Changing times

I've been talking to a lot of people these days. This is for one of them. While interacting with different age groups, I've realised how much I get to learn from them. Sometimes I've felt too stagnated and opinionated on certain issues, these people help clear the fog instantly. Also it's a great idea to put forth our views without feeling repressed or judgemental about them too. I believe when such freedom of thought is accorded, people open up more comfortably and the conversation gets a direction. In this age of instant communication mediums, we've lost that subtle art of expressing our feelings. There are a hundred messages from our coworkers and friends and acquaintances all that begin and stop within two sentences usually: "Hi. What's up? Been long." Not that I wouldn't be happy when someone I haven't spoken to in ages greets me first, but the happiness is really short lived when I discover we don't have anything to carry further our talks. One can't steer a conversation alone. At least I can't do that.

The entire premises of having a conversation is that two or more people express themselves. I think people have forgotten what it means to express themselves. Not to be judgemental here, but yes more and more of them use emoticons which perhaps seem great on screens, but what about really conveying the emotion to the other person? We have left that part of ourselves in the past itself, when we would talk to each other, to elders, to the people we met on streets. These days, even a smile to get by past walking people is so hard to come. I have a lot of complaints about this segregatory system; women engrossed in their cell phones during train journeys. It's rather saddening to see each one of them plugging in earphones and shutting the world they are so intimate with in an hour of journey. As a student when I had started my first train journey, I was always checked on in by the regular travellers and it was a reassuring feeling. I got my first lessons of public conversations especially in cramped places like trains there. I saw a sisterhood there, linked with a strong invisible thread of care and concern.

In the last five years, a lot has changed about train journeys. Mumbai's lifeline now seems to be a source of not interaction but stressed women venting out at each other. The understanding seems to have gone in a toss. I was shocked to see how rudely could women behave with each other and with young college girls. It was almost inappropriate to see them mouthing against their family upbringing and such issues. A bad word could hurt anyone, even strangers. It was unbearable to see the polluted atmosphere within the ladies coach on local trains. I used to think that local trains made the divide between class and status disappear, but what I've been seeing lately just saddens me. Our hatred for the lower middle classes has become public and with such vengeance. It's disappointing and a blot on a city that prides itself on being a melting pot of cultures and equal opportunities in our nation. When Bob Dylan sang, The times they are a-changin', did he expect the world to change so starkly? Some songs are powerful enough in their prophecies.

The order is rapidly fadin'

And the first one now will later be last

For the times they are a-changin'