Smoke , don't inhale!

Hi all. I guess one has to keep the ball rolling so here's another exposition of putrescent prose for your perusal. This came out in the Hindu on the 12th of this month and you can see the neo-conservatism brimming over. Basically, I think it is a rather stupid of young folk to veer to extremes of illogicality in their rebellion against authority. Right now , the emphasis is on "Doing it different." Even if doing it the right way is the most logical thing to do. Poe knew what he was talking about when he wrote that brilliant monologue on perversity. Today's youth is mind-bogglingly perverse.

Anyway , here goes.

Smoke, don’t inhale

If the modalities of expression of public outrage over the Stephanie hit-and-run case is any indicator, Indian nouveau riche society has been badly bitten by the ‘smoke but don’t inhale’ bug. The Stephanie case is but a microcosm of a crisis of identity that is looming, menacingly, over young metropolitan India.

It is interesting to note that the primary defense offered by the accused was that the victim was an ‘acquaintance’. The implicit assertion here is the rather austere statement that good girls do not hang out with acquaintances at late hours of the night.

The existence of this puritanical streak is further supported by the evidence that, over the week following the incident, certain newspapers reported Stephanie as having been a ‘night-club’ dancer. We are confronted here with two puritanical presumptions. One, being a night-club dancer is a questionable profession. Two, murdering a woman perceived as being ‘easy’ is, in a way, less of a crime.

The question now is, given that bourgeois India finds the concept of open sexuality abhorrent, why is it that the metro yuppies insist on flaunting their liberated sexual mores so very insistently? Popular teenage perception, consistently reinforced by main-stream Bollywood, has raised, among other things, alcohol consumption and eve-teasing to the status of mandatory rites of passage to that exacting Holy Grail of ‘coolness’.

The trouble is that the archetypal urban dwelling 20-something metropolite derives his outlook upon life not from the reality of Indian society but from the unadulterated poppy-cock of MTV. Concomitant with the economic liberalization of the early 90’s, India witnessed a massive burst in the somnolent entertainment industry. Studio after studio, with little or no talent aboard, jumped on the cable telecasting bandwagon and to stay alive in the market, religiously adopted the trends of the US industry ad libidum.

Unfortunately for us, while the American industry has moved on from its fixation with bubble-gum pop and while American society is in the process of moving on from its experiment with liberal sexuality, the Indian nouveau riche is caught in a cleft stick. When all the hoopla raised about pub-hopping and live-in relationships etc. finally began to garner metro mainstream acceptance, they found that their American idols had moved on.

In a culture as hysterical and volatile as ours, there is little scope for rational demarches. Once the slide to decadence, euphemistically denominated ‘emancipation from ossified medieval mindsets’, had commenced, there was little the yuppies could do about it than to learn to like it.

And that is why, while farmers in the Andhra heartland starve and their crops wilt for lack of water, the booze flows without fail in the pubs of Hyderabad. That is why, while a 21 year old girl is chased at midnight and killed on the streets of Chennai, in all probability, a Tollywood film unit is recording a similar stunt for the hero to pull off not so very far away. Of course, in reel life, the hero can hold his drink like a man, drive like a maniac and still impress the adoring muse who, coyly, accepts his proposal for marriage, cohabitation, sex etc.

If the above statement appears abstract, readers are invited to recall a certain Bajaj Pulsar ad, first telecast last year, where the hero commandeers his elder brother’s bike and drives about town, ‘hitting on the chicks’. The protagonist’s disc brakes allow him to spare the life of a rabbit that happens to blunder in his way. Stephanie, alas! She was not so lucky.

How can our youngsters be blamed if we, through the mindless commercialism of our entertainment industry, present them such ambiguous social messages? Where does machismo end and idiocy begin? Where does seduction end and molestation commence? For today’s generation, these ethical boundaries are becoming increasingly fuzzy.

In our zeal to ape Occidental values, we have omitted to consider the fact that, such as they are, these values have evolved indigenously in a social milieu very different from ours. Our efforts to superimpose American ideologies on our own have resulted in the creation of a dangerous dichotomy between our societal archetypes and our ethical values. In simpler terms, society today wants to smoke, but is not ready to inhale.

It is the task of the media to mould the objectives of the entertainment industry to confirm to our collective vision as a nation. To replace films about prostitutes and homo-sexuality with crude, unimaginative indigenous icons, as the Government persists in doing, is to further propagate the myth of Western superiority.

A plant, in the absence of artificial splints, will grow to assume its natural shape. Likewise, gradual censorship of the MTV culture is likely to result in the maturation of metropolitan young India as a strong, vibrant social entity, in conformance with our cultural ethos.

Full stop!

(Oh, to those of you who have been kind enough to point out a blog is for recording personal musings, i am afraid i have to offer a firm nolle prosequi to the prospect. It is with the sole intention of getting my articles down on the net that i am prosecuting this venture. anyway , the contents of my biography would merit publication on asbestos at the very least! Ciao for now.)