Sunday, May 2, 2010

Bandwagon Shift

In this post am only going back to about 10 years of my life and trying to reiterate few mammothian shifts in ideas, the acceptable and others.

When I finished my 12th grade, engineering was the last option I wanted to take (I finally ended becoming an engineer), but my folks wanted me to become an engineer. It was the norm them, it was the bandwagon on to which every parent wanted their ward to board. 10 years later, parents are little more skeptical in making their kids an engineer. It's an urban legend here in Bangalore that if you throw a stone up into the air, it will either land on a dog or an engineer, a software engineer at that.

I never had the awkward conversation with my folks regarding the person whom I should marry, their religion, cast and so on and so forth. But I did hear lot of relatives and friends in their youth who have had fall out with their family because of the choice they made in their love life. Now when I take a look around, the old do exist in pockets, but most are happy when their kids wed someone who is Indian/Opposite sex. Another major shift???

When in college, I was one of the early ones to use the cell phone. The only purpose was to be in touch with my family. Now there are times when am being educated about the various functions in the uber cool cell phone by 6-7 yr olds. My mom uses short codes in the msgs, my kid brother takes better pics on the cell than I, I hardly know the difference between Nokia, Samsung and iPhone other than that I find Nokia easier to manouveur through.

I used to try and maintain a Diary when as a kid. It was a personal space for me that nobody used to intrude into, and yet I found it hard to maintain. Now am maintaining a blog, which is more public than the diary of celebs and yet I find it interesting and easy to maintain. Another of those shifts.

Before joining for my graduation, I used to be in touch with friends via STD calls and the snail mail. Then came the email revolution and later on the scraps in orkut. Not being present in one of the networking sites was considered more of an anathema and being accepted by your peers was partly depended on your online presence. Now orkut has become a fad and thus arrived facebook and twitter. If you are not on FB, then you are not alive for most of your friends. FB has become more of a bandwagon that you need to be on, maintain your online reputation and grow yourself as a brand.

Anyways, am pretty sure that I will be alive for another 40 odd years to see more bandwagon shift. Guess I should be prepared for all that I will live to see and experience. :)

2 comments:

Rachana said...

reflections.. :) Btw, pls change d spelling of ur diary dude! :P unless yu really meant dairy wch i dont think yu did.. :)

jagadeesh S Nair said...

Nice... :P