We are in an era witnessing the literati of the land, particularly the urban elite and their young cohorts giving up time-honoured customs and looking askance at the traditions that have endured for centuries, some of them featured in the narratives of epics as well as scriptures. The impact of rule by aliens for nearly four centuries ending seven decades ago on the makeover in Indian ethos is being bandied about by public speakers with or without credentials to dwell on the matter. The extent and rate of the perceptible change in outlook to the land’s legacy of now-disfavoured ways of life have not shown any signs of abating, thanks to many factors, particularly rapid urbanisation bringing in its wake congestion in cities, compulsions of stressed life, shortfall of life-supporting resources, tardy administration and last but not the least, families devoid of the elderly playing the role of mentors. The modern society, dominated by nuclear families with no space for the senior citizens, seems to mock at the oft-quoted expression that the entire world is a family.
The child, in a typical urban-based family, growing in an atmosphere that offers no scope to learn the do’s and don’ts of life drawn from the land’s customs and traditional practices is also forced to spend years of schooling missing education by miles and miles. There are no signs of the elderly returning to the family fold that they raised.
