A time machine view: 2020's reflections in circa 2100

 

The television coverage on the nabbing and interrogation of actresses in alleged drug-use and drug-link cases are unprecedented. The Ratha Jatra (the Chariot Festival) of Mahaprabhu the Supreme Lord Shree Jagannatha and HIS brother Prabhu Shree Balabhadra, and HIS sister Subhadra in the Holy Land of Shree Jagannatha Puri, to my knowledge and experiences, seems to have got the second position compared to the ignoble entourage of drug addicts from their residences to NCB headquarters and then back.

Ooooffffff, what a terrible society we are in. The 45 minutes of commuting of the actresses are getting covered with such details that also cover their breakfast tables rituals like their sipping of black coffee to donning of their outfits. The color and size of the vermilion (sindoor, we Indians know) put on the forehead of the actresses are also described in detail.

Oh my God, save the society from such madness in making actors as demi-gods.

Let us, for a moment, move forward against "time", without a TIME MACHINE of course, and place us 20 years hence. How would we view the present incidents in the rearview mirror of eons?

Before that let me tell you an anecdote with a small child on the subject of “history”.

         A child, obviously not interested in studying "history", yesterday asked me about the logic and the benefits (if any) of studying “history” in the present era of biotech and infotech. She was thinking "history" means Akbar, Sahajahan, Bentick et al in all. these are unnecessary characters to know about even we feel. The great kings and kingdoms like that of Rana Pratap, Laxmi Bai, Suheldev are erased or minimized and the invaders to India have been given prominence. However, I thought it very correct to explain it to the curious mind that "history" is much more and much worthy than the ones we are taught about in classrooms. 

I pulled the right strings from the canopy of my memories to explain to the child that – history has been narrowly presented to many of us. For example, I told her, for generations, we have been studying that – Indian history commences with the periods of Moghuls, Turks, and business companies like East India Company of the British regime, and other encroachers to India, and ends with the attainment of independence from British raj in 1947. Indian school students post 1947, unfortunately, have not given the opportunity to understand and read ancient Indian cultures, Kings, and kingdoms as part of the Indian history, at least in education curricula. Similarly, "World history" means to us as the French revolution, and so on.

It has not been told to our children in the school curricula that history is also of (a) development of atomic theory, (b) anthropology, (c) development of democracy through the eras of fascism, communism, and liberalism, (d) scientific developments starting from sparking of fire through friction between logs of woods to the stage of auto guided missiles through auto-generated fires, (e) evolution of humans from the stone-age to the age of the humanoids. I explained to her that we need to study the history of all these subjects because there available are the seeds of learning. There lie the treasures from which we need to pick up the good ones and dispel the bad ones.

It is to be realized, for example, that in the development of the atomic theory, it is but for the Rutherford there was Bohr. And it is but for the Heisenberg, and many other eminent physicists and chemists, today the humankind has reached to the stage of nuclear power and dreaming of making interstellar journeys. It is the pages of the science of the earlier generations that are giving us sensibilities to AVOID another Pearl Harbour or another Hiroshima. It is the same “history” again, which is now refraining all the Nations to wage war against each other. But for the Learnings from the pages of the “history”, there could have been more Hiroshimas.

And history has its showering of good judgments on mankind to refrain from aggression and wars. But for the 1962 Sino-India war, which we of the present generation is aware of from history, today there could have been a nuclear war in the borders of India and China.

Now let us come back to the point where we started this discussion.

It is important to remember that the history of Bollywood is full of graceful actors and actresses. People for generations idolized these actors of Yester generations. It is for those actors that Bollywood grew to be comparable with other entertainment industries across the world. But now things are changing. And the pain is that these are changing with turn of bad events,  like the involvement of actors in politics, regionalism, caste, creed, and religions. The erstwhile mind-your-own-entertainment-business Bollywood is also full of many persons and characters that are diagrammatically opposite to their deeds and deliverances in and off the screen. The arena of Bollywood must be cleansed thoroughly lest when the present period will become history it will be remembered for all bad reasons.

Actresses are not extra beautiful then common females we come across in our daily lives. In fact, the civility contains more generous and graceful personas then those we view in televisions and cinema screens. Let us make our culture, and GODs GREAT, not the silly dented and painted faces.

Let our cultural places be covered in minute details so that the next generation will learn good things.

History has its importance and place of decency for posterity always. Let this be preserved in all spheres of activities in society.

That was my advice to the child of curiosity about studying “history” as a sacrosanct subject.