20 years ago, when I’d visit a friend’s house, he’d sit talking to me over sweet nothing without distraction. We’d occasionally be served tea, snacks and the Addda would snowball into a congregation of 8-9 young people. When we’d visit our relatives’, they would be busy entertaining us ruminating over our common past and heartily cracking jokes. When, after a day’s heavy engagement, my father would return home, we’d sit together to exchange our day’s happenings among us. Thus, we’re counselled by our parents and our interpersonal bondage would grow. We had emotional attachments. We actually came to the rescue of anyone who were in dire situation or digressing from moral, ethical path.
On the contrary, today we find people sitting in a place
together not talking to each other, rather engrossed in their respective mobile
phones. Father has lost connection with the other members of the family, ditto
with other people in the family. They do not have an iota of an experience and
knowledge to guess as to how and where the young members are being led to.
Human sensitivity is evidently found lacking in today’s
world. Moral and emotional values are eroding. Children, in some cases, are sky
rocketing in their career, earning well and are seen settled in life
apparently. But, inwardly, they are unhappy, having intense counselling under
some psychologist, undergoing monitoring under a psychiatrist, consuming pills
every day to keep their outward mental balance. Most of the young couples are
queuing up in the Doctor’s chambers for IVF babies, for they are incapable of
begetting babies naturally. The very root of pleasure and sexuality are
dropping down among the young couples. They are earning in millions, but are
unhappy. Lawyers’ services are pressed into action either to reconcile or
litigate between the young couples.
Over obsession with competitive careerdom together with
virtual lifestyle have its toll on these unfortunate souls.
Where do they spend time in the virtual world? Let us begin
with the people in their forties, fifties. They are addicted to news. What are
contents of this news? Are they of any practical help in the life of these
people? I doubt. These middle aged people might have, instead, generated their
second source of income, a mode to obtain value’s call in life or get
recognition, do charitable work to their satisfaction, persued their hobby to
their heart’s content, had they prudently employed their time. It’s time for
them to prepare for a life of happy retired life. It may be augmented by
securing their existence with a view to have surplus corpus that could support
them until their nineties neutralising the adversity of inflations and economic
volatility.
This may, for them, be done if they hone their talent, prune
their hobbies, interests and keep themselves upgraded by way of reading
educative books, seeing videos, surfing the net productively to learn more with
a focused mind instead of seeing useless news items.
Coming to housewives. They are seen enjoying hours together
on social media platform chatting, seeing OTT entertainments which, in no way,
is going to enrich them. They are hooked on Facebook, Tiktok, Reels, Youtube goggling up at the
screen at sweet-nothing-kind of
production. The creators earn, they lose their time. They might have
concentrated on building and enhancing relationship among family members,
looking after and encouraging them to go and get more from the world. They
might have started doing small enterprises like cooking, knitting and fashion,
singing, dancing, teaching kids etc. Such efforts would have augmented their
family income add up to their value. To achieve this, they must tear themselves
from these purposeless entertainments and focus on enhancing their quality.
Children are the most effected lot. They are lost in Reels,
movies, Cartoons, Games. They need to employ their time more constructively.
It’s, unfortunately, they who lose it the most. It’s their time to enlighten
themselves with the knowledge of Finance, Sports, Careers and professions. It’s
time for them to educate themselves into the new modes of earning, new
technologies and how these can be turned into generating wealth.
Until we get our elders to recognise this and push this in
secondary education syllabus on pragmatic use of mobile phones and internet,
there is no scope of brightening our children’s life, let alone guide them.
[By profession this author is a 38 years' experienced private tutor. Visit https://www.dbhattacharjee.com to know more.
