TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2024
KSS Pillai
It is the usual complaint of parents that their children spend much time with their smartphones, carrying them even to the bedrooms and toilets. The young ones reply impatiently, their attention on the mobile phone when the parents ask them questions. The 'disease' has spread to the grown-ups also, who have stopped complaining about the hours they used to spend alone. Chatting with known and unknown friends has become common for all at all times of the day and night.
The internet has changed the lifestyle of people everywhere. It has brought the 'global village' into existence, bringing people of different cultures and countries closer like a small village. It is now a community in which people are connected with computers, smartphones, televisions, and similar inventions. The propagation of media technologies has interconnected remote corners of the world. The world is tied together into a single globalised marketplace and village.
Those who migrate to the 'greener pastures' in other countries know that their children will marry and remarry several times without any feeling of guilt. Marriages that were once considered sacred have become another arrangement of convenience, changing partners on flimsy grounds. As the unitary family system is prevalent in almost all parts of the world, the usual practice is for them to leave their parents and live independently. Everybody knows that the new generations will have no affiliation with the countries of their parents' origin after a few years.
One can already see the effect of the world becoming a compact one in matrimony. Gone are the days of arranged marriages. Religions and castes no longer play a role in fixing marriages, as the parents have become mere spectators nodding their heads to whatever the new generation decides.
I received the wedding invitation of a postgraduate doctor boy recently. He was marrying his classmate from another state with a different mother tongue. Though his parents were initially against the marriage, they remained mute spectators later as they knew the wedding would take place irrespective of their consent. When I last heard, the boy's parents were practising dance at an academy, as they had to dance at the wedding.
Are we not returning to the age when the religion of people was not that important? I have heard about kings belonging to a particular community bringing foreigners to their land and helping them build churches and mosques.
Like the kings of the past, our politicians use the election time to flaunt their secular nature if it brings votes in their favour. They merrily don the dress of people belonging to other religious groups and take food with them if sufficient publicity is given in the media.
Our neighbours in a condominium in a megacity in Kerala belong to different religions. Our children play together, and the young parents do not care about religion. They invite one another to their homes when they celebrate religious festivals.
The social life has been one of the casualties due to the modern inventions. People no longer look forward to the weekly holidays to get together with their friends, spending long hours together exchanging news while devouring tasty dishes prepared by the hosts.
