Tomorrow

I was out with some old friends late last night. It was your normal guys' night out on the town, singing "Ho-ho-ho and a bottle of rum", drinking two and generally having a good time driving around on the empty nighttime roads.

We got to talking; about old times, old friends, memories from school. "Do you remember we had samosa parties after school?" said one, "Now kids that age have booze parties. Things have really changed huh?" (I'm paraphrasing and translating but that was the gist of it).

I replied by saying something like, "There is more money everywhere nowadays. You can see it all around. Schoolchildren with mobiles. For us a bicycle was a big buy."

My friend wondered out loud,"What'll our kids' lives be like then? If things can change so drastically since we were in school, our kids will have completely different lifestyles. How'll we control them? Say they drink like we're doing right now. Everyone around them will be doing it."

The "we" was inaccurate since my better half has put an embargo on my alcohol imports (so to speak) and when I'm out with my friends at night, not drinking while they are, I think of her as just my half (that's why drinking is a bad habit, whether you do it or not, but I digress).

I replied again, "Maybe drinking and stuff will be acceptable enough that they won't hide it from us, as we do from our parents. And we in turn, will just tell them about the dangers and trust them to take care of themselves. Of course, my own kids will be out of luck, because of their mom, but they're not the majority."

He said,"So basically, they'll be living a Western kind of lifestyle." That just about sums it up.

Our nation is caught in a hurricane of change right now. Six months, no two months ago, we bought our vegetables at the corner vegetable vendor's. Our groceries came from the neighbourhood kiranawalla, eggs and mushrooms and stuff, from another grocery store because the first one doesn't stock them (he's a Jain, I think). Now, I can go to Aditya Birla Group's More, or Godrej's Nature-whatever or another store owned by a certain Gujju guy who is one of the world's richest people now (big deal!), and buy all the above 
mentioned stuff.

Change is everywhere. All around us. We have to make sure it reaches everywhere. Not just a handful of cities and states. Everyone must benefit. This is our best chance to help every single citizen of this country be happy. Money doesn't buy 
happiness.

But its absence makes it kind of hard to be happy.