Changing lifestyle and mores

Hemant Kumar Gawande

heymant@india.com

Bhopal, India

With changing times people have adapted themselves to the changing trends and given off old traditions. Instead of reacting to the sudden cultural shocks, they have embraced foreign culture with poise. Whatever felt was otherwise unnoticed. But now feelings are supreme and customs have gone haywire. Freedom has taken forefront. Rituals have acquired backseat. Rules are supposed to be broken. Exceptions are present for every single rule. Break-free is the idea. “Live life, King size” is the motto.

Relationship is passé. Companionship is in fashion. Infidelity is the mood of the times. Live and let live is the flavour of the season. Morality is extinct. Liberty is in. Plagiarism is in vogue. Mannerism is out. Every other person is alike in habits. Therefore, nobody cares to complaint. Eating from each other’s platter, sharing  couches with others  and wearing clothes of others is all common game. No morality, no fear of sins. Cutting each other’s throats for fiscal markets. Bull trading, bear fighting, nerve wrecking all is in. Pick pocketing, rag picking were all age-old things. Chain pulling, stealing bikes are new common sports of the dusk. Making money is important. Not how it is done!

Gone are the days when women were supposed to be bewitching. Now males have encroached this department. Male vanity(read metrosexuality) is in, female grooming is out. Outdoorsy is in, presentability is out. On the contrary, eve-teasing is out, male-bashing is in. Menopause was an old grandma’s tale. Andropause has taken over. Males are proud to show their cleavage and not ashamed to wax or pierce their body parts, manicure, pedicure, to the extent of threading their eyebrows. Liposuctions and nose jobs are no more left in a woman’s kitty. On the contrary women feel proud to ride bikes, use abusive language, smoking hubble-bubble at sheeshah` parties, seeing male escorts and etching manly tattoos on their backs.

Children are no more childish from any angle. They have lost their pristine innocence. They have overgrown in a narrow span of time. Ignorance is bliss. But too much information creates disturbance. Teenage turmoil has been taken over by pre-mature adulthood. Experimentation with prohibited zones is not uncommon. What is common is non-secrecy. Nothing is left to imagination or to be held under adult supervision or parental guidance. Children of today are smarter than their contemporary adults. However their parents are sadly mistaken that their kids are extraordinarily talented!

Fasting, feasting, boozing, go altogether……….Their has been a flood of emotions on name of religiosity and the youths of today have crossed all their boundaries. On one hand they perform hard fasting whole day long in holy months, discard leather footwear and accessories, grow their beards, carry a huge vermilion mark on their forehead and so on……..On the other hand they booze all year long, smoke to choke their breath, don’t bathe for weeks on, use corroded language, watch pornography, buy inexpensive luxuries and ultimately drain wealth from their parents’ wallet. Where does the sanctity disappear from these people at these very times?

On name of education, youths migrate from rural areas and remote interiors to their nearest urban localities and get settled there. They don’t care about their roots, nor the new settlement they have entered into. They live in a carefree environment because nobody knows them here. Eventually in an attempt to break-free from parental bonds and the restrictions laid upon them till now, they get surrounded by extreme vices. Meeting persons of opposite sex which were not used to, till date, live-in relationships, same-sex attraction, exposure to narcotics, drugs, alcohol, restricted mass media, truant peer groups etc create an entirely different environment for them. This is characterized by social trauma delineating their mindset towards negativity altogether. Perhaps they become prey to a diabolic personality role. Loose in character and footloose in standing they forget their obligations for the people or the society which brought them up. While their parents give-off airs before their acquaintances, that their ‘apple-of-eye’ is doing hard and performing wonders in an unknown land. Little do they know what their doted child is up to!

Criminals roam about freely on the roads of a metropolis, under the garb of a decent man. The majority of this chunk belongs to the youths who have moved in pursuit of a career. Leave career aside they improvise methods of money making by delving into nasty crimes. Night prowl is a common game which has least vigilance. City bugles and crossroad signals get dimmer at the wake of midnight, but rowdy mass don’t pause at any point of time. Lethargy shows no sign, while uncanny acts of human intolerance continue unspoken. Colossus of night gets darker, under the background of a star studded sky. Crimes get personified. Plots get proper shape. City sleeps while the criminals wake. Society sobs over its degradation, while the denizens of the coming near future are being born at the labour desk in a nearby public hospital. Yell of these midnight infants shies away the otherwise silent lull of night………………