The Next Generation

enerations change. And a friend had once written a story which began with the line – heredity skips generations. I believe in both. Actually today in my family, I see four generations standing side by side, with one more decade about to begin.

Slowly they are arriving, the next generation of the Banerjees and the Bhattacharyas. Tiny but feisty, all of them are claimed to be more intelligent than our generation. Their grandparents are convinced about the authenticity of this fact. Well, that’s brilliant. As far as I am concerned I am pleased to be the uncle who will help them elope when they are old enough to elope or let them stay in Mumbai when they run off from home to become a Bollywood star. So clearly you see I don’t have any speck of intelligence that I can be proud of.

The next generation will be a strange one. They will be the ones who will grow up with friends, rather than cousins, they will have their own strange accents, they will probably make a big fuss about visiting India when their parents discuss about it. The huge collections of books in Bengali that we have hoarded with every penny that we got from our elders today wear a deserted look. Didi and I splurged on books rather than on clothes or anything else and what a collection we built. But there were always so many more books to buy. Our parents wait for the next one in the family to devour them. And they know how impossible that might be. By that time, they might get bored with me as well. As I have been growing up, the cynic in me buys up more Dilbert than is healthy for the mind.

But I think they will manage. They are the children of the new millennium, smarter and often more connected to roots than we have been as for them roots will not be a city like Calcutta but it will be the whole country and Oh what an incredible country that is. And I know their parents; of course I do!!! And I am sure, they’ll be as paranoid, yet lovable as ours have been.

Of course there might be others being born closer to them, geographically and probably they will hit it off as we did when we were younger. 2011 I think has 12 months like every other year. So possibility of adding to their cousin group seems logically feasible.