Tough generations of yester-decades, And where are we now?

“The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.” ― Robert Jordan

If one wants to learn from history then one must learn from it. The best is to learn from your own contemporary history.


Can you imagine that overnight you are asked to leave all that you have and without a penny or any belongings you are put up in a tent where several families share one tent and you are labeled as a refugee! You are taking refuge in your own country. You don’t have food to eat, no water to bathe or even drink, you have common dug-up toilets, no medicine, and nowhere to go. You have no idea of your future and the future of your family including your children.

On top of it, they had to undergo the pain of riots and mass massacre of family and friends. People saw trains full of slashed and mutilated bodies dumped on trains, with blood all over! Properties burnt, rioting mobs gunning for your life with swords and sickles. Thousands climbed on each other to take a train to the other side and they did not know what existed or what was in store for them on the ‘other side’. Those who survived scattered around in the ‘Naya watan’, some went south, some east, some to the west- many stayed in the north- a new land with little or no hope in sight.

Many of them had big bungalows in Lahore or Rawalpindi, decades-old established thriving business empires, properties, shops, factories, and above all an honorable place in the society. All ruined in one day! Now they were no body with nothing.

“My barn having burned down, I can now see the moon.” ― Mizuta Masahide, 17th-century Japanese poet

Let me make a rough and ready comparison of partition (a word coined for amputation of a nation in two) to the Holocaust during Second World War where 6 million Jews were systematically killed by Germans. The estimated two million were killed, actually butchered by each other, on both sides during partition and 10 to 20 million displaced which was as much as somewhere between population of Belgium (11 million) and Sri Lanka (22 million) today! Germans stuffed Jews in trains like animals, in trains to take them to concentration camps but Indians pushed them on top of each other in trains to save themselves from each other to land up in refugee camps.

Putting the two incidents - partition and Holocaust little more crudely- Partition was killing by Jhatka and Holocaust was more like Halal over 6 long years, killing it softly, more painfully, sucking out life drop by drop.

But both were extremely traumatic to people who suffered. You could blame the Nazi party in general and Hitler in particular for Holocaust but, it was majorly the British who left us in a lurch could be the culprits to a large extent for partition. And politicians of those days- so called freedom fighters too have blood on their hands.

Even today the second generation of Holocaust Jew survivors don’t forget that trauma (I know some personally). Sure those second generation survivors of Partition also can’t just shrug it away- wounds got healed but scars remain.

It is hard to understand what mettle that generation was made off. All one can say is they were great men and woman who were survivors- of partition. And of course Israel.

Those days’ people had four or five kids in every family in India. Going was of course tough. Imagine people living in thousand square yard 8 bedroom Kothi (Bungalows) or mansions in acres were uprooted like a tree and put in a rented one bedroom flat (tenement to be precise) of 400 square feet and 7 to 8 people living in it! They faced aftershocks of partition for decades there after- most till they lived.

The children of that gritty and resolute generation were also deprived of basic necessities, as India was finding its own feet- government had a lot on their hands. Yet they never saw their parents moan in pain- if they did they must have done it in private or swallowed their pain- yet not their pride. They managed to raise their children in abject, poverty. Yet taught the good values and learn to live within means. Children responded well, managed with little, and enjoyed small thrills of life. They had less but enjoyed their childhood- ‘Thoda hai paar kafee hai’ (There is less but it is enough). They shared fruits, food and even clothes. If some boy in class 10 owned a bike, he thought he was the king. There was less and that is why there was value of money, or you valued money.

‘I feel deprivation builds resilience and gets you closer to reality’

Parents didn’t have the luxury to give us luxury. ‘Buss itna he hai’ and people moved on.

You could not afford a new cricket bat, you got parchment done around it and it was like your life was in that one bat. You did not have football shoes, you played without shoes! No big deal. No one cried or cursed.

Pamper was a word which we had never heard in our life. Today people say ‘pamper me’. Come on grow up.

I remember being a chief guest at a function where they were felicitating school children who had scored more than 85% in their board exam of class 12th. In my address to the students and parents, I told the boys and girls that they were so lucky to be born in these times when they had everything that science, technology and medicine can provide. Most middle class which is a swollen population is having the best of everything today. So be grateful to god and be happy.

What has gone wrong now?

Have the generations gone from tough to soft to softer, now weakling aka sissy over the last three generations- yes it seems.

Most research does clearly indicate younger people are – on average – less resilient than older people. They are more prone to stress, less emotionally stable and less tolerant of ambiguity than older generations.

A 78-year old ABC chair told a forum of the Australia-United Kingdom Chamber of Commerce:

‘They’re very keen on being thanked and they almost need hugging. That’s before COVID of course, we can’t hug any more. But they almost need hugging, they seem to lack the resilience that I remember from my younger days.’
So praise but keep it in check and rap on the knuckles if and when required.

I totally agree with this.

The basic problem is that everyone wants to be politically right. From climate change to women’s safety or gender equality- it is just jargon-iszation. What I say must get me some brownie points and every one should be happy and feel good. I must not ruffle any feathers! What crass! No one wants to bell the cat or catch the bull by the horns or even kill a cockroach- ouch it hurts and so inhumane.

Sensitization, dealing more diplomatically, and using sugarcoated words has skewed the narrative. We are fooling each other but feeling happy. We are making people softer with silly words. If you cannot take criticism then how can you take failure!

We have invented words like physically challenged to replace handicapped. PTSD (post-Traumatic Stress disorder) to replace stress. You don’t want to call a guy short; say he is vertically challenged- OMG. And he is happy too. No you can’t hurt some ones feelings- we have become so artificial and contrived.

Oh come on learn to face it. If you are bald you are bald- what’s the big deal, you can’t call it scalp shaming! For heaven’s sake do you want me to call a ‘ganjja’ a ‘Trichologically challenged’ gentleman?

A few years back there was a management fad called change management. I being a teacher of management can take the liberty of saying this. Yes a fad.

One of the ‘Major’ problems was to address life Changes Caused by Restructuring

Restructuring, in organizations resulting in ‘sweeping’ life changes for a number of employees. Typical changes are salary cuts, loss of benefits, downgrading in job position, or relocation to another city, state or country.
People call these as devastating changes to employees! You cannot handle a pay cut, you cannot handle some one calling you fatso and you cannot handle a change in your job profile, your relocation, then what the hell can you handle? And you threaten to commit suicide! You require someone to handle you when you are 30 year old!
Capt. Vikram Batra- Param Vir Chakra was martyred at age of 24 leading his men in Kargil fighting with Pakistani soldiers. The operations were executed during the night, amidst the harsh, howling wind and biting cold temperatures — ranging from -5 to -11 degrees Celsius — at a height of 16,000 feet with little oxygen to breath.
Do you think for such people there is no ‘devastating’ experience as relocating from Mumbai to Gurugram for some of our IT geeks or gen next in general?

“This entire generation seems to have become pussies, you know? Nobody seems to enjoy themselves much anymore. They are all knocking each other down for enjoying themselves.” ― Lemmy Kilmister

Life is not a bed of roses- Yet it is all over

India’s premier military training institution, the National Defense Academy (NDA), is facing an unprecedented burnout. Between January 2008 and November 2017, as many as 1,256 cadets quit the academy. This amounts to between 16% and 20% of the intake each year.

Though the training remains the same- may be a little less grueling than in and around 1970, yet the new green horns cannot take it!

Even at WestPoint – United states Military Academy several cadets quite after a while as it is very tough and disciplined life! They realize the military isn't for them. Once you get there and start living the day to day, you may just decide that this isn't how you want to spend the next 8-35 years of your life. Disciplined and being in battle zone- no way.

Today one watches with pain how youth commit suicide and killing themselves as flies- in numbers. The reasons are intriguing - jilted in love, or rejection by a boy or a girl, (as if rejections didn’t happen 50 years ago) a new found word ‘breakup’, or failure in an exam or not being able to cope with IIT entrance or NEET exam! Worst ready to kill yourself, if you are asked to not to use your mobile in the class by a teacher. And then blame the teacher!
Authorities also want to be politically right and politically polite. If someone commits suicide for not clearing NEET, stop NEET- how neat!

One fundamental thing to understand is that competitive exam is a competition where every one cannot win. Civil services exams, CDS tests or IIT entrance tests were as tough 50 years ago as today. Failure and success was part of the game called life.

I was addressing school students and informed them that in 1960’s or 70’s there were very few education cum job options. There were three basic avenues people could look at, Engineering, Law or Medicine. Whereas today you have hundreds of options to choose from. Fashion design, standup comedy, social media marketing, Mass communication, media, management, IT, ITES and list is long.

With so much available why do you commit suicide? And there is no answer from students as well as parents. Basically it boils down to lack of resilience and inability to take failure- and too high ‘unrealistic ambitions’.

Parental trap

Today the biggest problem is that instead of identifying the problem the whole world is ready to circumvent the issue and the world is ready to blame everyone else except the one who needs to be told. In 60’s and even in 90’s there were no school counsellors or psycho analysts and life was good to go.

Parents and teachers worked together, trusted each other and accepted the short fall on ‘as is where is’ basis. If your son or daughter is not a derby winning horse, don’t push the system or blame the race track or the jockey!

If every body in the class stands first then who will be second? And third.

Such an in the face argument in days of overtly polite world may sound and will sound discourteous or even gauche, or taking a gibe at society at large, but you need to catch the bull by the horns.

Today parents become overprotective and ‘pamper’ their only child- they for god alone knows, what reason cannot teach these basics of life and taking failure as part and parcel of facing the world. Teachers and parents can to some extent protect and cover up during schools or even say college but can you keep protecting your child when he is no more a child and goes out to earn a living; a nasty boss, a colleague who is a pain, or a team mate who is rude and in disciplined- where does it stop?

Instead of playing to the gallery and making your children fragile and inflexible you will do a great service to your next generation if you show some sense of responsibility in raising tougher kids- mentally and physically. So seniors, parents smell the coffee as they say.

You can quit a job or college but you cannot quite your planet earth.

Let me throw in another caveat by saying that as we move along life is going to become tougher by the day, there will be more competition and less oxygen, lesser food and may be very little water left the way we are pushing the climate. We are sending rockets to the moon but the bad news is we have yet to find water or food on the moon! So remain on mother earth- you can quit a job, a college, a profession but not your planet!

And don’t commit suicide!

“Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.” ― Steve Maraboli