Time to call a spade a spade
Are we becoming softer individually?
Virender Kapoor
I remember being with those who were displaced during partition in 1947.Aunts, Chachas, Mamas and neighbor’s. It was the greatest learning for our generation. They not only survived but also laughed and sang ‘main zindagi ka saath nibhata chalagaya, main fikar ko dhooain main udaata chalaa gaya’.
Overnight you are forced to choose sides and leave everything behind, without a penny and pushed into tents labeled as a refugee in your own country.
Most hallucinated about riots and mass massacre of family and friends. Trains full of mutilated bloody bodies is not easy to forget! Mobs chasing you with swords and sickles. Thousands climbed on each other to take a train to the other side- not knowing what was in store for them. They withstood the crisis of their life.
Millions of them left behind well established businesses and homes in Sindh or Lahore.
Six million Jews perished in Holocaust. Partition of India displaced around 20 million and 2 million were butchered. It is hard to understand what mettle that generation was made off.
People were pushed into 400 square feet tenements. They suffered the aftershocks for decades, till they lived.
The next gen never saw their parents moan in pain- if they did they must have done it in private or swallowed their pain. Most managed to raise their children in abject, poverty. Yet taught the good values and to live within means and be strong.
Kids shared food and even clothes. A kid owning even a second hand cycle was a king- you valued money. Deprivation builds resilience and gets you closer to reality’. Parents didn’t have the luxury to give luxury. ‘Buss itna he hai’- nobody cursed.
“The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.”
― Robert Jordan,
Something strange is happening!
Today our youth live in an era where technology and science is at its best. But they have unrealistic expectations. They want to achieve without sacrifice, without stress and with as little work as possible. They need to be praised always. They love it if you say ’oh you are so cool’.
Parents too play to the gallery. If your child is not an Arabian horse, don’t blame the race course or the trainer. These horses have speed, endurance, and strong bones.
Yet everyone wants to be politically right. From Global warming to work life balance- it is just a rhetoric-must not ruffle any feathers, yet score brownie points! No one wants to bell the cat.
Sugarcoated word are distorting the narrative. ‘Physically challenged’ has replace handicapped. PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress disorder) to replace Shock! We feel good by fooling each other.
Salary cuts, loss of perks, or relocation are seen as ‘devastating changes’ by gen next.
You cannot handle a pay cut, you cannot handle relocation- then what the hell can you handle? And you threaten to sue the company!
Capt. Saurabh Kalia was martyred at the age of 22, tortured and killed by Pakistanis in Kargil war. Resilience is dwindling steadily. Between 2008 and 2017 as many as 1,256 cadets quit the National Defense Academy (NDA), as they could not handle pressure.
New breed new problems
Today youth commit suicide for, ‘breakup’, failure in an exam or not being able to cope with NEET exam pressure! Authorities also remain politically polite. You cannot handle NEET, stop NEET- how neat! Civil services exams, CDS tests or IIT entrance tests were as tough 50 years ago as today.
Three basic avenues were available earlier Engineering, Law or Medicine. Today you have hundreds of options to choose from. Fashion design, standup comedy, social media marketing, Mass-com, management, and list is long.
Then why do you commit suicide? It boils down to lack of resilience and inability to take failure- and ‘unrealistic ambitions’. We circumvent the issue and blame everyone else except the one who needs to be told. Earlier there were no school psycho analysts and life was good to go. Life is not a bed of roses- face it.
Parents and teachers worked together, trusted each other and accepted the short fall. If everybody in the class stands first then who will be second?
Such an in the face argument in days of overtly polite world – only words- may sound discourteous or even gauche but you need to catch the bull by the horns.
Don’t make children fragile and inflexible. You will do a great service to your next generation if you raise tougher kids- mentally and physically. Smell the coffee as they say.
Let me throw in another caveat – life is going to become tougher by the day, more competition and less oxygen, lesser food and may be very little water left the way we are pushing the climate. We are sending rockets to the moon but we have yet to find water or food on the moon! So remain on mother earth- you can quit a job, a college, but not your planet!
‘If you are politically wrong you are actually right’