Karmic Gap

We live in a pluralistic society. Each and every speck of living matter has tasted a pinch of their own kind that differ in all possible ways namely race, gender, crusty, crumbly, young, adult, haggard, exhausted, shrinking templed, grizzly haired, grey haired, ear and nose haired, whiny, bitchy, patriarchal, stubborn, adamant, controlling, rusty, stinky (due to age or the lack of any contact with water or soap, popular among teens due to a mentally developed aversion), etc. If you don't have a clue of what I am talking about read furthur.

There is prejudice w.r.t the simplest and most basic properties that one is born with like their shades of skin color judged by how fair and lovely you are born, class which is usually judged by how much of fair and lovely cream you can afford or how organic you can get when buying vegetables, intellectual capability judged by the number of words you pretend to know from the dictionary (most of which turn out to be colloquial) and the number of acronyms that are adjoined to your name (to convey some sort of proverbial truth i.e. accomplishments that might not be obvious from the name itself), the fruity or musky smelling bodies, the country and continent you are born in which has developed a list acronyms such as FOB, ABCD, LTOB, etc and most importantly prejudice w.r.t age unless of course if you are Jessica Simpson who wishes she were mentally older or Michael Jackson who “wishes” he were still a kid or at least a white male even though the plastic on his face is melting down and soon he would be magically extrapolated from his skin as the Beijing Tigers with a morbid dread of effeminate laughter lines.

There is prejudice even w.r.t the honorific you indicate when you buy a flight ticket at Emirates, a world class United Arab Emirates based airlines, which not only requires your name, address and passport number but also an honorific which include a gamut of options such not only Mr, Mrs, etc but also Al Haj (For muslims who have completed their visit to Mecca), Sri/Srimathi, Archbishop, president, minister, Sultan, etc. So if you indicate a Sultan, president or celebrity you are automatically assigned first class in the flight unless you are a Jew in which case you will be denied a ticket and transferred to Israir airlines.

Since we are all born with these differences, I call it the Karmic gap. It was nobody’s fault that hitler had only one testicle, or that Cher was born a woman, or that I am an engineer and in the same token it was nobody’s fault that a yale student graduating with a C heads a powerful nation either. Some groups call it fortune; I won’t even go to the extent of calling it misfortune but Karma. In the same way, I consider the generation gap as an element of karmic gap. I am sure every one of us has heard an older member of our family or friend telling us that “in my days things were so much harder. You guys are having it so easy.” Looking around at my generation I wonder if the “having it so easy” really referred to alcohol, drugs, sex, porn, etc in which case it’s an affirmative Yes but if it refers to our lives then it could vary since I can’t really speak for Paris Hilton's “troubled life” fighting out the lawsuit for her lost sex tapes. Every member talks about how great their respective generation is. So the other day I took a look at our previous generation i.e. our parents who grew up approximately just after the Second World War and around the Indian partition and independence. What would it be like for us growing up then with today’s mindset?

My interest towards generation gap was born out of the conversation I struck with a british man in his 50’s the other day and we somehow got down talking about men in 50s’ favorite topic - generation gap. He said “We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors! We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times we learned to solve the problem. We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. Unthinkable! We played 'tag' and 'it' - and cricket, sometimes that hard ball would really hurt. We got cut and broke bones and broke teeth, and strangely there were no law suits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame, but us. Do you remember accidents? We had fall outs, thumped each other, and got black and blue and learned to get over it.”

I was praying I wouldn't convulse in hysterical amusement when I heard him talk. I really can’t speak for the women back then since a. I am not one and b. they didn't play a big part in anything besides getting pregnant, raising us slobs and cleaning the house, none of which I have expertise in. So let me speak for the men since they were the “responsible” chums who used to play cricket outside their house without gloves and pads, getting hurt at the wrong places and not being able to sue companies for injuries. They created babies out of nowhere just from kissing the opposite sex. Back then, even movies never showed any unwanted scenes, usually love making scenes transformed into birds chirping and flying into azure skies or flowers blooming. Entertainment was so much different, even the Beatles were big back then and in general, songs did not contain lyrics that were pornographic like the ones now by Tyrese, Beyonce or Marques Houston. Even the ones that are now "PG-13" kind are way too sexual. The list of words in the dictionary has now increased drastically with words like bootilicious (not sure of the correct spelling). On the other hand, this is also the age of the i-pod and the numerous sleek devices available on the market that allow american parents to monitor their kids at each and every step they are taking for which the poor asian parents and kids are slogging at the manufacturing depts of Taiwan and China. I don't even want to go to the call center story.

I hope you can see what my point is (I really feel sorry for people who are confused at this point. You just need to think harder and come out of the box. You might then get somewhere!)

My theory is that the world is heading towards a single point. Over time, with all the inter-racial mixes of different colors, there would just be one color. Can't say which one that would be, maybe a shade of mahogony? And with the baby boomers and advancement in stem cell research (scientists claim to extend human life to 5000 yrs)there would just be one generation. With the rising middle class and diminishing pooor and rich there would just be one class. Anyway thats my ideal world afterall. Who knows what its gonna be like. But I doubt if there ever will be a universal religion in which case Tom Cruise is screwed. Embracing the karmic gap and accepting one another's differences is the only way to survive this world that is flat.