The different years in a life have unique vigour, energy, aspirations and learning. In childhood, we do not think too much. But later, when we are in the phase of transition from teenager to an adult, these years are what can be called years where man is in the making. After that, we would be stable and rigid enough to sustain our thinking, behaviour and acts.
But I think that these years are the most difficult to live, especially when there is no intervention from family in our life and decisions. We are independent to make our choices and decide upon our destiny. Support and guidance from someone can be very helpful but can not go along all the way. Today’s age of turbulence in the culture of our country also makes it difficult for youth to understand what to do with their life. Today, there are so many diversions, disturbances, digressions that it is very difficult to stick to one phase of the mind. When there are lot of options in the name of opportunities, people are never satisfied in following one path. I think that in the previous years, when alternatives were limited but competition was also less, then it was much easier to concentrate and work hard. Now due to pressure of change and adjustment, we are left guessing what is it we should adhere to.
Our initial 18-20 years lay our foundation. Values, morals, ethics, perceptions, character get built into our system. But during the age of 18-25, everything in our nature and behaviour get refined with new ideas and atmosphere. Some qualities get destroyed and many new get cultivated. And finally they become part of our personality. Apart from that, there are the years where it is decided what we would become out of our life. Some of our co-age group people already would have made their career or are in the line. Some are struggling and some have left the hope.
But I think, there is one important point here. During this period, whatever we think, say or do with ourselves, relatives, friends or elders, we should analyze it very carefully. Relations get damaged, prejudices get forged, temperament gets unrestrained, behaviour gets contemptuous and we can become very self-centred, sarcastic, pessimistic individual. And if it happens, there is no going back. So it is very dangerous in that way and I think, family and elders intervention therefore becomes necessary.
There is no harm in taking our words back in this age period. There is no compromise of dignity in apologizing for our mistakes or wrongful actions in these turbulent years. There is no waste in giving time to retrospection and introspection. When we think that our beliefs and perceptions alter with every passing day, it is better we try to make sense out of them and reinforce what is constant. And due this reason only, I think that we should not squabble over petty arguments taking a firm stand as it cannot be that firm in these years.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Robbing me off my words
Words are only one form of expression of thoughts and feelings. It is said that non-verbal communication plays a major role in our lives. But to me, words seem to hold more importance as they often come after filtration through mind but face-expressions, voice, personality is more deceptive and constantly changing depending on our mood and emotions.
Now the words we use to describe any situation observation, feelings or emotions are also what we think about that situation. Sometimes it happens that we do not find words exactly according to our observation or what we actually feel to say. But when this problem persists, then our thinking, feeling and observations also in turn becomes limited to our capacity of using correct words. This means to say that richness in our language affects the richness in our power of observation and thought.
Now coming to our generation’s speaking and writing traits, we can safely call them pathetic. Due to our own negligence and culture of comfort, and due to growing prevalence of social networking, the power of words in giving any message have diminished and so have the quality of messages. In mobile and internet communication, not only our grammatical and vocabulary related mistakes are ignored but also our inability to code the message into compact and precise words are excused. In fact, it has become part of modern fashion to make as many mistakes as possible in a single message and still deliver the message!
If we see our day to day conversations, there is exclusive collection of words that everyone uses to describe everything. Bhayankar, Ultimate, Bhokal, Maal, Class, Phodu, Fundu, Phadu, Todu, Machau, Mast, Sahi, Classic: these are the adjectives that we utilize to pinpoint the situation or personalities at hand. Vagueness of these words clearly suggests vagueness of our minds. These words often named as College Lingo are being used indiscriminately across the college campuses and afterwards in our daily life. When watching cricket, we ascribe a good shot played to simply a classic shot, not knowing what classic shots means actually. Even in cricket commentaries, words have become fixed for every situation. When visiting a place, we say it is ultimate, sahi, mast, phadu but do not have a slight notion of what we actually feel and want to say. In movies, the words are so limited and overused that only one different word can be said as the theme of the entire movie. Lyrics of songs have also deteriorated in quality of language though some lyrics writers are still trying to maintain the standard of songs through innovatively mixing other languages such as Urdu and Arabic words. In newspaper too, the conditions are no better. The stress there is on color, images, and headlines rather than on words and texts.
And there is another issue of using our mother tongue or second learned language. For most of us, Hindi remains the mother tongue while English is the second language. In this case, getting and retaining proficiency and richness in both the languages becomes a challenging task. In fact, it is a very rare chance that one can speak or write both the languages unerringly without mixing their words. We are also used to first think in our mother tongue then convert it into second language. After years of practice only, one can think in both the languages and then convert that thinking into words with equal precision.
Due to the growing stress on English, mother tongue such as Hindi are left ignored. People feel themselves inferior if they cannot at least use some English words in between Hindi. When people can christen all English words in their talking, it is a matter of vanity. But research have also shown that a child gets accustomed to his/her mother tongue in initial years of cognitive ability development and afterwards in school time, when he/she is rigorously taught in English only then the deterioration of both languages is definite. By learning and adhering to Hindi only, I think, one can learn quality English. Otherwise most of the time, we would be using words whose meaning is not distinctively clear to us in either of the languages.
At the cost of the possibility of being blamed for exaggeration, I would say that words are our identities. We eat, consume, work, sleep, talk, watch, listen, read, write but the thing that remains is only words. If you rob me off my words, you take away everything.
Now the words we use to describe any situation observation, feelings or emotions are also what we think about that situation. Sometimes it happens that we do not find words exactly according to our observation or what we actually feel to say. But when this problem persists, then our thinking, feeling and observations also in turn becomes limited to our capacity of using correct words. This means to say that richness in our language affects the richness in our power of observation and thought.
Now coming to our generation’s speaking and writing traits, we can safely call them pathetic. Due to our own negligence and culture of comfort, and due to growing prevalence of social networking, the power of words in giving any message have diminished and so have the quality of messages. In mobile and internet communication, not only our grammatical and vocabulary related mistakes are ignored but also our inability to code the message into compact and precise words are excused. In fact, it has become part of modern fashion to make as many mistakes as possible in a single message and still deliver the message!
If we see our day to day conversations, there is exclusive collection of words that everyone uses to describe everything. Bhayankar, Ultimate, Bhokal, Maal, Class, Phodu, Fundu, Phadu, Todu, Machau, Mast, Sahi, Classic: these are the adjectives that we utilize to pinpoint the situation or personalities at hand. Vagueness of these words clearly suggests vagueness of our minds. These words often named as College Lingo are being used indiscriminately across the college campuses and afterwards in our daily life. When watching cricket, we ascribe a good shot played to simply a classic shot, not knowing what classic shots means actually. Even in cricket commentaries, words have become fixed for every situation. When visiting a place, we say it is ultimate, sahi, mast, phadu but do not have a slight notion of what we actually feel and want to say. In movies, the words are so limited and overused that only one different word can be said as the theme of the entire movie. Lyrics of songs have also deteriorated in quality of language though some lyrics writers are still trying to maintain the standard of songs through innovatively mixing other languages such as Urdu and Arabic words. In newspaper too, the conditions are no better. The stress there is on color, images, and headlines rather than on words and texts.
And there is another issue of using our mother tongue or second learned language. For most of us, Hindi remains the mother tongue while English is the second language. In this case, getting and retaining proficiency and richness in both the languages becomes a challenging task. In fact, it is a very rare chance that one can speak or write both the languages unerringly without mixing their words. We are also used to first think in our mother tongue then convert it into second language. After years of practice only, one can think in both the languages and then convert that thinking into words with equal precision.
Due to the growing stress on English, mother tongue such as Hindi are left ignored. People feel themselves inferior if they cannot at least use some English words in between Hindi. When people can christen all English words in their talking, it is a matter of vanity. But research have also shown that a child gets accustomed to his/her mother tongue in initial years of cognitive ability development and afterwards in school time, when he/she is rigorously taught in English only then the deterioration of both languages is definite. By learning and adhering to Hindi only, I think, one can learn quality English. Otherwise most of the time, we would be using words whose meaning is not distinctively clear to us in either of the languages.
At the cost of the possibility of being blamed for exaggeration, I would say that words are our identities. We eat, consume, work, sleep, talk, watch, listen, read, write but the thing that remains is only words. If you rob me off my words, you take away everything.
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