I write today as a person who reads considerably more than an average Indian my age (I am 29 for those eager to know). That this is where I stand, shamefully proud, with arms akimbo on the reader's scale is a disgrace to me and my generation. Yes, to those few eyebrows that I have been successful in raising (from the untrammeled attention on your Facebook page), Congratulations! You are welcome to enter the attic of a cynic who believes that not all is hunky dory in our corner of the world.
It is true that our generation today has access to some of the world's finest inventions... cars, flights, flatscreen LEDs, laptops, iphones pods pads et al. It is also true that we are making extensive use of these fine inventions. As Newton once said; We are standing on the shoulders of giants... But I somehow doubt that we are seeing more than the giants themselves. These inventions that we wear so proudly on ourselves like medals, are ironically, prizes that belong to the generation that precede ours. It is to them that the glory belongs. It is to us to ensure that we do not make a Frankenstein out of them. I fear that like overindulged parents who dote on their children till they make perfect monkeys out of them, our previous generation too racked their brains and brawn to make great inventions available to us. Sadly, their efforts, though noble may inadvertently be responsible for making monkeys out of us.
We now have the tools necessary to take civilization forward, but lack the very depth in human attributes like the knowledge of surrounding, the utilization of our abilities (sans gadgets), and the urge to remove the veil of obfuscation to see the truth that lies behind it. We are like a dog who has lost its sense of smell, a bat without its sense of sound, a hawk without vision, a lion without fangs. Simply using advanced technology does not power a generation to be more knowledgeable than a generation that did not have access to the same level of technology!
I find the balance of knowledge slightly skewed when an engineer (termed a "Techie" in contemporary media parlance) can operate an iphone4S with blindfolded dexterity and grieve over the soul of its so-called creator (ignoring several equally fertile brains other than Steve's that made the contraption possible), and simultaneously remain ignorant of the name Nikolai Tesla! Mind you.. the same Electrical Engineer who admires Steve Jobs' contribution to his field does not know the name of Nikolai Tesla, arguably one of the founding fathers of the same field! It is tantamount to calling oneself a Computer Engineer without ever coming across the name of Charles Babbage. It is like biting an apple not knowing that its a fruit!
In the days when there were no Single Lens Reflex digital cameras and very few analogue ones around, my father taught me the basics of photography with the help of a pencil, a piece of paper, and three optical terms; shutter speed, aperture and focal length. He also lectured about 'depth-of-field' and 'depth-of-focus', definitions too complicated for a 5 year old to grasp. Today, it is difficult to find a person without a digital SLR, in fact it is a blasphemy if you have traveled on-site and haven't bought yourself one! However, I wonder whether there are really more people in our generation than my dad's who know what 'SLR' stands for and are aware of it's basic operation (despite the millions slinging from as many necks). A generation has craved for what you hold today in your hands friends. If nothing, at least spend an hour on Wikipedia to read what it is. You will do poor Daguerre a favour.
A friend of mine likes playing PS3 (for those who are from the Dark Ages and do not know what it means; PlayStation3 is a video game console by SONY). Another of the commendable inventions to have been lavished on our generation. My friend is playing a series called Unchartered2 wherein his avatar is trekking through the snow-capped Himalayas, running through monasteries, and bouncing over pagodas in search of hidden treasure. The place is incidentally named Shangri-La by the game's designer. Gives me solace to know that at least the designer(s) read James Hilton's Lost Horizon. I find it hard to convince my friend that Shangri-La is a fictional place mentioned in that novel and to my knowledge it is there that this name was first used; and, it was not the designer of Unchartered2 who invented this place! You see, the perils of not reading, because it is uncool!
With so much on our plate, all we have to do is eat. But sometimes it is necessary to peep in the kitchen to figure how the food eventually made it to the plate (Sagar, a vegetarian friend of mine in college always made a survey of the kitchen of a restaurant to ensure that they did not make the daal makhani in the same pan where once they cooked a delicious murgh masala :)). Else, we run the risk of not only being dumb ourselves, but, more frighteningly, breed a generation that believes that money is produced in ATMs and water in vending machines.
Soon, the name Nero will just be known as a CD-ROM burning software, Magellan the name of a GPS company, Picasso will be reduced to a typo for Picasa, Edison will be best known as a desi-town in New Jersey, Agni a name of some kind of missile, Bose a music-system, and so on.
The pain of reading though mostly unrewarding monetarily and greatly time-consuming can at times take a human mind to the depth of understanding without which the mind just sees and hears and feels things without really registering what it saw, heard or felt. That is why my father can walk through Mendeleev's periodic table and talk through Hemingway and ponder over Chekov as I fidget in my mind if 'Au' stands for gold or silver.
4 comments:
Hmmmm..... I wonder what's in Uncharted 3 , coming up 1-1-11. I didn't understand most of it , not surprising.
Good.Stay Awake and Keep Going..Don't
Fall Asleep.
Your blog has been a delightful discovery, Saptarshi (have we met before?). I know very few of your generation who are simultaneously so well-read, so thoughtful, so articulate and so keen on writing down their thoughts regularly. As a teacher, it warms my heart... so here I go, my first comment on your blog; more will follow.
Today's world suffers from what the French call embarras de richesse... having too much of too many things, and living too passively in both body and mind. You have thought enough about both the causes and consequences yourself, so I won't burden you with more. Except to say that I can see in my own classes with schoolkids that they can't remember and coherently talk about things they have supposedly 'learnt' just a couple of years ago! Many of them routinely score 90%-plus in their exams, too, but it is anybody's guess what kind of 'educated' people they will grow up to be, and what kind of work they will be fit for. Various kinds of narrowly specialized technical jobs, probably, but certainly not teachers, writers, pioneering entrepreneurs or statesmen (I wonder whether you are aware that behind the facade of countless people with PhDs, there is already a tremendous shortage of good teachers at all levels from KG to PG). And tying in with something said in one of your earlier posts, reflect that if someone has to google out Picasso or autobahn or Nero, s/he, even if capable of figuring out what the writer was trying to say, could never write the same sort of stuff themselves! As I have said in my blog, never have there been so many people around with degrees under their belts, money in their pockets and nothing (beyond greed, technical manuals and sleaze) in their brains. Brave new world indeed!
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