“Sir, there is a lot of stuff on social media speaking of India as a backward society in the past now making progress because of western education and technology. Is that really so? But there also are many features that talk of India’s great history and culture and architecture and philosophy. Are these parts of some propaganda? What is the reality? And, Sir, there also are many features on the social media insisting that getting married and having a family is not important. I get very confused when I see all such stuff ! What should a girl like me do?” THE seriousness of this query from a 19-year college-going girl can be understood immediately. She does not know how to stand clear of the conflicting bombardment of ideas on the young minds on social media. And that is one issue that really, really needs a serious familial attention. However, the loud-thinker must thank that girl’s family for having groomed her well -- so much so that she got confused instead of getting influenced by wrong narratives. Obviously, the elders in her family had kept a close emotional connect with her -- which was why she ran for help to her father, who in turn asked her to talk to the loud-thinker at length. Such children can be helped from becoming victims of wrong narrative and dirty propaganda. During the long conversation, the little one confided that a so-called leading cinema actor had said in a social media interview that getting married was not important at all and staying single meant enjoying life on one’s own terms. She also said that another influential person was talking of ‘living in’ as the best system and ‘same ---’ marriage, too, was a practice getting popular these days.

 

Once again, the girl’s family needs to be thanked. For, she had the sense to take resort in family elders. And that was so because they had created and retained a healthy atmosphere of open communication in the family for years. “At home, we talk of everything. I tell my mother everything that I encounter,” the girl added. In the years to come, more and more numbers of youngsters are going to get confused because of twisted propaganda that seeks to destroy and demolish every good idea that the Indian culture has built over generations -- the idea of family as the first and the last resort for all, the idea of confiding everything with parents, the idea that one returns home even after committing serious mistakes because home is one place where there is a complete acceptance of every member of the family -- despite the person’s shortcomings. Yes, home is also a place where deliberate sins are never to be pardoned, but innocent mistakes are to be tolerated. When the family has such an atmosphere, then the children from such a home stay emotionally protected and remain safe from all sorts of wrong influences. Such atmosphere is achieved only when the elders keep the youngsters all the time in a close emotional connect -- through open, clear conversation during which nothing is hidden from anybody. For, behind the closed doors of the family, everything is granted a reasonable acceptance. So, if a mistake takes place innocently, then the person is not held to a gun-point. Rather, he or she is given to understand that one mistake is always a trigger for correction later. But if the mistakes forms a pattern, then there is no accommodation of such persons.

 

There is a marked difference between children from families with open culture and the ones from families of closed, rigid culture where healthy conversation is almost totally absent between elders and youngsters. This assertion is absolutely necessary at this stage because the current series of articles in ‘Loud Thinking’ is aimed at urging the families to work hard to create an atmosphere of healthy conversation involving youngsters. Of course, building a healthy conversation is a matter of patience and readiness to spend years to build trust between two generations. But in the long run, such an attempt brings healthy results, all right. The elders have to remember very well that giving sermons to youngsters is not the purpose and practice expected here. What is expected is for the family elders to create a strong bond of communication with youngsters -- and offer the younger people advice or word of caution as if delivered casually or uttered in a flow of things. A slow application of love and affection and care builds greater trust between two generations.