When I was a kid we were told to respect elders. This always led me to the next question: Who’s an elder? We asked our parents in those days even sillier questions. What does God look like? Where did grandfather go in his sleep? Why do we have birthdays? Why do we eat karela when it tastes so awful? Why do girls sit down and pee? Since we were three brothers, two of them much older than me, most of my questions were about the unknown sex, till Dorothy, a freckled redhead in the girls’ school next door took me aside one hot, sultry afternoon and showed me and explained to me everything I had to know. I marvelled at her wisdom and stopped asking questions about girls. But I still wanted to know why we needed to respect elders, touch their feet, why people grow grey and then vanish one day, and who was this strange guy called God they went to visit in the skies, and why he never shaved.
The funny thing’s after so many years most of those questions remain unanswered. My father went away 31 years ago, strapped to a forlorn hospital bed. Outside, drums were beating, people were celebrating Durga puja while, inside, Ashis and I were praying that his suffering be over. Did we want him to die? No. Did we want him to live? No. He was in coma. His organs were failing, one by one. For three days I begged God to save him. When there was no answer, I begged for his death. That’s how quickly we change. That’s another question which haunts me: Why do our answers change as we grow older? Why do we never read Treasure Island once we’ve read Lolita? Have we forgotten Chaplin since Borat came? Why aren’t kisses stolen any more?
Another question that stays unanswered is: What’s a generation? A teacher once said it was 50 years in Biblical terms. But by the time I was in high school, Elvis had arrived. The world had changed; so had most definitions. I read somewhere that every 30 years, a Generational Shift occurred. This explained why my father loved Rabindrasangit, my brother listened to Nikhil Banerji, and I Jailhouse Rocked. I obviously preferred music that allowed me closer physical proximity to girls. It took me a year or two more to fully comprehend where that proximity could lead me. Yet I never quite understood the Generation Gap. I just assumed I had better taste than others.
Then one day I got married and had kids of my own. Ghastly, bawling kids who didn’t like me at all. They loved their mothers and flaunted it. If I picked them up, they cried. When their mothers picked them up, they gargled with laughter. It was clearly a hostile act. A friend muttered that kids are not genetically programmed to like their fathers. I tried to find answers. I gave them sweet, toys; I made horrible faces at them when no one looked, threatened them; begged them. But nothing changed. They still bawled at me. They still loved their mothers. I gave up, consoling myself it was genetic coding. Hate your father. He’s another generation. He doesn’t understand you. It’s Woodstock versus Britney Spears on speed. Why fight it? Who knows, I told myself, Kid Rock may be actually cooler than Jim Morrisson.
Now my kids are grown up and they tell me a generation is not 30 years. Not even 15. They can’t relate to kids 5 years younger, who listen to different music, do different things and, more important, often do the same things we do in an entirely different way. Their lifestyle’s changed. Their fashions are weird. Their language, strange. Even their technology’s different. They live in coded, digital times when sleep is a euphemism for 5 hours of network downtime. The landline at home, which my daughters once clung onto for dear life, no longer rings. It stands forlorn in one corner as all seven of us, including our helps, remain glued to our own cellphones. I’m waiting for our dogs to have their own communication device. Even I go down to the gym now wearing headphones that don’t need an iPod, listening to Garth Brooks.
No, I’ll be honest. I hate nostalgia, can’t bear the Beatles any more, tried reading Hercule Poirot once and puked, love Fellini but never watch him, my CD library may as well belong to someone else, my books (thousands and thousands of them) no longer reflect my reading interests. Even my DVD collection lies spurned. What do I watch, read, listen to? Whatever finds me. What do I enjoy? Anything that grabs my imagination. I could be strolling down the Nice waterfront or be trapped in Manhattan traffic or be lolling on a Bangkok skytrain. It’s only the moment that holds me. Am I a traitor to my generation? Or have I simply stopped asking questions?
How long is a generation? I still have no clue. But I guess people are measuring it in months now.
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