It’s uncanny how sometimes one’s thoughts seem to be ‘stolen’, literally from our minds. It gets surreal but always brings a smile to my face for I take it to there being at least one other intelligent person apart from me in this world. Someone who thought the same lovely thought!
Thus, when I read a nice forward which poetically tried to convey the then and the now – it was incredible for I had been writing this Blog about similar things since an hour. Astonishing.
But after the feel-good factor waned off, I got thinking seriously. Serious thinking is another thing which only our ‘in-between’ generation is capable of. For our parents before us, somehow knew everything and whatever they said always made sense, even if seemingly said it off-the-cuff. The generation after us – our children – never think, they also never listen – first instance reaction always is to do it & then pause, to think. If they are lucky, well good for us; if not, then start the recovery of what went wrong!
Well, the serious thinking made me want to make out the whole list of things which may just be passé after us. For at least we had the good fortune of seeing some of the good old stuff!
My hubby was weeding out old stuff from his workstation as I convinced him of needing some good chi. And out tumbled hordes of treasured DVD’s. Treasured in both ways – as favorite & prized possessions as also since a large amount of saved mullah had been sunk into them years ago. All to waste, sadly. For as hubby dearest explained each 500 GB hard disk can now hold as many as 100 films and occupies minuscule space too. Yet, for posterity sake & in the faint hope of striking gold, years later when those get classified as antique fortune, I asked for my quaint DVD tower to be left filled up with just enough of them. My twenty-year-old son dismisses them off as vintage! (Wait on, dearie till you shall make monies out of them long after we are gone and then you’ll remember to tell tales to your grandchildren).
A typical ‘in-between’ generation thought process!
Spending weekends at home, lounging in comfortable kaftans, reading, sipping tea and cooking food at leisure with that extra touch of special. Soon going to be thing of the past! But I shall go away from this world a happy soul for I made Saturday’s special at home with an appetizer and a funky mojito thrown in with some fancy menu from my mom’s old Hamlyn books, watching some interesting movie together. Fortunately, with my twenty-year-old in a faraway land and devoid of seriously good home food with the Hyderabadi biryani being missed the most, his visits lead to him making out weeks of menu before he arrives for his mid-semester break. 1 of 1 down, none to go!
Another typical ‘in-between’ generation belief process!
Addicted to reading the weekly magazine which comes with the weekend newspaper, cover to cover right in the morning with groggy eyes & not putting it away till 95% articles are read. Something which doesn’t interest anyone anymore. It came naturally with everyone wanting the magazine at the same time. Now I have no competition and the whole magazine to myself. I read it cover to cover even now, as is my habit but the fun of that fight for it has gone. The new generation prefers the instant news updates on their mobile phones. No wonder, striking up conversations in groups needs special lessons/skills workshops in which parents shell out 100 times the value of that poor magazine!
Another typical ‘in-between’ generation intellectual process!
A glass of warm milk, with forth worked in with vigorous ‘measuring of the milk for a meter long’, to give comfort to the sleepy eyes which refused to wake up in the morning and a cosy duvet which just snubbed all our efforts to get out of bed on a winter morning. Mornings which were rushed interspersed with minor scuffles for the washrooms, gulping down bowls of broken wheat porridge breakfast, running to the bus stop to get into the magical army ‘shaktiman’ school bus with the army ‘bhaiya’ ruling the roost maintaining discipline in a bus full of officers’ kids and none of us having the guts to defy his diktat! Years of school life with my son had all the same replays except the bus ride which got replaced with a fifteen-year trek to and fro to his school in the car with me chaperoning him, without a miss. Reasons weren’t unrestrained pampering but a need arising from the nature of his father’s job.
Another typical ‘in-between’ generation commitment process!
And we have lived to tell the tale!
Wickedlyours 