Sunday, March 14, 2010

NextGen…


I watched “Jaane Tu Yaa Jaane Naa” the other day. Honestly I couldn’t comprehend why so many people liked the movie. If I don’t like a movie, I usually locate the reasons, lets say ‘poor acting’ or ‘cheap story’. But here the most vicious thing was, I found it difficult to figure out why I didn’t like the movie. I couldn’t simply comprehend what was going on. I am a kind of person who externalizes reasons, a person who looks for external reasons. But here I couldn’t find any, so I started looking inside. Then I found a pattern. I noticed that, I find now a days difficult to understand more and more, things about people called NextGen aka todays young generation. I cant comprehend things like why do they talk on cell phone for unusually long times? What probably can a person communicate with so many SMSs? What makes people go on shopping spree? Why people like calling themselves ‘random and unpredictable’?...
I am beginning to feel that there is nothing (much) wrong with the movie neither anything with myself. I think this is what is called “generation gap”. Probably since the movie is about NextGen, I am beginning to feel it out of my time. Now a days I am beginning to get inkling that I will have to face more and more of this “gap of perception” (or do they call “gap of attitude”?) in future. Now, how much time gap is generation gap? Traditional definition puts gap between say father and son. When talking of todays fast changing society, shouldn’t the definition be revised? Now when I try comparing myself with NextGen, difference in age of 8 years is almost equivalent to generation gap. Probably india is going through cultural makeover too fast and after a decade or so, there is going to be an interesting variety of people in our good old country.
Looking back, NextGen evolution in india started in 1990s, when after fall of USSR, india started globalizing. I was (fortunately) born in 1980 and I have seen socialist india for quite sometime to understand how capitalism or socialism morphs people to quite different mindsets. This jinx is quite interesting (and entertaining too) for a person who likes to study people.
On a selfish side, what I like the most about NextGen is that they make really good consumers. That’s what happens if you live in a capitalist society for sometime. You can create needs for them and sell them almost anything under that pretext, starting from mobile phone plans to spirituality. I was not surprised reading orkut profile of someone the other day, a girl of 23, who said, “I just cant live without teddy bears!!!”.

The pic, sunrise :)

4 comments:

Rakesh Vanamali said...

Next gen is a gen that I'm part of supposedly and yet don't understand! :)

Awesome pic!

Junius said...

#V Rakesh
I would expect that hihi :)

Anil P said...

Lovely sunset.

Some stories will transcend generations.

Junius said...

#Anil P
it is a sunrise! :(