Modern Life Style Takes Over our Cultural Life

 

                       Modern Life-Style Takes Over Cultural Life                                                                                                                   (By-B.R. Kumawat)

                                       Life never stops but runs for  ever.                                                                                                                Body must die  but life dies never.                                                   \                                                            Life feeds ever on Tradition's nurture.                                                                                                          It's Tradition alone that begets Culture.

The essence of these philosophical lines imparts culture through the best medium of tradition on the basis of which man is differentiated from the beasts, courtesy from vulgarity and the Earth from other planets. Without the treasure of tradition, life is not social; but only biological appropriate only to beasts; not to human beings.

Addressing the dignitaries I pay my best thanks to this assembly designed to settle if the Modern Life-Style is Taking Over Our Cultural Life or not. I would like to draw the attention of the dignitaries, the judges, my ambitious competitors and of all the other audience at my views that are to go in favour to the the proposal.

Dear audience! We have stepped today on the advanced land of 21st century that is specifically known for the arena of Science sustaining a facilitated life much away from the dreams of our medieval ancestors. Our space journeys have opened several new lands to live on, our weapon- researches have made us free from all warrish threats and our What's App-Face Book has put the world onto our palms. But , think for a while, have we made  this journey straightforwardly to the present era? No .....! Not a bit. We have made this journey of advancement step by step safeguarding the experiences of one generation for the benefit of other generation. Every coming generation has sought new efforts and added something new to the previously gained achievement and thus the modern aspect of the universe has come to human vision. This generation-to-generation on-going process of life being developed  is called tradition.

The word 'tradition' itself is sufficient to interpret all the glory of modern era. All modern scientific advancements had been  envisaged by our ancestors before thousands of years. Our scriptures sanctify this belief. The Pushp Viman of the Ramayan had envisaged the helicopter, in the Mahabharat Sanjay distantly watching the battle of Kurukshetra envisaged the  television and alike Bhishm Pitamah while sitting there in his palace talking to the Ganga had envisaged the whats app-talking of the modern age. It means it's tradition after the glorious modern age.

Culture is just a child of tradition. Today man has varied cultures but they all have been sprouted from and are fostered by certain traditions. That's why the life sustained by a definite culture is healthy and strong; and vital even in all negative situations. Culture may there be in its varied forms but all its forms are aimed only to make life healthy and wealthy of all expectations. This is the main reason that cultural life is always advanced to any other form of life.

Life without culture soon gets distorted in its every feature. Today; we see; some baseless powers of personality and behaviour without being sanctified by tradition distort our cultural life under the affectation of modernity. Such life-styles have come to fashion that they fully avoid our tradition supporting our culture and consequently  our cultural life gets distorted.

This distortion to cultural life is due to various areas of modern life style.  Today the fast songs have made us forget the rhythmical songs of the last century; that would   glorify our traditional life, a crazy race after government service has made us forget all about our traditional occupations due to which we have lost our self-reliance and inherited skills, our over- facilitated life has made us forget all about the direct contact to nature due to which several bodily and psychic diseases attack us day and night and , after all, our blind-imitation to modern pleasures and our over-dependence on Science and Reason have made us forget all about God; the Creator. We have inclined not only to atheism but also to blasphemy due to which we have made ourselves a victim to anxiety, depression and failure. We have acquired material prosperity at the cost of mental peace and inner satisfaction.

The WWE hair cutting style and the french cut beard of the boys have made them spontaneous enough to despise all the rebukes and fears of elders. The on-line games have abstained the youth from muscle exercises. The kid cars, Chhota Bheem, Doromen etc. like TV shows for kids have abstained them from the grandmother's stories fully filled with moral values. The careless use of mobiles have made the youth be addicted to video-watching, not anyhow common to our culture. Not only this, the editing  apps are misused to misinterpret our glorified past and the over-dependence of whats app-face book like social media have engulfed our family as well as community talk.

Today the short clothing of females, their sleeveless shirts and their step cut hair style, their curtain bangs, their shag cut etc. provide them additional freedom that may incite mishaps. The tendency of male-female equality and the reduction of genderic discrimination  has brought the opposite genders so close that a sudden friendship takes place and how soon that friendship gets transformed into so-called love, nobody knows. The scene doesn't end here. Love and madness run side by side and love-marriage gets place. This marriage without the bond of tradition and without the safety of culture soon gets broken or runs with no ideals due to which the next generation becomes fully ignorant to cultural values.

In the traditional set up of education the children would accomplish their study-period through the prescribed text books in  well disciplined classrooms under the full authority and control of the teacher. The modern life style has made the children so much facilitated with pass books and E- material that they never get acknowledged to the real content. The syllabus is reduced, teacher-power is reduced and the percentage of marks is increased. A higer percentage has become a point of prestige. It is the modern life style that counts percentage; not knowledge. The over-gaining marks attitude has defeated the knowledge-based culture of our education system today. The showy shining of the modern age has pushed the pearly originality of our long aged culture into incessant darkness.

This assembly of thoughtful audience  has to consider at what extent the modern life style has snatched our cultural life. We were the products of such a culture that was enriched with all life-giving elements, that bestowed us a highly contemplating mind and that was sanctified even by Gods. But, today that superb culture has been buried under the morbid and false aptitudes of modernity. Our culture would give us  a vital opportunity of being there in the company of nature gazing every aspect of nature. We would be charmed at the chirping of birds, we would collect peacock feathers, we would watch the rainbow with  unblinking  eyes and we would play with lambs. All these activities would connect us to cultural values i.e. solidarity, affection, co-operation etc. The modern age  has changed our agrarian life into industrial rush dragging us from our rural background to urban gloss. I don't mean to defame the industrialism and urbanism. Of course they are good, but only upto they don't attack our culture and tradition.

Progress of any field must not give its side-effects to the culture and tradition. As a modern progress we made law-courts under the democratic set up of our ruling system in the mid-20th century. We intended to provide ourselves an all over safety through the law-courts. These law-courts have beyond doubted given us individual safety but individual safety doesn't mean cultural safety. We have never thought how deeply and hideously  these law-courts have attacked our culture. These law-courts have sanctioned inter-caste marriage, live in relationship, beloved-keeping, lesbianship etc. that are considered good in no culture. It means our law-courts engrossed in  modern life-style attack our cultural life. Society is superior to law courts. Social rules are more life-giving than the legal rules to a descent life.

A culture is always to foster life. It sprouts a positive energy to life. An all around development is bestowed to life only by culture and so life is only to be cultural. If the cultural life is attacked by a negative force, it becomes a pious duty to all to defend it. Culture is a legacy to us left by our ancestors who expected us to leave it in its same pious form for the generation coming after us. So, we must have an intellectual fight against all the forces negative to culture. A self -participation is needed here rather than being assured on our governments or on law-courts. Sometimes our governments and law-courts seem to be so much engrossed in their own interests that they seem to be unknown to our prestigious culture.

It is not our culture to condemn the faith of others even if we are atheist but if we do so, we commit a cultural offence for which our law-courts have no remedy under the pretext of freedom of expression. It is not our culture to give a part of  legacy to the married daughters but law-courts sanction it. It means law and culture may have a contradiction, but then culture needs more attention.

It's my heart and intellect-felt concept that this assembly here is absolutely aware at the cultural-life being attacked by the modern life-style and that this assembly is aptly thoughtful in having a debate over the burning present issue in whose favour I have proceeded my pleads.

   Thanks for the attentive listening.

                                                                    Jai Hind!

Flowers

                                                                                                         
                Flowers

My village had a garden of flowers. Peculiar flowers would they be. They were flowers of every colour, flowers of every scent and flowers of every type. The names of Champa, Chameli, Rosie have circulated from our garden. By every mean they would be attractive enough to distract the eyes of passersby and I would be much possessive to them thinking that somehow they were for me. They would smile at me, laugh at me and gaze at me and I in all possible ways would give them proper response but I would neither touch nor ever pluck them for the fear of my father. 

My father….. a dangerous father, a bullying father, father of fathers he would be. Acknowledged to new methods of threshing, a tyrant father he would be. He  had two eyes ……one for me and another for the rest of the world. He would seem as if he had incarnated to foster and safeguard the flowers. Not alone I but even anybody else if ever dared a little would be a wanted subject of his rage. Such was my father. He would seem to be believing, “Flowers are not to be plucked, flowers are to be presented” but Bholu would say, “Flowers are ours. They are so beautiful only to please us. Nature has bloomed them for us. We have every right to touch them, to pluck them.  They are to adorn our passion. Nobody can part us with them.” 

This Bholu was the leader of our circle. For me he was more than a leader. A saviour I would think him against my father’s frequent denials. He would incite new hopes to my failures. Newly created hopes would fill new blood in my veins but I was a hanging pendulum between Bholu and my father. 

After all, the flowers were my sacred aim, my heart danced with their charming name. No one was less beautiful, no one was more beautiful, they were all most beautiful. The whole village had the rarest glory with their scent and shining. New buds seemed no longer buds but very soon they would seem changing into flowers and mixing with the former blooming. Bholu would say, “ Flowers are ours. They are to be gained, not to be pained. To despise them is to pain them. Whoever despises them is a dead clod on this planet.” And I would be the true follower of his philosophy. If my father hadn’t been, I don’t know how many flowers I would have plucked per day. 

My days would be the victims of the father’s stony heart but my nights would be blessed with the scenty flowers hoodwinking the all-alert father. So sweet dreams I would have incessantly for ten hours and then would wake up only by the father’s morning rebuke. At once a two folded loss I would feel… .one due to father’s presence and another due to flowers' absence. 

What a lovely flowers they would be!  All would call them by their fashion. My grandma would call them birds,  my father would call babies and Bholu would call them hearts. For me they were everything. Full of pollen they would be but no beetle hovering over them could I bear. But princes from distant villages would often be invited by the elderly folk of my village to have a look of the flowers and they would depart with their satisfying faces. Very soon disguising as kings they would return with their dancing friends and take away their chosen flowers. My father would be the most pleasant witness of the flowers’ departure. I wondered why the whole village would sing even at its loss .

One by one the flowers would seem to me to be going away. At the yearly return of the festival of Holy I would count how many flowers had  lost their twigs. Looking at those yearly returned flames I would reckon my loss with a weeping face. Just then I would find consoling Bholu standing by me. I would feel his right hand across my shoulders and listen to his consoling words, “ Flowers are ours. Our garden has much fertility to beget more flowers. Wretched are those who keep eye on the flowers of others.”

The spring of flowers was to me the autumn of sorrows. When this autumn began to rest on my innocent face, my father brought me one flower from some other garden. I felt its scent and shining and began to play with it. By and by I forgot the old flowers of our garden and my heart satisfied its full ambition with this new one. Now, after twenty years, I see there are no flowers in our garden. Even Bholu says, ”Flowers are not ours. Flowers have gone away. There are only buds never to change into flowers.” Of course there are only buds in our garden but my sixteen years old son says “ They are flowers” and  just then with all of a sudden my dead father seems  to be coming into me. I feel myself saying, “No, they are babies.” ……. This is the father tradition. This is the immortal tradition ….. Never to fade but to travel generation after generation. Let’s foster this father tradition. 

Poetic Criticism

 Sujata Bhatt’s Voice of Unwanted Girl

The beauty of form, the beauty of thought
With a strong passion, in poetry are wrought.
Dear Sujata Bhatt, you are not a Bhaat
Or you would have known what is the art.
How can a foetus hear the outside noise
Traffic, monsoon, wind or the Bombay voice?
Does Fancy forsake all her real reason
Or Nature forget all her viewed vision?

 O Mom! What made thee abort me
 For my fault that I was a she?
 Didst thou have a virgin’s shame
 Or my dad have Shikhandi name?

Your autopsy room, your pomegranate,
Your formaldehyde poetry does never rate.

 Soon thou got thyself rid of me
 And all were pleased with thee.
 Thy green sari, thy hair blossoms
 Refilled  passion  in  thy  bosoms.
 Thou crushed a flower in the bud
 And  mixed  a  fairy  in  the  mud.
 What a beautiful butterfly I would be all!
 What a sweetheart would a prince me call!
 My dreams to fruit could never set.
 No fair-sex may this planet ever get!

Music and rhyme and meter poetry needs.
True soul often sprouts this-like better seeds.
            Mother mother mother
            Look look look look look
            Look for look for look for

                                      Poetically criticised by
                                              B.R. Kumawat
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