Anyway, coming to the point, I have been closely observing a number of families, their logistics etc. off-late. I am fortunate enough to have friends/contacts from diversified backgrounds. and I feel restless to tell you all what I feel when I get into their shows and know the daily knitty-gritty of life. This reflects the same in many of your,mine and several other families too.
Lets talk business, bhai-saab. Loved the word bhai- especially after the BROTHERS (Mukesh and Anil) got united and upon knowing that our India's 10% growth rate is well on the cards again after the shake-hand.
Folks,
India is moving. The lower of the middle class is moving to the middle, the latter in turn, is moving to the upper of the class. Some of them are even crossing over to the absolute top tier of the prosperity percentile.
The Sharmas in Delhi, Iyers in Chennai, Boses in Kolkata, Dhabolkars in Mumbai, Vadapallis in Hyderabad and an assortment of all in Bengaluru, share something in common. They mostly live in their own homes, cook in modular kitchens, drive their own cars and take regular vacations in up-market resorts in India or abroad.
The upwardly mobile has gone way beyond what their parents’ could even day-dream about.
Senior Sharma to senior Iyer aspired to get the children through college and get them settled. Their ultimate wish was to own a home before retirement. They were the people who wistfully imagined of a life with just enough money to rise above the scrounging mediocrity. But it always remained out of reach for most. Life was challenging enough to make the everyday issues seem like chores. Who would have thought of it as a blessing in disguise?
The middle class has come a long way since. People have moved up within and across the class. Neither the Sharma’s nor the Iyers have to face the daily corrosive uncertainty - about themselves or their children. There is affordability to secure a good life and a future for all. Naturally, the seniors expect us to be worry-free and happy. Interestingly, we do not seem to be so.
Today the upwardly mobile Dabholkars are affluent, educationally decorated, successful yet ailing. They seem to suffer from a depressive ailment that we can call mal-calibration. In simple terms, it is the lack of sense of proportion of the problems encountered in life. So individuals are reeling under a variety of stress and strain which seem as insurmountable as the crib fences are to a toddler. Only difference is unlike the toddler, they never grow up to realise that the fence is just two and a half feet in height. People are suffering from a loss of perspective since there is no major hurdle in their lives against which they can calibrate the daily disappointments. So what were puddles to the senior Dhabolkar appears to be bottomless pits to the junior.
It is disturbingly amusing to see that a mere difference of choices of vacation spots can evoke a friction between Bose spouses as would have an incidence of physical violence in earlier times. How a couple of near perfect education and wealth can drift apart on questions of settling abroad or buying a home or picking the living room furniture or even on who pays for what? To them each of these are as deep and disturbing as was the dilemma faced by the senior Boses when the date to pay the home rent and the school fees coincided and they just had means for one. In absence of real problems the daily trivialities now appear as serious misery. Worse still, the situation is compunded by the fact that with increased affluence Vadapallis can afford more - further increasing the number possible points of contentions! Untreated, mal-calibration can over time break families apart or merely continue a diseased existence. Children wither under perennial clouds of misplaced priorities and even pick up the malady to pass on to theirs.
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Look around and you will see TV-ad-families - in malls, resorts and gatherings. Wait till the end of the social commercial and the emotions ooze out of the plaster of age defying make-ups.
The lot of the middle-class may have changed. But there are millions whose haven’t. Then how have Vadapallis lost the reference of reality? The truth is, in addition to losing perspective of their own lives, they have also insulated ourselves from the world around. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain the disconnect when everyday travails of the less fortunate are beamed 24/7 on the 30 inch LCDs in our living rooms. The Iyers to the Sharmas have compartmentalised themselves. So they do not even calibrate against the reality beyond their immediate neighbourhood – the unending struggle for existence, for food and for shelter, for freedom and for dignity; struggle for even the fundamental right to live.
I just wish someday we will look through the crib fences and comprehend the sheer blessings that we have chanced upon. Someday we will be understanding and serene enough to extend a helping hand to others whose plight shocked us into gratitude. Someday everyone will be prosperous enough not to have any reference to calibrate against! By that time we will have grown beyond the fencing of our personal cribs.
Restless,
Jd.
