English counterparts. So much so, no problem .. we seemed to have adapted well, in lines with Darwin’s famous theory of evolution.
The problem lies with the mannerisms or codes of conduct of the Englishmen, whose colonial whips though we had digested for 200 years but now find it difficult to digest these potions and moving steps towards modernizing ourselves further. The open display of emotions in public like hugging, kissing are still a taboo in our society and though we try hard to prove how progressive we are, incidents of the likes of Dumdum metro where a couple was harassed and allegedly assaulted for hugging in open shows we are miles away from attaining that milestone.
As the ever-protesting youth have taken to the streets with banners and rounded-up the hapless metro authorities who complain nonchalantly (?) of the absence of CC TV camera in the stretch of the metro run where the incident occurred; one question remains. With marriage rates having fallen appreciably, divorces growing in leaps and bounds; the progressive youth have started going in for short-time live-in relationships instead; has the meaning of love, compassion, understanding, companionship and commitment too changed?
Like the make-up or grooming without which no public presence can be sought of; be it a corporate job, public-speaking, even launching music, books; where everybody has to become fashion models for a while .. to display oneself; do our relationships also need display before others to prove their efficiency? Like the innumerable posts in social media sporting the best of all jobs, best flats, best cars, best relationships .. such open display of emotions in public stems up from that urge to excel above all ..
If everybody is such hell-bent on proving that they are the happiest persons on earth there is little left for our political bosses to do, other than squandering our hard-earned money and feigning socio-economic parity .. Coming back to the topic if we know we have a good relationship, why not enrich our lives with it; rather than display such behavior, gestures which hurt others’ sentiments and which could’ve been kept at wraps? But I know such thoughts would land me into that old tug-of-war going through ages…And I know the war will go on; as of now between us and our children, then between their children and ours and so on and so forth… it would continue forever .. Best wishes to our continual progressiveness ..
Ending on Kipling’s note again.
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth! 😍
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