Nestled in a cane casket, hung a foot or two above the ground, and wrapped in embroidered cotton cloth, the baby slept peacefully. This is a rare sight to see and that’s why it caught my attention amongst the many other photographs displayed in an art and culture magazine. Times have changed.
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Recently, I went to a Baby Shop to purchase something for a new- born in the family. The fancy air-conditioned store was filled with toys, clothes, cradles and other put-the-baby-to-sleep gadgets. There were machines which – when fixed to the cradle- would project stars on the ceiling, another one which sang the baby to sleep, and yet another which recorded the mother’s voice to put the baby to sleep.
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So let me get this straight, the baby is made to listen to the mother’s recorded voice rather than mother herself! But it is when the store keeper exhibited a ‘baby cosmetic set’, that I flipped.
This is how synthetic humans are beginning to get. Babies open their eyes to a synthetic world! American lullabies are sung by machines instead of the mother singing to the baby, thick expensive blankets with machine-made prints on it replace the warm, cozy blankets that have the mother’s /grandmother’s embroidery on it, and cradles with affixed gadgets that easily make the parent’s presence unwanted!
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As a country we are growing at a rapid speed. Our haste to conquer the technological world in order to make lives better is just, but, not when we compromise on the indigenous resources that already exist in our environment. Our lifestyle was much more human before technology made its stormy entry.
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Our existence was much more significant than it is today. We made an effort to ask grandma for her rajma recipe instead of using instant mixes. We physically jogged instead of using a treadmill, kids stepped out in the sun to play native games like hopscotch, chuppa-chuppi( hide & Seek) or lagori and today the play station gets them excited more than anything else. I am afraid we are soon heading to an age where, the next I Phone will get the kids more awestruck than a rare colourful butterfly fluttering around the garden!
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Technology is the biggest boon. Man could not have done any better. Computers, GPS systems, video conferences across the world, mobile Internet, medical aids and technology, technology based security systems, all are inevitably irreplaceable and superior innovations, which have made lives safer and more secure and the world smaller! But they‘ve also made man lose something vital in life. Once he makes a machine, the machine takes over. So, man just ends up making life better, but not living it.
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This has not only affected a healthy lifestyle but nature too has suffered. I believe conservation of nature can only be possible if its value is appreciated, if we are aware of its beauty in the true sense and this is possible if we enjoy it in its purest form. But man, has become so used to the luxuries of the synthetic world, that he cannot care much to venture out into the open .
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He has to build a resort to enjoy the forest or the beach, and once he does that he’ll have to build roads so that people like him, who long for the nature’s peace and serenity can drive their SUVs to the resort…So now you have a resort filled with people, you have a busy road which takes you to the resort filled with people. The chirping of birds, the sound of a distant waterfall, and the quiet of nature that actually brought us there in the first place has now been replaced with cars, buildings, toilet flushes; basically by an annoying, synthetic civilization.
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An easy life is not always an exciting or fulfilling one. Asking idle rickshaw wallahs, or the kirana store for directions makes travelling or searching for a place an experience by itself.
Life’s flavours can be enjoyed by lending ourselves a little more to a world that is, and less to the one that we create for our convenience.
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Poorvi Sardar is programming c-ordinator and blogs at http://poorvisardar.blogspot.in/