There is the ignoble part of me that envies the youth in India. More particularly the youth in Bengalooru. They are living in a world that I thought Iwould never see again and they are living it brimming with the youthful energies that I once had. In the words of the song, it smells like teen spirit all up in here.
A heady scent, that. It is one that I and my generation, encountered, experienced, infused into ourselves, better than half a century ago. And in so doing changed the course of human social history. I believe for the better. The Youth of B’loor (Yo...) – no wait, that’s an unfortunate acronym – Youth in B’loor (YiB), stand on the threshold of doing the same.
There is that dusky undertone of Travel, Adventure, New Experiences, and Unpredictable Delights that happen when strangers start living next door to each other. In B’loor that happens because of all the cities in India, B’loor ranks among the newer ones. India’s older cities, the large ancient ones, grew over the centuries. With their various sectarian and ethnic agglutinations domiciled in enclaves of sameness, those older cities perpetuated, and still do (to one degree or another), the mildly xenophobic attitudes of the rural and traditional backgrounds of the denizens. B’loor, on the other hand, exploded into city-dom. Young Information Technology worker bees swarmed B’loor from all parts of India, bringing with them bits and pieces of their ‘native’. Without Mom, Dad, and the parivar looking over their shoulders these youngsters, Youngistan, to give them their generational label started mingling. The huge advantage to mingling is that in its Brownian motion it knocks of those edges that don’t fit, leaving a well rounded organism that merges into the larger whole of Modern India, or MoIn, as I prefer. (Get it? I did, it is a close relative of a pun). Next thing you know, and to quote Bobby Darin, you’ve got 2 butterflies, casting their eyes, both in the same direction with the resulting butterfly collection. That’s what happens when you’ve got young singles living in close proximity to each other. In MoIn, in B’loor, it is getting increasingly difficult for the ‘native’ to be identified by physical feature. Ask the children of the YiBs for their ‘native’ and you’ll get as confusing an answer as you would from any USian of my generation.
“Let’s see now. We started out in Syracuse, and then moved to McHenry, but I went to school in Iowa, California, Montana, New York, spending considerable amount of time in Amsterdam and Haight Ashbury.”
Except, of course, the names will be Indian. The music, the laughter, the love, the heady scent of The Possible, will have a B’loor accent.
World peace may not be that far away.
A heady scent, that. It is one that I and my generation, encountered, experienced, infused into ourselves, better than half a century ago. And in so doing changed the course of human social history. I believe for the better. The Youth of B’loor (Yo...) – no wait, that’s an unfortunate acronym – Youth in B’loor (YiB), stand on the threshold of doing the same.
There is that dusky undertone of Travel, Adventure, New Experiences, and Unpredictable Delights that happen when strangers start living next door to each other. In B’loor that happens because of all the cities in India, B’loor ranks among the newer ones. India’s older cities, the large ancient ones, grew over the centuries. With their various sectarian and ethnic agglutinations domiciled in enclaves of sameness, those older cities perpetuated, and still do (to one degree or another), the mildly xenophobic attitudes of the rural and traditional backgrounds of the denizens. B’loor, on the other hand, exploded into city-dom. Young Information Technology worker bees swarmed B’loor from all parts of India, bringing with them bits and pieces of their ‘native’. Without Mom, Dad, and the parivar looking over their shoulders these youngsters, Youngistan, to give them their generational label started mingling. The huge advantage to mingling is that in its Brownian motion it knocks of those edges that don’t fit, leaving a well rounded organism that merges into the larger whole of Modern India, or MoIn, as I prefer. (Get it? I did, it is a close relative of a pun). Next thing you know, and to quote Bobby Darin, you’ve got 2 butterflies, casting their eyes, both in the same direction with the resulting butterfly collection. That’s what happens when you’ve got young singles living in close proximity to each other. In MoIn, in B’loor, it is getting increasingly difficult for the ‘native’ to be identified by physical feature. Ask the children of the YiBs for their ‘native’ and you’ll get as confusing an answer as you would from any USian of my generation.
“Let’s see now. We started out in Syracuse, and then moved to McHenry, but I went to school in Iowa, California, Montana, New York, spending considerable amount of time in Amsterdam and Haight Ashbury.”
Except, of course, the names will be Indian. The music, the laughter, the love, the heady scent of The Possible, will have a B’loor accent.
World peace may not be that far away.
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