Vintage cars

The lights go off to flash back within a minute. Fire works lit up the sky. Loud music pears the ear drums. Balloons bursted "Happy New Year" lowd cheers, many hugs, followed by kisses and foot tapping. Another year passed with a bang. What is all about a new year? I do not think any of us are seriously concerned. People take another opportunity to celebrate, take a dip into free flowing 'high spirits' to wake up with hangover on the next day. Just another page in a new calender. Another day with innumerable to follow the suit . Life doesn't change a bit. Old timers always found in search a pen and paper to scribble important things , often write the dead year while casting the date. The smell of a new diary is breathed deep while flipping the stuck front page. But for many young either their mobile or P.C is ready to shows the date accurately. They do not find the need to write any thing at all . Gadgets do all the needful job.

Carried away by the need to take a resolution, many good things are thought off with a fond hope to adhere but few to stay on. Many new years are celebrated in succession. Years scurry with rapid speed. Infants grow into adolescents, teens into thirties , thirties into middle ages and there on, into crippling old ages. Life keeps changing. With ever changing times newer thoughts, newer trends, newer needs, hold up denizens. Mind sets take a radical change. New generations find a different set of needs, styles and values. Old stick to the ways they were brought up, cherish what they saw, uphold what they imbibed,rever what they valued, continue to love what they liked once. They find extremely difficult to see through changes. Young see it as generation gap.

The school boy enthusiasm drastically differs from all seen and experienced passivity. Alluring undefined future gives a bountiful call to the young. Places, money, power, new relations, achievements, thrill an youngster prompting him to explore. Sparkling teeth, glowing skin, bountiful hair, agile body, perfect digestion, boundless zest, loads of curiosity, exploding energy, dreams, love, passion, anger, naughtiness, they denote God's human creation at it's best. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven"(Words worth). Calling grave yards, retirements, ill health, lack of productivity, desertion, short but insipid future, insulin, hypertension, clutched knees, palpitations, be league the old and tired. They feel rarely wanted. Failing health make them insecure. Most admired fathers, most wanted mothers of their youthful years suddenly find themselves unemployable. They don't fail to see an undercut in their authority.They start living in the pale shadows of their glorious past. It is a drama that is being replayed from time immemorial. It is as real as old leaves from a big tree diving to the ground giving way to the tender sprouting.

"Get me one ticket" my great grand mother asked the gate keeper of a theatre pulling her white cloth on her tonsured head. He rose up and offered his stool to her in the first place, stammered " I think you came to the wrong movie grandma". "Why do you think so?" "Because it is an English movie" My granny said in a hoarse tone " What do you think? I know that it is an English movie. If you want I can tell you the story..." she narrated for a minute. He appeared to have regretted for watching the movie for the past fifteen days without making a head and tail of it.Finally she concluded " Elizabeth Tailor(?) is very beautiful you know, I came to see her." "Wait a minute I'll get you the ticket" he ran away. That was magnum Opus Cleopatra. Many around must have despised her for not chanting Ram Nam sitting at home. Many find hard to believe that old were ever young in their life time. It is almost perceived as though all these people were born with grey hairs and sagging skin. We gleefully accept new trends with regard to young ones but confine old to the patterned demeanour. We expect them to renounce every thing they come across. Any deviation attracts all the attention in the world.

I was never a part of the joint family culture.Much before my time it breathed it's last. Still old were all around in the form of grand parents preferring to stay with their sons, or rather forced to stay so. Children were the best beneficiaries from them. They always found a cushion in the form of their obese grandmas, had a shoulder to cry, identify a target to ventilate their anger. These Grannies are occasional money lenders, story tellers, secret divulgers, teachers of divine chants, Amruthanjan massagers, pamperers and spoilers .They provided shielding to children from parental abuses. They had ample of time to spare to them.Rest of the family were occasionally tired of these old with their constant preachings, insistence, demands. They quarrelled yet shared.They were treated as indispensable part of the family. Never alienated in the name of generation gap. They were old bricks in the holistic familial structure composed of many new, strong and small bricks.

With the social and economic changes on avenue old people belonging to the middle class are seen turning affluent, wearing expensive sports shoe for their lonely walks, using sleek mobiles to chat with their remotely placed beloved, dressed in designer tees bought from far away lands, driving big cars presented to them, living in palacious banglows built by their children with a hope to come back, joining in expensive 5 star hospitals where attendants are not required. They are like vintage cars which are serviced regularly, painted polished and preserved as precious show pieces with regular large doses of foreign remittances.

Some vintage cars are shut in their garages for fear of maintenance, eventually rusting and collapsing. They are like oldies who are finding their ways to old age homes. Identified as odd pieces in the plush heavenly apartments, as they do not know how to keep their bathrooms clean, arrange their shelves, hardly able to communicate with their English speaking grand children, find it difficult to relish the outlandish recipies prepared at home, they have hardly anything common with their children in their scheme of things. No one has time or inclination to read their minds and mend their ways.No university is teaching us the precious themes like 'empathy' 'patience' 'generosity to a fault'. Even modern writer like Stephen Covey often refers that happiness is home made. I do believe that to a great extent the choice lies with us whether to be happy or unhappy. If lending an ear is conceived to be self effacing activity, equal amount of anguish is on offing for us in disguised form. The problems are to be treated as dead ends of the street, offering no way out. Solutions are better arrived when people got to put up a fight against them, than to find out an escape route which demands no serious effort from their side.

Very few vintage cars are truely being used for a regular ride and are in true working relation with the users, loved, tamed and occasionally kicked.