Twittering Generation

For a guy pushing the wrong side of forties, I am reasonably techno-savvy. The most valuable testimony comes from my son Chathu. Once I was advising him on his choice of jumper (yeah, sweaters are called jumpers in Australia) with a hoodie; which I thought made him look like a drug dealer in New York streets. He said all his friends wear hoodies. They are the in thing, the new look. What do you know about fashion? About teenage styles? Agreed; you are good in gadgets; technology… But you know nothing about us. He went on. Yeah, the compliment slipped through and escaped from his lips in the middle of all that generational angst.

But I can’t figure out facebook and twitter. Do we need short sentences with dodgy acronyms to indicate what we are thinking while in toilet? Nothing like reading a nicely coined turn of phrase, a cleverly constructed sentence that delicately underlines the ironies of life… So blogs are OK- as long as they are not too self centred. I joined facebook based on an invitation from a friend. After joining I realized that an automatic invitation went from me to so many old forgotten acquaintances with whom I have infrequently kept up a correspondence. I had them crawling out of the woodworks and saying Hi nice to find you on face book. I am in California. Watch me on the vineyard round with my daughter. Someone from Japan writes, good to know you exist. It is raining in Kyoto. Yeah, it is a bit trivial.

The interminable wait for the postman, the anxiety and expectations that accompany it, have all vanished with emails and SMSes. Now my mobile flashes a silver light when emails arrive. Being a light sleeper and Australia being 5 hours ahead of India, most of my mails arrive at midnight. I am distracted by the flashing light. But I still get up, read the mail & go back to sleep. Some of the mails are forwards that I have seen before. Some very interesting ones, nevertheless. Chathu has an itouch and I discover the joys of touch-screen browsing these days. We also have a cheap, secure Wi Fi network at home to which two laptops, one VOiP phone, one PS3, one PSP, three mobiles and the iTouch are connected. It is a networked home, I bet.

We love technology for connecting us across mountains and seas in an instant. We love technology for making things easier by cutting, pasting, scheduling and reminding us of things to do. We love technology for putting us in touch with long lost friends who send funny forwards. We love it for the cozy comfort with which we send money and book holidays. But I guess technology has also extracted its’ toll by trivializing many aspects of our existence. For making us believe that the whole world might be interested in knowing who we chill out with, how the weather is out there and whether we believe Man U will win the next league outing. Technology tells us to communicate without thinking…and turns our youth into asocial creatures, cooped up before silly machines, playing mind numbing games which challenge pretty much nothing of our modest cerebral assets. Sometimes I wish, give me a few good books and no connectivity. I might spend months in our lonely house in the village which looks so empty without my mother. Maybe I will feel rejuvenated. I will start waiting for the postman to bring good tidings from old friends.

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I read P J O’Rourke on the constitution of the US of A in twitter speak. It is hilarious. Here is the link.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000%5C000%5C016%5C721mjcvw.asp

Also discovered this author Christopher Mathew who has written the Crisp Report and Family Matters. Much in the style of Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole Diaries- of which I am a huge fan.

Also been reading Tariq Ali's Clash of Fundamentalisms and Duel-Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power. A bit repetitive but gives a different, new perspective. Also read Rashid Ahmed's book on Taliban. These works tend to be too pessimistic on Pakistan.
A friend suggests that I should read the Martin Beck series by Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall, a team of Swedish writers. They are not in the library and are expensive to buy. If anyone finds them in Darya Ganj second hand market, please buy: Promise I shall reimburse..

Missing something

Sorry about this long interlude. It is so cold out here. The temperature often dips to the minus zero ranges. These are days when one wants to curl up and read. Imagination freezes and one long for the sunshine and warmth of home country. Reports of fallen girders, monsoon failure, power cuts and water shortages fail to douse my enthusiasm for home.

I have been requested by a dear friend to write about MJ. My musical tastes have always followed a two- generation lag. I listened to most of my music in the eighties. We were not so clued in on Bee Gees & K C & the Sunshine Band. Instead, the music of Beatles, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd & Simon & Garfunkel which belonged to an earlier generation filled our lives. When Michael Jackson broke into the scene, we thought he appealed to callow youth whose musical tastes weren’t as refined as ours was (sounds pretty arrogant, I know). Don’t blame us if we found white socks, shiny pants, wavy hair and moonwalk a bit crude. Over the years, I consistently made serious efforts to plug myself in on to contemporary music. Savage Garden, Green Day, Metallica and Linkin Park are all bands I discovered along the way. But Michael Jackson passed me by without making an impact. Billie Jean was probably the only song which got my attention. But he inspired a whole generation as the obituaries would reveal. Maybe I missed something there.

But then one shouldn’t sneer at musical phases spanning generations. When four boys from Liverpool with funny haircuts started singing silly love songs, many sneered at them. Today, when I look back I really don’t think they were great, musically, I mean. But then songs like Norwegian Wood were anthems of our youth- although our youth happened much after Beatles ended their music. Contemporary music in the eighties reached the shores of India pretty late. In the nineties, the lag almost disappeared. My son listens to the latest that releases in the west.

Simon & Garfunkel are touring Australia. Tickets are priced too high. Sounds familiar. A couple of old men who sang for the young and passionate working-class during their heydays are squeezing out the last ounce of moolah from their musical careers. The music that inspired a whole generation is being flogged for all it is worth. And the working class boys in tattered jeans who grew up listening to them are now in suits and don’t think twice about paying a few hundred dollars for a peek at their icons. I consider the “Boxer” as one of the greatest songs of all times. I must have seen their DVD of the reunion concert in Central Park a hundred times. But no way am I paying a hundred plus dollars from my pitiful allowances to see them live. I could claim to my grandchildren that I saw them with my own eyes. But my grandchildren wouldn’t know who they were anyway…

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I am constantly accosted with questions on India’s defence prowess and the growing economic might. There are dedicated Indophiles in Australia. I evade these questions for one simple reason. For the large majority of us, becoming a super power doesn’t mean much. We’d rather see hunger and poverty eliminated from our land, our streets freed of crime, our rivers banks not stripped of sands, our forests pristine and green, our atmosphere filled with clean air to breathe, affordable power available round the clock, drinking water and education provided to all, and our youth gainfully employed. If economic might is a precondition for achieving all that, so be it. We certainly wouldn’t want a few tycoons and MBAs wallowing in wealth while the large majority tries to eke out a miserable existence.

And India’s defence prowess, did someone say? It is a bit too complex. Not a subject I would like to write about in a blog. While we have many fine Officers in the Armed Forces and several fine technocrats in our Military Industrial complex, these guys are often caught in the nitty gritty of troublesome daily existence. Higher defence management and superpower pretensions are left to those in the seminar circuits and media talk shops. I advise them to catch hold of someone in the leisure class to talk about these high fangled things.