Someone sent me an email…

“Frankly I’m amazed how someone whom (I guess it should be “from”) older generation writes almost like us the younger generation.”

Though that is a nice compliment, I feel bad that the older generation is perceived as being different…and not on the same wavelength.

We are all people….let not older people think that just because they have spent longer on this earth, they are somehow better, and let not younger people think that because they are fresh and energetic and full of ideas, they are better! If we can learn to just see each other as people, it would be great.

One of the things I like about many people in Bangalore is that they do take me for the person I am; my gender, age, and other labels don’t seem to matter. In fact, one of my friends, when I referred to him as “young”, said, very rightly, “Why do YOU mention young? Do I ever mention old?”…and I have heeded that tip!

I also have friends who are 20 to 30 years older than I am, whose minds are sharp,whose opinions are open, and whose hearts are also warm and friendly.

I have had arguments with other people of my age who say that “today’s kids” are pub rats and mall rats. I tell them that they simply have not come into contact with the other kind, that’s all…and I have been lucky to do so.

These are the people who take the time out of their busy jobs to follow their interests with a passion, who often volunteer to help out others on a regular basis, and who make me feel really proud to be counted amongst their friends!

But…if I start displaying the rigidity of thinking, and the intolerance that I associate with mental old age…I hope someone will give me a swift KITP (Kick In The Pants) and point it out…but who knows, perhaps the fossilization of my mind would be an irreversible process, and like many people I know, I will continue to think that I am open in my thinking, even as I sink into the morass of prejudice and preconception.

One of the first signs of this, I would imagine, would be a lament on “I don’t know what the world is coming to nowadays. In my days….”… as long as I feel that today is as great a day in my life as the past, and this world is as wonderful a place to live in as it used to be, I am OK!

For example, I can’t bemoan the “old days” when people used to write “lovely handwritten letters”, because what seems to be forgotten was the time taken for those letters to reach! I remember those “airmails” from my brothers-in-law, arriving after a month of two, when the news would already be stale….I do love the instant communication of today. In the same way, several minus that people bemoan today come with their own pluses.

Here’s an image I liked very much, of a kite flying in the glowing evening sky, at Madivala Lake, when we had gone there for the Bird Race…I like the contrast between its apparent freedom, and its actually being tied down by that single thread!