Where Are We Headed To ?

We, the youth, are the children of progress. With the fruits of modernity at our disposal we are abled in many ways. The entire concept of childhood has changed, and so has the way in which we grow up. We see more screens than faces; we always want to be over connected not in reality but through virtual mediums. Due to countless similar reasons it wouldn't be wrong to say that we, the children of progress are paralyzed by technology.

Today’s childhood does not involve adventures in the pool or the parks. There aren't stories of princesses, dwarfs and other innocent mysticism that once helped the budding imaginations to flower. The playfulness of children is limited by screens that hypnotize them. Children are not surrounded by familiar faces for each of the family members are out in the world chasing their dreams of fancy careers. The human element in raising children is absent and thus we’re raising children who’re developing a dependence on the so called technological aids, some things that eventually cage their lives in a virtual utopia.

The children who've graduated to become bread earners are constantly being influenced by a western lifestyle, an outcome of a booming economy that has led to migrations into the big cities where these newly arrived adults are experiencing and relishing their “big city lives”. Thus, there is a generation of young people who thrive on western sitcoms, drinking binges and an unawareness of the future. A generation that does not worry about the future and even neglects the worries of today, a generation that has left families behind and has found a sense of individuality, an individuality that lacks the virtue of responsibility.

Life is treated as a party, and thus there’s carelessness in this modern life. The paradox is that even after being so well informed about everything under the sun, we live without the basic ethics that our fore-fathers had. It’s this careless playfulness that is now progressing into marital relations and divorce is not much of a taboo for the Indians of today. Such changes are bound to happen. Cultural advocates will scorn at such a new way life but the fact is that material progress comes at the cost of cultural degradation. Progress woes people, affects their lifestyles and finally affects their beliefs, making cultural norms look like forgotten facts of a certain period back in time.

The youth today makes its own choices, its own rules and is on its way in creating a pseudo-culture, a culture that will be followed by generations to come. An eventual outcome will be a culture that is closely related to the western way of life. The Indian youth is on the road of progress. It has come really far but it is slowly forgetting where it once belonged.

The sun which once rose in the east,

Will eventually set in the west...

When the course of life,

Changes from east to west...

The Purposeless Pursuit

"Science has a purpose, art does not have any purpose"

                                         -Me

The following statement was uttered by me. And just like the ones who heard it, 99% of you would differ with me. I have demeaned art as a force I have called it without any purpose; I've somehow proved it worthless. But not many would think that art is without any purpose for it hides infinite purposes within it. It is worthless for it is cannot be weighed along with a specific worth.

Purpose is an end, a conclusive point of stagnation that ends a pursuit. That’s science it begins with an equation and ends with a well-defined result. And art… did it have any purpose? Does the beautiful Starry Night tell you of a purpose? Does the night watch give you a clear understanding of its random set up? It’s all beyond reasoning, beyond understanding and most of all beyond purpose.

Then what was art? Art was nothing fixed. It was an infinite dive towards the unknown, feeling a thousand and one emotions, passing by innumerable thoughts. It was free from purpose. It was like happiness, like an orgasm, unaffected by anything, without any purpose, not reaching a conclusive point but breaking free through a free-fall of liberation.

They all argue, then why do movies have a message? I say those movies aren’t art, they’re an amalgamation of art and science, the science of psychology, of passing a message to the minds in return for the green paper of materialistic powers. This amalgamation is necessary in the worldly environment, and it works at times when the ruling element is art and not the science of generating psychological appeal (read “making money”)

So the next time, you’re giving a purpose to art. Think again. You may have reduced it to a science that dies the death of purpose.

Barren Lands of Art

In an attempt to revive this blog which has remained dead for a while now, I thought of answering a question which I stumbled upon while trying to live my life. The question asked me, “Why isn’t art valued in India?” and for a moment which turned out to be very long I was scratching my head while I recollected the sad state of affairs of art and artists here.

My attempt to find an answer told me about things that tried to form a reason. As Indians, We live a calculative life. There is an age for education (which is of a lower time period for those lucky women-folk), an age for the disguised devastation of a marital association, an age to announce the good news and not feel as if you’d scored. Then there is the culture keeping us in place, arranging us like sheep of a herd, heading blindly to a single direction. And while at home, we’re busy calculating the rising commodity prices as we weep for our pockets. Yes, an Indian life is highly mathematical, governed by constants. But how can people living by “constants” understand something as infinite as art?

All of us are busy moving, like gears of machinery. Not being able to wander, to fly. The ideal career again has to abide a constant. So half of the potential artists die a death of sacrifice, they want to fly but “No” say their Indian lives, “Go into that cage and live chained to the constants that you’re bound to abide”. But the artistic soul always breathes in them, so they play a gamble some time later in life. They break their cages of careers and try to fly. A few of them attain a flight but many crash. They see the masses, relishing a circus in the name of art. They’re happy with a stagnant song and dance of glamorous personas and true artists are left ignored in the corners. So many artists face disappointment and surrender to their cages again because it’s too late then, as the system demands them to take care of the children they've made, even the advocates of culture threaten them to abide by the code. And when they turn old, sitting on their rocking chairs, they reflect about a life that never happened while they were busy in trying to fit in a calculative existence.

This is the story of these barren artistic lands that we live in.