Smriti is into the third year of her Engineering graduation; also a member of the English Team, Enginium. This is her first write-up on Freespeech. The second is being edited and will be out soon.
Fashion is a strange word. By fashion I mean not just the fashion of clothes (which incidentally is a concept alien to me. My wardrobe has been in a state of inertia for quite some time now), but fashion in terms of trends, moods, styles governing every conceivable aspect of human life. It is strange, not because it is ‘strange’ strange, but because the more things seem to change the more they remain the same. Time, they say, goes round in cycles. It is a circle, not just a contiguous one but in fact a continuous one. If looked at with this perspective the past, present and the future are the same thing. Call it our love for compartmentalization that makes the three appear to be such different entities. It is like having the same pizza crust garnished with different toppings, where the crust and the crux is always the past. The past is the scaffolding, it is the buttress. And it will always pack quite a punch (heavier than the one Mohammad Ali landed on Joe Frazier, if you please).
It is not for nothing that you see remixes- from Lata Mangeskar’s songs to Shakespeare’s plays, reenactments- of past dictators’ lives to new boy bands trying to do the ‘Beatles’, re-stirring-of grandmas old recipes and pickles to history itself, to discussions about the relevance or non relevance of Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre and their ilk today, to researchers who spend their entire lives trying to disprove the theory of relativity to others who spend theirs trying to find new applications of Newton’s laws, to well this can go on. But the point is, be it philosophy or fashion (of clothes, that is) or music or food or just about anything under the sun, we simply don’t do things the way they were done in the past.
Everything ‘past’ has a certain magic, a halo of enigma, a tinge of mysticism, a certain permanence about it. From the Hippie culture and the sexual revolution and the Osho phenomenon, to the world wars and the Berlin wall and the rise and fall of communism, to Pink Floyd to Naxalbari and naxalites, to Indian democracy to American dominance, African emergence to Asian resurgence. Even the dictators seemed more bedazzling, more enigmatic. It is no wonder then that the present generation is on a perpetual borrowing mission, in various degrees of course. It is always on the lookout for new toppings to make things appear brand new or just trying to mix and match and repackage the earlier ones.
The past is more in our blood than we realize. And even if we do realize then we are busy coining up terms like ‘fashion cycle’ to make up for our lack of ideas, creativity, ingenuity and sincerity. Do not get fooled into believing terms like fashion cycle-they are all euphemisms for borrowings in various degrees. We cannot shake the past off. In this sense nothing we will ever create can be truly ‘original’ or no event that takes place can be treated as a stand alone, independent entity. For everything we do will be more deeply entrenched in the past than we can ever imagine.
The past is more present than the present itself; for it is the foundation that we stand on, it is the influence which guides us, the thoughts that make us, the music which satiates us, the enigma that bedazzles us, the tenderness which nurtures us. The past is the maker of our present and probably also our future. The past packs more than a punch.
Fashion is a strange word. By fashion I mean not just the fashion of clothes (which incidentally is a concept alien to me. My wardrobe has been in a state of inertia for quite some time now), but fashion in terms of trends, moods, styles governing every conceivable aspect of human life. It is strange, not because it is ‘strange’ strange, but because the more things seem to change the more they remain the same. Time, they say, goes round in cycles. It is a circle, not just a contiguous one but in fact a continuous one. If looked at with this perspective the past, present and the future are the same thing. Call it our love for compartmentalization that makes the three appear to be such different entities. It is like having the same pizza crust garnished with different toppings, where the crust and the crux is always the past. The past is the scaffolding, it is the buttress. And it will always pack quite a punch (heavier than the one Mohammad Ali landed on Joe Frazier, if you please).
It is not for nothing that you see remixes- from Lata Mangeskar’s songs to Shakespeare’s plays, reenactments- of past dictators’ lives to new boy bands trying to do the ‘Beatles’, re-stirring-of grandmas old recipes and pickles to history itself, to discussions about the relevance or non relevance of Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre and their ilk today, to researchers who spend their entire lives trying to disprove the theory of relativity to others who spend theirs trying to find new applications of Newton’s laws, to well this can go on. But the point is, be it philosophy or fashion (of clothes, that is) or music or food or just about anything under the sun, we simply don’t do things the way they were done in the past.
Everything ‘past’ has a certain magic, a halo of enigma, a tinge of mysticism, a certain permanence about it. From the Hippie culture and the sexual revolution and the Osho phenomenon, to the world wars and the Berlin wall and the rise and fall of communism, to Pink Floyd to Naxalbari and naxalites, to Indian democracy to American dominance, African emergence to Asian resurgence. Even the dictators seemed more bedazzling, more enigmatic. It is no wonder then that the present generation is on a perpetual borrowing mission, in various degrees of course. It is always on the lookout for new toppings to make things appear brand new or just trying to mix and match and repackage the earlier ones.
The past is more in our blood than we realize. And even if we do realize then we are busy coining up terms like ‘fashion cycle’ to make up for our lack of ideas, creativity, ingenuity and sincerity. Do not get fooled into believing terms like fashion cycle-they are all euphemisms for borrowings in various degrees. We cannot shake the past off. In this sense nothing we will ever create can be truly ‘original’ or no event that takes place can be treated as a stand alone, independent entity. For everything we do will be more deeply entrenched in the past than we can ever imagine.
The past is more present than the present itself; for it is the foundation that we stand on, it is the influence which guides us, the thoughts that make us, the music which satiates us, the enigma that bedazzles us, the tenderness which nurtures us. The past is the maker of our present and probably also our future. The past packs more than a punch.
1 comment:
jst read d article...........a rare taste of writing worth appreciating...........
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