The pics becoming viral of a ‘Captain Cool’ MS Dhoni merrily playing with his little daughter, while the ‘CSK’ team was busy celebrating their IPL victory, has now earned him the sobriquet ‘Daddy Cool’ and more fans, who are looking at the human side of a battle-scattered veteran of historic wins !

Are young men of today more committed, sincere and demonstrative as caring Dads compared to us, who have grown ups as children and to our own  fathers and their fathers of that Victorian era when the well-accepted generation gap existed where one spoke to them only when spoken to ?! What appears is a connect getting established and the small family size is helping.

The young Dads of the 60s were working men ( with fewer working mothers) with large families and live-in parents. Life’s daily struggle often made them exhausted, underpaid and frustrated, worrying about their meager salaries and keeping quiet about their own anxieties so that the rest of the family would have a better life.

Speaking of my Dad, I now realize that despite his love, becoming friends was not usual in those days, but he passed on to us through his exemplary, simple life-style, many of life’s beautiful pursuits like music, literature, films and love for sports and most importantly, being a ‘good human being’ was the lesson he inculcated in all of us.

With time, demographic changes, rapid technology, healthcare, living standards, education system and life-styles have seen huge transformation. But ‘Dads’ who were considered a source of inspiration and fountain of knowledge in the 80’s are now becoming old-style and uncool with their archaic technical skills and old-world values. Parents were the mentors two decades back but not any longer, instead their protective cover is a burden and well-meaning advice now seem like impractical homilies which don’t suit the generation which values its freedom more than its responsibilities.

Whatever the age and position, Dads (and Moms) in general, love unconditionally but often do not allow children to understand them well enough to make sense of their actions. Sometimes they make the mistake of attaching an emotional price tag to everything, meaning that progeny’s success is their success, progeny’s failure is their failure – trying to be the judge of what’s right and wrong because Dad ( and Mom) know what’s best. No longer is that going to work with the youth of today.

Researchers think that adults now pay too much attention to their children at the expense of themselves. Dads (Parents) defer their pleasure trips, close off interests or avenues that they formerly pursued that made them fuller and more interesting people. Being totally focused on the children makes them lose their identities, lowers self-esteem when discarded by them later, struggling to rediscover what’s left as the ‘nest is empty’.

Once upon a time ( not very long ago ) life for a college student was, to use an old cliché, simple to the point of being mundane. For some (like me) real-time started with a 10^th Board exam. of HS or High School ( for some others, Board of SC or Senior Cambridge ) to be followed by 12^th Board of Intermediate Exams. Those from SC were considered more anglicised and suave – would somehow pass in Hindi while the High School types, being not-so-cool, less likely to score highly in English for strangely obvious reasons, but often faring better in maths and science. But no-one,not even the best, could dream getting anywhere near 90%!

Things would eventually level after college pass-out into the big bad world of competitions comprising basically of two streams – engineering and medical (few even applied to armed forces) while many opted for graduation and post-graduation en-route to appearing for the All-India IAS, Railways, Income Tax, other Allieds or the SBI and PSU banks. Yet another set (financially solid !) moved to the US haven for higher studies.

When one saw/read that Mark Zuckerberg got his degree from Harvard Univ. more than a decade after he’d dropped out to pursue his vision of FB, one reflects that at the end of the day (of professional life), how much do academic results and marks count ! Many of success stories I know are of back-benchers in school, some even notorious pranksters !

Cut to the present and amazingly so many students get 90+% in their board exams and then high percentages result in high cut-offs to get admission in colleges, thereby de-motivating those who could not score well or who score even 80+% marks ( really fabulous in our time !). Should percentage be the only criteria for admissions ? Life is far much more than percentage and degrees but try telling that to eager, ambitious parents and the authorities, in a hugely competitive dog-eat-dog world.

The counter-argument is – this generation is far smarter and earns the high scores through smart prep and professional counseling. Multiple choice answers and objective type tests also enable very high scoring with ‘a little bit of luck’ of-course (like getting the right questions ! )

But is learning and imparting knowledge about success by scoring high – in the good old days, it was all about conceptual clarity and getting the ‘fundas’ right and also about the right values. Many from the old school might even sing sadly today “ Koi Lauta De Mere Bite Hue Din ….”

There are times when some words (or phrases) get stuck to your memory – either from a book, a film or even a random expression from a lay person ! For movie and lit buffs this can happen often, for writers do come up with lines, which in context appear path-breaking and pithy but taken outside,  compel reflection on the larger meaning that can be attributable to them.

A phrase that recently quite caught my imagination were the intriguing lines – “..from somewhere between nowhere and goodbye” as said by the wise, down and out prize fighter, describing the main protagonist of the movie, whose past was made up of dereliction and deprivation of life’s basic needs (from the 2004 Oscar winner, film-drama ‘Million Dollar Baby’). But was it more of a metaphor than an expression ?

Taken in a larger context, what do such words signify ? It can be the story of those who fight an identity crises (being nowhere), struggling to find a new one for a better tomorrow, perilously jumping off beaten paths ( goodbye ).

Many people living ordinary lives, working in firms and offices, feel they are not in a good position in life, not really heading anywhere and they know given half a chance, they’d love to say good-bye to all of it.What a gutted feeling and what it does is to keep away positivity and happiness at arm’s length.

On another level, aren’t we all (specially those battling mid-life crises and onset of old age) hanging between the imagery and physicality of beauty and the realization that it’s time to say goodbye to the impetuousness of youth and its trappings , yet fight the perennial struggle to remain somewhere in-between !

All of that and am still wondering – that being somewhere can still be better than being nowhere (and with no meaning for existence) and it’s hard but better to say goodbye to those things and people, that time and life have decided for us.

As an exuberant youth in the 1970s, I was very fascinated with the vroom, zoom and ‘dhoom’ speed at which some my friends with more machismo and muscle could handle motorcycles with one famous brand appropriately called ‘Bullet’ !  In fact the scooters (and scootis) that we softer guys used, were a very poor cousin to these mean machines and the then heroes could manage all their filmy stunts and romance heroines equipped with those shiny symbols of power. Those cool dude with wheels, people would rave !

Cut to 2018 – in Mumbai’s horrendous traffic with innumerable autos, cars, buses, vans and trucks on roads with world-famed pot-holes (as in all major cities), we have the indefatigable bikers ( motorcycles are known as bikes by today’s youngsters ) all over to add to the general mayhem – with their foot on the gas, swerving, weaving, lane cutting, overtaking from the left and grazing the poor vehicles and motor cars which happen to be in their way – all done with alacrity and with the effrontery and bravado worthy of a crown prince ! But now, all this is so scary and hair-raising !

To look at the brighter side – bikers today almost always wear helmets ( ever vigilant cops make them pay heavily otherwise) and with backpacks, are well protected in case of unfortunate mishaps. However, not only does this make them oblivious to others on the road ( I’ve often driving the car, tried many types of preventive actions through hand signals to them with no effect!) but with such great acceleration, there are always hazards out of the biker’s control, like bad weather, gravel or sand, potholes, and bad drivers and yes, pedestrians walking on roads with mobiles on their ears !

Young bikers with lady pillion riders tend to become more adventurous to ‘show-off’ their driving skills and expose them and others to risk. Knowing and staying within your limits can help keep you safe and choosing a bike that’s within your skill level can lessen the chances of a needless accident.

As a senior citizen and also regular car owner-driver, I am in a comfort zone that both my sons are not into bikes but I can easily understand that macho feeling of speed and power that attracts young to mo-bikes apart from their being far more affordable than cars.  Someone had once said ‘.. riding a motorcycle is one of the most glorious and romantic activities I have ever come across’ – so true, but I would recommend, if it could be approached with a proper mindset and not as the race of life !