We don’t bother to know!

That young boy used to work out vigorously in the gym. He used to run at 9kmph speed continuously for 5 minutes or more, giving me a real inferiority complex. While cycling, his difficulty level used to be more than 10, against my 6 or 7. Many a times, I tried to ask him, since how many days he was working out, but either he used to be busy with his phone and I-pod, or I used to be overtired to talk to him.

Finally, yesterday, the boy himself asked me while we were paddling on spin bike, “It seems you are new to this gym”. “Yes. This is my second week,” I said, and the conversation began. During the discussion, he told me that he was a junior college student and he reduced some 10 pounds in four months. After I told him that I am a journalist, he enthusiastically asked me about how we work, and what exactly I do. Being a regular reader of my newspaper, he easily understood what I explained. “So, you cover dance, drama, exhibitions like cultural events? I hardly read them in details. I just watch photographs and read headlines,” he remarked. “Well, most of the youngsters do the same,” I told him my experience. “But, you must be watching the photographs of Mega drama ‘Shambhuraje’ we are carrying daily these days,” I asked him. “Yes, I do. But it is very boring play, isn’t it?,” his response was shocking for me. The boy was calling a play, based on the life of Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj as ‘boring’ one. “Well, may be. The play is in Marathi, so difficult to understand for non-Marathi people,” I gave him (and myself) an excuse. “No, I am Maharashtrian, we speak Marathi at home. I was about to go to the show on student’s pass, when my sister told me that it is a crap, and especially, the end is irritating!” I received the words like a series of electric shocks.

That young boy was calling the glorious Maratha history portrayed in the play as ‘boring’. A born Maharashtrian boy was calling the struggle of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj shown in the play as crap. A Marathi speaking boy was calling the brutal torture of Sambhaji Raje as irritating, that too, without watching a play, and referring to the advice given by his college-going sister. What the hell has happened to us?

For hours, my friends discuss the Hollywood flicks. They search internet and get the lyrics of latest English songs. They rehearse for days and nights and get perfection in pronouncing each and every word of their favorite song. They don’t care about the meaning, but they enjoy singing along. Their cell phones and I-pods are full of such songs. My friends, of my age group, they don’t know about our history, but they don’t even bother to know about. They even don’t know about the history behind English songs they utter, but they don’t bother to know. They know little more than ten or twenty Hollywood films, and the same number of Hollywood stars. And they don’t bother to know more about this industry, of which they call themselves ‘big’ fans.

Some call themselves greatest fans of Manchester United or Real Madrid but they know little about the history of these great clubs. Some say, they love WWE, and they don’t even know when the World Heavyweight Championship was introduced in this wrestling entertainment. Some boast to be great fans of PC games and these guys hardly recognize whether the DVD of the game they master in, is made in China or Japan or Korea or Thailand or somewhere else! What has happened to us?

We hate Mahabharata and Ramayana, as we feel these are bogus mythologies. We call ourselves very scientific and practical people, away from such unbelievable non sense. We change Hindi, or Indian channels within seconds (DD is no where in the list even) and shift to HBO, AXN, and we enjoy the film, whether it be Spanish, or Japanese, or whatever. We hardly care to read the subtitles even, (may be because most of the times, we miss them due to slow reading). We shift from Doordarshan showing Mahabharata war, to AXN showing the movie ‘Troy’. And we enjoy the Troy, without bothering to know who Achilles was. Achilles, oh, leave him; we hardly know more than the names about the Iliad and the Odyssey, but, we don’t really feel to know more than these names.  

We find reading Emperor Ashoka, Chandragupta Maurya or Shehenshah Akbar very boring, and we don’t find reading King George, or Queen Victoria or the Iliad or the Odyssey interesting.  

We spend hours on internet searching newest remix version of some Hollywood song, or pirated copies of sound mixing software, or details about newly released browser by Microsoft, but we hardly bother to know who Bill Gates was some three decade ago, and how he became Bill Gates of today.

We discuss minute features of newest Mercedes Benz with our friends (even if the car is not going to be launched in India for next 20 years), but we hardly bother to know whose daughter’s name was Mercedes after which the car was named.

We behave like half Americans, of which we feel proud. But, we hardly know who Thomas Jefferson was. We hate to know about our Indian history. And we don’t bother about the history of place which we love. Then, what exactly we are doing?

Are we living in present, and dreaming of future forgetting about the past? Isn’t it unwise? The boy ridiculing the martyrdom of Chhatrapati Sambhaji -- as a result of which he was born to a Maharashtrian Marathi-speaking family, and not to a forcefully converted Muslim family -- was knowing nothing about how this Maratha King was assassinated and for which cause he laid his life. Neither his parents, nor his teachers bothered to tell him about the history out of the text-books. Neither had they bothered to tell the history to his sister, who called the end part of the play ‘irritating’.

The places where this history is being told, and re-told – the Kirtans, folk theatre, and discourses – are untouchable for the boy, his sister and their friends, as they are young and these places are for old folks. Knowledge centers for youngsters – cyber cafes, www, and televisions – are being used for searching lyrics and synopsis of new movies. Real knowledge-seeking is missing somewhere.

But, as a result -- we know neither about Sambhaji, nor about Achilles, neither Tansen nor Brian Adams, neither Gopi Krishna nor Michel Jackson, neither Ronaldo not Tendulkar, neither Amitabh Bachchan nor Arnold Schwarzenegger, neither Lata Mangeshkar nor Madonna, and neither Dr APJ Abdul Kalam nor Thomas Jefferson. Why such non-sense living in the era where knowledge is open for all and just a click away!