X+Y=?

When my sister had her first son, Shankar, I was 20. That was when I started thinking about generation gap. Seeing how smart the kid was made me wonder how well I would be able to cope with 20-year-olds by the time I turned 40. Watching him grow up was an inspiration in itself. When he started rattling out names of a 100 different animal species it was time for me to start watching Discovery channel more seriously. I had to come up with new stories for him everyday, with appropriate quizzes and morals, honing my narrative skills in the process. I brushed up my knowledge of Phantom, Tintin and Asterix & Obelix as he started reading them himself. And I started thinking more and more about the idea of generation gap.

What decides generation gap? To me, the right answer was 'exposure' - exposure to the media, exposure to the world around you and what's happening in other (younger/older) people's lives. But, then again, isn't your exposure more likely to coincide with the times that you live in! Need not be. When I started reading short stories/children's novels as an 8 year old, all I had to read was stories published in the 50s, 60s and early 70s which my aunts and uncles had been foresighted enough to get bound. Later on, when I was in high school, my life's mission was to watch old Tamil films from the 60s, 50s and even the 40s. I'm probably one of the few Tamils in my agegroup who could boast of (!!) having watched all the films that MGR ever acted in, and almost all of Sivaji's flicks as well. Could this have made me a Babyboomer, instead of a Generation X (born between 1961 and 1977) person?

As I learn more about Babyboomers, Generation X and Y (born after 1977) I am quite confused. I don't seem to belong to any of them and yet belong to all of them at the same time. In a way that's good. I think I can relate to older people as well as the younger ones. I know I have issues with the Generation Y's impatience and insatiability. But I am guilty of those crimes myself. So, I think I like dealing with the Millenials - even if we don't always get along like a house on fire. I know I'm right alongside the Babyboomers and Generation X most times. Will I be able to get along with the new wave of youngsters who will enter the workforce by the time I am 40? Not unless I manage to keep up with the times.

LAYERS

With me, what you see is not what you get. Sometimes you see more, sometimes you get more. I think in layers – a logical plan (with scores of related ideas connected to it), a backup to the plan, and a backup for that backup. And that is why I surprise myself when I have only one subject/object on my agenda. Interestingly enough, when I look back, I realise that it is these obsessions that I relish most when they fructify.

I applied for only two scholarships (and was awarded both), I am looking at just one job at the moment, unlike my fellow MBAs, and I am very likely to get it. It’s just not me. And yet, it is. Some big businessman (either Carnegie or Warren Buffet, I am not sure which of them) once said, ‘put all your eggs in one basket and watch it’. I always thought I’m not the type who would fall for it, but I am doing just that. Why?

A very bright friend of mine, to whom I am getting quite attached these days, pointed out recently that everything I do seems like a battle I’m fighting with myself. Just a day later Joe (the organisational psychologist I have been working with) said that I was putting too much ‘deterministic pressure on the personal perpendicular pronoun’ and asked me to reflect on it for sometime before coming up with a response. Am I really striving for perfection? Do I really think it will make me or my people happy? I don’t know. I just want to live my life to the fullest and the only way I can think of living it well is by doing what I like doing, by trying to do justice to my potential.

Where will this quest stop? Well, why should it? Remember the story of Matsya avatar - the fish that kept growing to fit the pond, the river and then almost the ocean itself? I feel like that fish sometimes. The good thing about it is that it never felt a fish out of water. I don’t either - even if I am the only atheist who loves the idea of God, religion and Bhakti; even if I am the only rationalist who values emotions more. I am an amphibious fish ambitious to fly!