Skip to main content

Generation Today




One of the reasons why I love teaching is that I am more comfortable with the young generation than with adults.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I haven’t really grown up.  I remain young at heart.  I still nurture youthful dreams and ideals.  I still hope for a better world and believe that it is possible to create such a world, a world in which people will be more sensible and sensitive.  My cynicism belongs to the adult part of my being.

The present edition of IndiSpire asks the following question: 


 My experience is that the young people embrace privacy out of helplessness.  It’s not that they wish to be confined to their private spaces; it’s that they don’t find people in whom they can confide fearlessly.  I have had innumerable experiences of youngsters wanting to spend time with me discussing their personal problems.  My regret has been that I couldn’t afford to give them the time they deserved. 

Ravi Zacharias said in one of his books that in the 1950s children lost their innocence, in the 60s their authority, in the 70s their love, 80s their hope, 90s their power to reason, and in the new millennium the children woke up and found out that they had lost their imagination. 

Zacharias attributes this condition to the violence and perversion that has become endemic.  I think there are other reasons too: people are too busy to give time to their children, in addition to the predominance of the social media and other things that keep youngsters pivoted to their mobile phones or other gadgets. 

They are searching for something genuine in those things: social media and the gadgets.  There is so much counterfeit in our world that the youngsters are confused.  The youngsters want genuineness.  They see that everything from the food they consume to the god they are taught to worship is contaminated.  They search for authenticity.  They can identify the authentic with the dexterity of a connoisseur.  You can’t bluff them.  Once they know that you are genuine they shed inhibitions.  And they have infinite questions to ask. 

So, to answer the IndiSpire question: yes, many things have changed. The world is not what it was twenty years ago.  The world confuses the young and they search for answers to a lot of questions.  It is because the adults are incapable of or unwilling to provide the answers that the youngsters go into the privacy of their little spaces and continue the search in many wrong places.  The answers are important to them.  If you can provide the answers, you will find the youngsters coming out of their little spaces.  I guarantee this.


Comments

  1. Rajeev MoothedathSeptember 10, 2017 at 6:23 PM

    "It is because the adults are incapable of or unwilling to provide the answers that the youngsters go into the privacy of their little spaces and continue the search in many wrong places"- Interesting observation!

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownSeptember 12, 2017 at 8:41 AM

    The major problem I feel is that they have become so adamant with their ideas. And not just young, even the older generation doesn't wish to shed their beliefs. I guess they are all afraid. Afraid to unlearn things it took them an eternity to learn. Afraid to realize that nothing's wrong or right, what they are fighting for, ready to shed blood for, ready to rally for, can also be stupid in someone's eyes. I wish I could vanish after writing this. :(

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

Sardar Patel and Unity

All pro-PM newspapers carried this ad today, 31 Oct 2025 No one recognised Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel as he stood looking at the 182-m tall statue of himself. The people were waiting anxiously for the Prime Minister whose eloquence would sway them with nationalistic fervour on this 150 th birth anniversary of Sardar Patel. “Is this unity?” Patel wondered looking at the gigantic version of himself. “Or inflation?” Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi chuckled standing beside Patel holding a biodegradable iPhone. “The world has changed, Sardar ji. They’ve built me in wax in London.” He looked amused. “We have become mere hashtags, I’d say.” That was Jawaharlal Nehru joining in a spirit of camaraderie. “I understand that in the world’s largest democracy now history is optional. Hashtags are mandatory.” “You know, Sardar ji,” Gandhi said with more amusement, “the PM has released a new coin and a stamp in your honour on your 150 th birth anniversary.”  “Ah, I watched the function too,” ...
15 comments
Read more

Being Christian in BJP’s India

A moment of triumph for India’s women’s cricket team turned unexpectedly into a controversy about religious faith and expression, thanks to some right-wing footsloggers. After her stellar performance in the semi-final of the Wormen’s World Cup (2025), Jemimah Rodrigues thanked Jesus for her achievement. “Jesus fought for me,” she said quoting the Bible: “Stand still and God will fight for you” [1 Samuel 12:16]. Some BJP leaders and their mindless followers took strong exception to that and roiled the religious fervour of the bourgeoning right wing with acerbic remarks. If Ms Rodrigues were a Hindu, she would have thanked her deity: Ram or Hanuman or whoever. Since she is a Christian, she thanked Jesus. What’s wrong in that? If she was a nonbeliever like me, God wouldn’t have topped the list of her benefactors. Religion is a talisman for a lot of people. There’s nothing wrong in imagining that some god sitting in some heaven is taking care of you. In fact, it gives a lot of psychologic...
16 comments
Read more

The wisdom of the Mahabharata

Illustration by Gemini AI “Krishna touches my hand. If you can call it a hand, these pinpricks of light that are newly coalescing into the shape of fingers and palm. At his touch something breaks, a chain that was tied to the woman-shape crumpled on the snow below. I am buoyant and expansive and uncontainable – but I always was so, only I never knew it! I am beyond the name and gender and the imprisoning patterns of ego. And yet, for the first time, I’m truly Panchali. I reach with my other hand for Karna – how surprisingly solid his clasp! Above us our palace waits, the only one I’ve ever needed. Its walls are space, its floor is sky, its center everywhere. We rise; the shapes cluster around us in welcome, dissolving and forming and dissolving again like fireflies in a summer evening.” What is quoted above is the final paragraph of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel The Palace of Illusions which I reread in the last few days merely because I had time on my hands and this book hap...
11 comments
Read more