The world we live in ---

I am truly witnessing a generation gap - I belong to the older generation which believed in right and wrong - while the milieu around us shows that nobody really cares now.

I had almost stopped reading the daily newspapers - much safer to read about the financial dailies which atleast deal with only things like Satyam fiasco or the sin of plain old greed!

Read an article today where a man kidnaps another's kids and asks for a crore's ransom by holding them hostage. The police grab the kidnapping kingpin's family (very very commendable of them and I fully agree in the concept!) and force the kingpin to release the children. And then the kingpin's wife is all over the place saying that her dear husband is no kidnapper but only wanted to teach the kid's parents a lesson!!!

Is this for real? So you kidnap someone's kids because you are upset with him and your wife supports you. Brilliant - What is the world coming to. By the same reasoning the girl in Meerut who killed her whole family with her boyfriend because she wanted to marry this penniless do-nothing, and her family objected, should also go scot free - I mean how dare the family object!!!

Or the grandmom who was killed by her 12-13 year old grandchild because she was not allowing him to visit pornographic sites and the parents of the boy tried to safe his back-side by saying that the grand-mom should have respected his privacy

Or the sofa repair guys (2 of them) who kill a woman because they think the woman looked loaded and then settle for a gold chain and 1600 bucks when they can find no more

Or a married guy who with his friends gang-rapes his girlfriend in Ahmedabad, the girl then commits suicide and the wife and father call a press conference in New Delhi to try to save the guy

Unfortunately, in most of these instances, there are people who are "in the know" or try to save the skin of the villians of the piece. I mean just because someone is my spouse, sibling, parent, child, friend, lover, etc. should I forget/condone what they did?

I still remember when "thou shalt not lie", "thou shalt not steal", "thou shall share", "thou shalt respect your elders" were tenets that were sworn by. When there were big families and our elders did not need our parents permission to teach us values or scold us or tell us what was right and what was not!

So what changed??? There has been a paradigm shift from what we see around us.

Today if a neighbour says something about your child - that the kid was mis-behaving or seen with wrong company, you do not take it at face value - you first tell the neighbour to mind his/her own business and then ask your child if what he said was true. The message being sent out is clear - the child can get away with anything!

Today there is no sense of "belonging" in a family - Summer vacations are time to take in a few more classes rather than hang-out with friends and relatives - no sense of bonding with cousins...

Money is a main criterion too - We did not have too much of it in our time and were none the worse for it - but the parents today want their kids to have luxury, when they think of their careers, it is with the expectation that they will make BIG money and therefore have a good life!!!

It is this I, me & myself attitude that rejects any sense of values and this quest for money - one way or the other - that I believe are the pain points. And then there is the "acceptance" factor - whatever you do, will be tolerated by friends and family.

Why is it that a parent is upset if the son slaps him - he has been a local tough and the parents have known it all along? Why does a wife allow her rapist husband to come back home, let alone support him? ...

We see all of this happening all around us and sit huddled in our own corners believing that this only happens to others and can never happen to us.

I think what scares the hell out of me is that I strongly believe that it is only a matter of time before things get worse and happen within our families and circles and since we have done damn all till now, there is nothing that we can or will do then.

But what can we do? That is the real question!

And I do know that my stopping to read the newspaper will not make it go away and is not really a solution. But I am clueless and till the time something occurs to me my "neck in the sand" attitude will help me tide over this - or so I hope!