EDITS | Wednesday, July 28, 2010 | Email | Print |  | Back
A burdened generation
Rajiv Dogra
People talk of the need for change as if the times gone by were soiled diapers. But seriously, were the previous ages all that bad? Perhaps the luxuries may have been wanting in some respects; the plasma television sets, the split-units and the condos may have been missing. But people still had fun. In fact, large amounts of it. The rich had their Riviera and the middle classes their ambition. The poor had fellow feeling.
Wherever you looked in the 1950s, be it in India or in Europe, the desire to start life all over again was in evidence. We in India were washing away the stains of Partition’s blood; those in the West were busy putting the trauma of World War II behind them. They were grim times, but there was hope in the air and a great confidence that we were the makers of our future. That’s why the past is not to be cast aside.
Still, every age leaves its mark on people. Despite the advances that we have made in knocking at the frontiers of knowledge, it is not adequately appreciated that the physical conditions, the political system and economic circumstances of the era shape vitally the behaviour and mental make-up of the population. Dictatorship, for instance, leaves people suspicious and nervous; they walk about morosely, constantly looking over their shoulders to see as to who is following them. Thus cramped they leave corrosiveness as their mark on history. The grim art and brooding literature of the Soviet era East Europe are examples. But it is not just dictatorship; social conditions too can corrode the creative process.
The Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels has a large display of paintings by Bosch. He was a great artist, but his art overwhelms with its grotesqueness. Most of his paintings are of starving people and withering bodies. Many others are fantasies. All this was a reflection of the times because in the 15th century, Western Europe was in a state of great turbulence. The Catholic Inquisition was in full sway; hangings, moral depravity and protest against the church were commonplace. Moreover, thousands of people would die regularly due to plague and other epidemics. Since the printed word did not have mass circulation then, paintings became the message. Bosch captured images of the time by painting misery on canvas.
Yet, barely a few hundred kilometres to the south, there were stirrings of a great renaissance. The same 15th century saw the flowering of some of the most joyous and delicate art the world has ever seen. All this was taking place in Italy because of the amazing financial boom it was enjoying under art-loving royal patrons.
Centuries later, our age has been witness to this phenomenon repeatedly. Wars, recessions and periods of financial boom have each left a profound mark. Thus those born before 1946 were called ‘The Silent Generation’ because of the deprivation of recession and the hardships of war that they had to cope with. An entire generation went through life with heads hung down.
Then, came the sunshine years of peace and plenty. No wonder that people born after World War II came to known as ‘The Baby Boomers’. There was optimism in the air and people had money to experiment with lifestyles. Who, for example, can forget the heady days of the late-Sixties, 1968 in particular, when students erupted in a revolt that was daring yet endearing. Love and lament were equally in the air.
Up until today, people continue to be nostalgic about the hippie era. Its excesses may have consumed the gullible but the joys of that age also led to a bountiful flowering of the mind. If Pandit Ravi Shankar, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and The Beatles were beckoning the world to the exotic, groups like ABBA were lilting out an altogether new beat. Fashion and literature were strumming refreshingly bold themes, even as technology was reaching for the Moon. And why just the Moon, the information technology age is largely the product of the Baby Boomers’ imagination.
Despite being so productively fertile otherwise, that generation seems to have faltered on the reproductive front. The wonderful world of plenty that was their creation was brought to its knees by their offspring. It is the children of the Baby Boomers, people born in the late-Sixties and thereafter, who became the financial masters of the world at a very young age.
They are the ones who were making the major decisions in the high street banks of New York that led to the global financial meltdown and the drying up of creative juices. Art and literature no longer sprout stunning new forms. One doesn’t hear of path-breaking writers or great sculptors any longer. Now it is staid sameness. The young no longer demand the impossible, like those who had so famously barricaded the streets of Paris in May 1968.
Perhaps that is why the latest generation, born after 1980, is known as GenY. It questions every issue with a ‘Y’ — ‘Y’ should I get a job?’; ‘Y should I shift out and find my own home?’; ‘Y should I clean my room?’ Of course, it will be unfair to tar an entire generation with the same brush. But caught as GenY is between the age of plenty and the current spell of uncertainty, its members could well turn out to be a confused lot. That is a worrying prospect because previous generations, from those of the Silent Age to the Baby Boomers and thereafter, would be dependent upon the decisions and actions of GenY.
This generation’s acts of commission and omission would influence our daily lives far more intimately and comprehensively than ever before. Earlier, people lived in units of families, tribes and communities, often disconnected from the daily destinies of others. But in our age globalisation is the intrusive buzz word — our stocks plunge every time the DOW dips.
GenY, therefore, carries an enormous extra cross — one that might hold them accountable for oil spills like that in the Gulf of Mexico, or for failing to meet the minimum aspirations of the tribals vis-a vis their heritage of natural resources. But isn’t it is all so unfair? Y should GenY be called upon to shoulder the burdens of the past?
The new generation is raw of age and relatively innocent. It was bred on plenty with promises of a lot more in perpetuity. It was told to believe that all would always be well, that the good times would keep rolling in.
Yet the tide has turned, abruptly and painfully. With the Governments across the world tightening belts, the consumer spending is going to be squeezed steadily making good times feel like a mirage. But adversity could be their big chance, provided they seek the impossible. For all you know that quest may bring out the best in them — a Picasso here, a Hemingway there, maybe even a Gandhi like transformational figure.
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