The Christian Science Monitor focuses attention on a growing epidemic in Indian society: kids no longer listen to their parents. The cause? Perhaps it is the glorification of parental disrespect and all the “following your heart” crap embedded within today’s Bollywood songs, as compared to those of yesteryear that kept it real (Mera Juta Hai Japani).
Indians have as many words for “love” as the Inuit have for “snow.” Songwriters choose from the many subtle variations: pyar (affection), mohabbat (love, in Urdu), prem (love, in Hindi), ishq (passion), or even junoon (obsession).
These sweet nothings are timeless, but the lyrics surrounding them have changed dramatically. In the 1950s, boys and girls would pine for each other, but accept their parents’ or society’s better judgment. Today’s lover lives and dies by his or her own mistakes or inner faults - immaturity, pride, poor dress sense - and the modern concept of love is spreading at the speed of sound to cities and villages, on radios and music videos, and into the minds of the humming masses.
The result, cultural watchers and filmmakers say, is a country teetering between its traditional rules and the giddy individualism of the West, with profound effects on India’s urban youth.
“This is the first generation that believes that tomorrow will be better than yesterday,” says Santosh Desai, president of the advertising firm, McCann Erickson, in New Delhi. “There’s this sense that the world is opening up with the lifting of constraints. There is an unspecific optimism, and one part of it is economic, but the other part is the lifting of mental barriers.”
My favorite part of this article has to be the English translations of what I assume are popular Hindi songs. Can anyone name these tunes?
In the 1950s, songs warned against falling in love, because of what people would say. “Be careful lest the world see us together/ and our love will become a story for people to tell,” went one popular tune.
By the 1980s, young people were ready to defy the world, at least in the films of Bollywood. “I’m a lover, you’re a lover/ so what are mommy and daddy to us/ the whole world is useless,” another song proclaimed.
And in the 1990s, filmmakers were pushing the outer boundaries of taste. “What’s behind your blouse?” sang a hero in one infamous tune. “My heart,” the heroine replied. (Perhaps the proper response would have been “one tight slap.”)
The last time I sang “what’s behind your blouse” to a girl (while we danced around a tree), I did in fact get slapped. The article ends with some quotes that mirror what my mom told me last night. I implied that my blogging career was more important than marriage but she wouldn’t hear it.
“There are a lot of young people who are getting married late,” says Mr. Akhtar. “I wouldn’t say that they have been put off of love. It’s more that they are cautious about the process being right. They want more fun, and they want to have achieved something by the time they settled down.”
But just as the aging sex pots on HBO’s “Sex in the City” can attest, freedom does not always bring happiness. Putting aside traditional arranged marriage for a “love match,” can increase the risk of divorce later, many Indians believe. Putting off marriage to pursue a career also increases the risk of not getting married at all.
