I have always believed and claimed that our generation is the cursed one. We want to live a fast pace life, life full of experiments and thrill, but after a point we are bounded by our “culture” or rather the values our parents have (enforced) given us. Some place we agree with those values and some places we don’t, but either ways we live by the rules.
I felt our next generation would find things much different or rather much easier until I met a friend. Few weeks before I happened to have dinner with a friend. He not only proved me wrong but also made me realized I am a Mumbaikar.
Honestly, from childhood , I am proud to be a Mumbaiate. I believe a Mumbaikar can survive anywhere. Mumbai has given a lot to people and truly it is a “karma bhoomi”. But so has many other cities in India. I always get annoyed when people say outsiders have spoilt Mumbai or rather any other place. Mumbai is Mumbai because of everyone living their. If people from various places wouldn’t have come to Mumbai , it wouldn’t have been where it is now. Ofcourse every good thing comes with unwanted baggage. We have few things like any other city does : corruption, slums blah blah blah.
Well, getting back to my friend , according to him his so called golden “Pune” has been ripped apart by outsiders and so he is going to kill them or make them leave home. And please, I am not exaggerating, according to him all those who have come from other place make all kinds of nuisance in his homeland and so they should be thrown out. I could see the anger in his face. On top of it , he hates Mumbai because it has become too crowded for him to live. Listening to him made me sad, this is today’s generation.
I was looking at it in a different way. For me it was like someone standing on a complete foreign land and talking about how his own small town is been populated by the worse people on this earth. Does he even realize that he is doing the same? And was he really unhappy about how crowded Mumbai is or it is all about he himself not getting any place their. Any of his claims did not make any sense to me. People come to his Pune and drink a lot and make nuisance, hello you do the same. People come to Pune and do not respect others , ah ha what about you.. ..
Well in all this, I wonder what are we going to teach our next generation, are they also going to fight for their own piece of land or realize that we are known for diversity, respect others and welcome them. I know we aren’t perfect; we need a lot to change but is fighting amongst ourselves the answer to this. I always had a hope that may be if we don’t do anything right of our motherland but at least we wont do anything wrong. But now I can do nothing but just sit and pray that there would be a day when we all can be human and yeah I am going to “just sit and pray” because I too am from the same crowd who wont want to do anything to make a better place to live in , the only difference in me is I don’t have any hatred for others.
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