They make noise and think they are talking to each other,
They make faces and they think they understand each other
And I am sure that they do not…..
The partyBy t.s.eliot.
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The theory of alienation and a song…
It had been long since we had a communist hero Karl Marx writing or coining the term “alienation” though his context had been purely socio-political, yet as days pass, the term blatantly comes forward as a hard hitting fact for all sections of the modern society. Today’s world is moving at such afrenzied speed that we find it difficult to keep up with its run, and the “keeping up ” baffles us to a situation where we do not even have time to review what went wrong and where and why.
We are left with a young and angry generation not ready to sacrifice or compromise for they say “this is the only life I have”. Gradually as this new morning dawns, we find people turning into islands separated from each other and moving away from each other day after day. Today’s working parents have a lot of hard cash to compensate for the time they cannot spend with their children, today’s friends meet each other in the networking systems, the husband and wife of today cannot solve their own problems but spend hours chatting to an unknown friend to solve his. This is a mad world that its turning into and if one would really give it a shot, he would be stupefied to endless misery to remember when was the last time he called up a friend without a reason, just to say “hi”!
Families breaking up into nuclear existences, individuals preferring to be left alone, children forgetting games like “gilli danda” to sit and play with the computer that does not feel!
No more “nani ki kahani”, no more “ rockey boshey adda”
No more joint families celebrating happiness together. Everyone wants to be left alone. Isolation resulting in alienation. Perhaps Marx saw it a bit too soon. Perhaps the great Goutam Chattopadhyay understood this too and as a response came his wonderful song “ Pritibi ta jeno choto hotey hotey ,satellite ar cable hatey, drawing roomer boka-baksho tey bondi….”
Television , has certainly been a revolution in the fields of technological advancement, bringing the world into your drawing rooms, but you are so very busy with the world you see there, that your own world inside your house falls apart. Thus the house you thought you would make into a home with love and care and understanding remains a house, a house with a lot of noise but no soul!
The song mentioned above is a wonderful portrayal of the theme of isolation, where one claims to befriend people whom they do not know and turn cold and isolatedtowards the ones immediately around.
“Bhebey dekheycho ki, tarao joto alok borsho durey, taro durey, tumi ar aami jai tobu sorey sorey…”
Where does this end ? Perhaps we need to go back to the stone age again to understand civilization and start building relationships from the scratch. Perhaps once in a while we all need to play the Big Boss or Big Brother game among ourselves to see what would you do if the world was shut up around you and all you could do was to interact with the ones with whom you live. Only now, you would be facing the hidden cameras and God would be chuckling as he watched the divine television!!!
HINDI POEMS