Culture Vultures

I grew up in an undivided joint family atmosphere where grandparents, cousins and siblings formed a great team and support system. India being a secular country we would celebrate all the festivals, which gave us the chance to connect to our cultural roots. Slowly with globalization and erosion of the joint family system we have drifted apart from the links of our own heritage, where using our relationship and clout we could safely navigate potential impediments in life. As I watched my kids mingle with the next generation of cousins I wondered about these third culture kids who were scattered all over the globe. Mobile in body soul and intellect with no place to call their own, they fit in everywhere, but nowhere in particular, funny isn’t it? A new flashy assorted culture is beamed at them from TV & Internet, food and festivals are homogenized & indigenized, Dominoes pizza to homemade food. The memory of their own culture and grandparents diminishes as their minds are filled with the arts, language and a cornucopia of other cultures. A sense of inferiority & alienation creeps in - as the ignorance of then own culture increases in leaps & bounds. As more and more people move into nuclear families leaving their parents and grandparents behind, a veil of “dementia” sets in on these oldies who now a pre-programmed to a Skype call every month. As time goes by the elderly are likely to be lonelier – despite the occasional trips that are enforced to either baby sit their grandchildren or change. All of us who revere the old culture know we are just a bunch of Jurassic park dinosaurs unable to comprehend the wanton amenisa of the new generation, and the end of a culture that is completely gone.