REALisation: Past Perfect, Present Continuous(ly busy), Future Tense

Noticing half-a-dozen strands of silver hair a while ago and the thought of writing on the lines of "When I was young...," would have ideally made me skip this subject. But when I mentally time-travelled into the late eighties, I realised I was lucky to be born much before this era of online chats, online gaming, escalators and treadmills. Not that I am against the online revolution... it helps me earn my bread, butter, jam and mayo, but I realised that back then (suddenly I feel as if I am aging at the speed of light!) childhood was just perfect!

PAST PERFECT

I used to write real letters (I must specify - hand-written ones!) to my nana/nani, aunts-uncles, cousins and my friend Ranjeeta.
The letters to the elders would always start like:
"Pyaari Maasi, Namaste! Aap kaisi ho, ghar par sab kaise hain..."
And the ones to Ranjeeta would go like this:
Dear Ranjeeta, how are you? You know what happened the other day.."

We still retain some of those blue inland letters and yellow envelopes with lots of stamps. Holding and reading them once in a while is an indescribable experience!

The past was also perfect with:

1. Playing cricket, kho kho, kabbadi, marbles, land and water, saakhli, pakdaa pakdi...
2. Running up and down the stairs all through the day, skipping steps in between (since most buildings didn't have elevators)
3. Falling from the swings, hurting the knees and hiding it from parents to avoid a temporary ban on playing outside
4. Aiming at raw mangoes and jamuns before the watchmen spotted us
5. Hating news program / samachar / baatmya on Doordarshan and watching Sunday movies with the entire family
6. Visiting relatives and family friends, one-to-one, on weekends

PRESENT CONTINUOUSly Busy

Forget what real experiences children have today, we grown-ups (oops...) hardly have time to get closer to nature. Working until late hours has become our nature, or should I say necessity! In today's competitive scenario, except for a few professions, one doesn't get to leave from work by evening. 9 to 5 is passé, we live in the world of 9 to 'God knows when'.

And it's not that we don't complete our work in time, the fact is that exploitation at work is at its peak. If you don't stay until late, someone else would! I remember how we used to get worried if dad wouldn't reach home by 8... the days when mobile phones didn't exist in India.

Letters now are limited to official mails and Facebook messages. And, presently we opt for:

1. Playing online / on Nintendo, iPod, iPad or mobile phones
2. Going up and down elevators and escalators, and wishing if they were much faster
3. Falling from the stairs while rushing for the trains and trying to hide it from ourselves, since we don't have time to visit the doctor
4. Buying expensive raw mangoes and jamuns from hypermarkets as we don't have time for strolling and bargaining at roadside markets
5. Reading news on mobile apps, swapping television channels until late nights on our personal television in separate rooms and watching movies on the go
6. Pinging relatives and family friends, online, if and when we have time

FUTURE TENSE

If this is the scene now, would the future be much tense? Imagine our life a few decades from now. When we might be so busy with our 'life' that we won't have any time to actually 'live', when our business and virtual world will completely rule over the real world! When people would prefer:

1. Not playing at all
2. Skipping the rush towards elevators and escalators; they would rather teleport themselves (wonder if it would be world full of tummies!)
3. Falling, but not realising we had a fall
4. Buying every single thing, including time, online
5. Not reading news or watching television / movies 
6. To stay to ourselves; What relatives? What friends?

I wonder if in future when we tell our kids / grand kids to improve their handwriting, they might just say, "What are fonts for!"

If we want our kids to experience the real world, we rather preserve it. How about walking a bit to reach home today or rather taking a pen and paper and writing a real letter to a friend or aunt!

This post again is my entry for my favourite IndiBlogger contest in association with Kissan. If you like it, do drop in your comment. If you are on IndiBlogger, the link above will take you to the entry where you can vote for the post. If you don't like it, I am glad you still read it through ;)