Gone are the days when I used to grope in the dark to see the time on my manually wound bedside clock. Today, I enjoy the convenience of just opening my eyes to see the time (and temperature too!) displayed on my room ceiling. Gone are the days when I used to wait for hours for a long-distance call (trunk call as it was called) to mature on my ITI-made round dial telephone. Gone are the days when I used to anxiously wait for the postman to tap on my door and deliver the letters from my near and dear ones - today, most communications are all done through e-mail, face book, cell phone and other media.
We have entered a time of great change. The evidence of this great change is everywhere - in teaching and learning, science and technology, traveling and eating, even walking and sleeping!
Yesterday, I went with my grandson (15) to his school to attend an advanced placement (AP) program that prepares the students for college education through a range of over 20 optional courses. Each subject teacher was making power point presentations extoling the virtues of his/her subject and trying to sell it to a young and curious audience. It is so different from my school days when the only tools available to the teacher were a blackboard and a piece of chalk while the students had very limited choice of subjects.
Science and technology are expanding at such a frantic pace that everyday there is something new. Every day we're bombarded with the latest technology products - cellphones, GPS, computers, video games and what not. No longer, I need to go to the bank to deposit checks - I can do it over my cell phone! Tape recorders and even CD players are obsolete. They are replaced by sleek digital devices like I-pods that fit into a shirt pocket! The black-slate like tablet meets almost all your basic needs of communication and entertainment, assuming of course that you know how to make use of it.
Eating habits too have been greatly influenced by changes around. You can find an amazing variety of ready-to-cook/eat food (including idlis and masala dosas) on the shelves of most grocery stores. Very few people now have the time or interest to struggle in making those delicious dishes from fundamentals!
You can see the changes in the social scene too. In contrast to the earlier generation, today more women are highly educated, and work on full-time placing career as most important in their lives. Attitudes and values have changed too. Patience and tolerance are getting to be rarer virtues. Divorce, a rare event in earlier days, is now a common phenomenon. It seems anyone can marry anyone else so long as the partners are of the opposite sex. Even this view is changing in some parts of the world!
Old-time ideas of force and fear have been shattered. As a child, I used to dread some of my teachers who doled out the most humiliating punishments. . Codes of discipline were faithfully enforced in many walks of life. There were restrictions imposed on certain social movements. Today, it seems OK to do almost anything and get away under the name of freedom, birthright or some such thing without any fear or stigmas attached to the deed. The very process of thinking itself seems to be going through radical changes from asking 'why?' to 'why not?'
Though many of these changes sound fascinating, I sometimes wonder where they are really leading the people? The paradox is that with all the seemingly progressive changes, happiness seems elusive. While some sections of society accumulate wealth beyond estimates, another part struggles to make a decent living amidst impacts from all kinds of disturbing pressures such as frauds, mounting expenses, uncaring friends and relatives, crime and violence, and so on.
Well, we must realize that we are all living in an age of change, and gracefully accept those that we cannot change. Our best shot is to help the people close to us by giving out what we are granted with in terms of time, money, knowledge, ideas, whatever, with honesty and sincerity.
