The Generation Why

College students Vivek, Anupama and Raghavendra are in a McDonald's outlet. They have just mutually agreed that the national anthem is in Sanskrit. Vivek says one of India's problems is "inflation". But isn't it a single-digit figure? Isn't it under control?

He puts his hand on his forehead and asks for "five minutes to get the right answer". When he has figured it out, he says, "Since our forex reserves have decreased, prices have increased".

All their complaints against India seem to be borrowed from newspaper wrappings.

Karan Johar must know something about Indian youth's nationalism, a silent phenomenon that everybody else has missed. He created pink and yellow classrooms that nobody in India has ever been to, and made Kajol say "yo" in his first film. In his second, he played the national anthem right in the middle of the story. There must be an intelligent reason why his characters are conveniently patriotic. But he doesn't agree there is necessarily a reason. "I didn't include the national anthem in Kabhi Kushi... to play to the gallery. It was just part of the narration. Also, I don't think the Indian youth is so patriotic that I should attract them through nationalism." India's modern young, he says, "are totally focused on themselves. And you show money, they like it".

Somewhere near the gates of NM college, there are girls in formal dress walking with flowers in their hands. It's 'Rose Day' here. Boys and girls give roses to each other. Red for love and yellow to promise decency. The boy and the girl who bag the highest number of roses become Rose King and Rose Queen. At the fringes of all this activity, there are candid voices that say, "We call most Indians 'they'. There are not many in this college who want to live in India. Riots, bomb blasts, these things don't affect us." In the middle of all this, once again a student is asked what are the three most important issues that face India today. The girl is reasonably bright. She has a great respect for "the Indian educational system". She thinks hard. "Corruption," she says as expected. "Poverty," she adds. Then she is stuck, like many. Could it be that the third problem is that in the scrambling minds of India's future, there is no third problem?

All About The Zippies
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