The kids of today are the citizens of tomorrow. Can we guarantee and define Citizens in this loaded sentence. The kids of yesterday are the morons of today. What guarantee do we have that this country will be free of this pseudo nationalism show off and work in real terms? We may not because we are not buying a product to put a seal of guarantee. We are discussing people who can take their own decisions. But the irony is that they get swayed by lucrative charm of people in every sphere of their life whom they think can change their destiny.

In other words they are confused. When a big giant like Google makes a product, it is made for a generation. That is why it could knock down the then giant Yahoo or Microsoft from the top position. To break Google Inc, there should be another cutting edge technology which will take years to come.

Generation gaps are similiar. Today’s youth and kids have grown up watching fantasy and false promises on television and other mediums made by tech savvy politicians. Any form of protest for them is nothing but a waste of time. Urban youths have never been to a rural area. Urban kids have never mingled with friends from other religions. They study and work in an environment where they see only the better side of life. They dont even have an idea that there is large area right under their nose who are deprived of every aspect they are lucky to have including food, education and right to life.

What results is a narrow outlook. Even at home their parents and grand parents speak the same language depending on their monetary status. Ten years back when I used to go to rural and remote areas of the country searching for stories, a few of my colleagues used to envy and at the same time mock me. For them real stories are film stars, politicians and cricketers. They made news of Page 3 celebrities and enjoyed being in the limelight. My thinking was a bit different. I enjoyed reporting the most downtrodden - explaining to the world their stories. For a decade or so, I reported so much of their stories that I became more of rural than urban.

Today I want to get out of this urban narrow minded circle and settle somewhere rural hamlet. Dont know if such a dream land exists because every place is now becoming a metaphor for development. And development is defined in terms of concrete structures and not the human outlook to grow beyond their narrow means. But this settlement dream is more of a fantasy for me than reality because I am a committed family man and cant put their life into turmoil just because I have an unreal ideology. And ideology no one practices, no one follows and no one buys. Just me and my damn ideology.

The above picture is of a Tribal Karate Class in South Gujarat