Does anything really change?

I was recently watching Episode 11 of Wagle Ki Duniya - a 30 min primetime TV program that aired on national TV in the late 80s and early 90s in India - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfaP1BSs8IA

I was watching it because I'm a Shah Rukh Khan fan (yes he's in this episode), and because I was yearning to feel like I was a pre-teen! When I was actually a pre-teen and watched this episode on TV with my parents more than 30 years ago on a small TV set, it was the best form of entertainment - replete with my parents prompting me during the scenes to imbibe some of the lessons being imparted in the show. 

Watching it in 2022 (thanks to the power of YouTube) has prompted a totally different view on the episode and led to (what is excusably the feature of a 40 year old brain) some deeper questioning. 

The question that it led me to was 'Does anything really change at all?'

And the reason that question came to mind is a few distinct scenes in the episode, which depicts India around the year 1990. 

The first scene starts with Mrs. Wagle walking into her house, returning from a grocery run. She enters and exclaims how the traffic has turned insane. How it's impossible to cross the road with so many cars zipping by every second and motor cyclists now adding to the chaos. Traffic was a bane in 1990 too? Yes, it was beginning to become a bane then as it's becoming/become one now, 32 years later!

I am very sure that if I watch a movie from the 1960s, the mention of traffic as a new and evolving bane will surely come up. I am equally sure that when I watch a movie in 2052, it will make an appearance too. 

The other scene which is even more interesting is when Mr. Wagle averts an accident with a car driven by the character played by SRK (by the way, the name of the character played by SRK is not revealed in this episode) who is visibly portrayed to be a youthful, energetic, upwardly mobile individual (albeit cigarette smoking). While the accident itself is a non-accident as none of the characters involved get hurt at all. However passers by (which are always in plenty on the streets of India), huddle at the 'crime scene' and within the blink of an eye, are all in a police station along with the victim and perpetrator. The victim and the perpetrator, in the meantime, are obviously clueless resembling the face of someone who is told to run on a treadmill with no option to stop!

The equivalent today is what happens on Twitter, or for that matter on any social media platform. Posts with genuine intent are plastered with hate, creating a narrative that is neither close to the intent nor really needed. A vocal minority is always ready and available to spoil the mood. 

There are a few other scenes in this episode which triggered this question for me but there are two that stand out. 

It made me wonder if anything really changes at all. The world we see around us, at any point in time, is a slice from a long thread of mankind. A thread long and wide. And on this thread, our experiences and interpretations are just our fast analysis of what we see. 

Sometimes I wonder if any of the hot topics of today are real issues or just issues we're hearing for the first time, while nothing has really changed in the decades that have passed. Asking questions and going in-depth requires time, energy and the desire to form an objective view, but who has the time. In our desire to be accepted as part of a community we follow narratives and strengthen them without realising how quickly we can move from a position of not knowing about a topic, to a position where we are so intently supporting it even without knowing enough about it. 

While this post started from a seemingly skeptical and innocuous view of the world, it makes me very hopeful. Hopeful because we seem to be worried that a lot has changed, but IF in fact nothing really has, there's nothing armageddon-ish is really going to happen. 

I recently had a conversation about this over dinner, and it didn't go anywhere because the waiter came with the bill and it was already getting late. I wonder where we would have landed... I wonder where we will land...