I thought I’d let my next piece have a follow-up with my previous writing about ‘Culture’. They may seem a little disconnected at first glance but if you would follow with me through this piece as well I will try to induce a co-relation between them. What has been a general evaluation of culture and identity I have further tried to emulate through our personal lives and actions. I pondered on different topics to keep up with the flow of this continuation but I felt this particular one had a stinging tinge on our pride and is a question seldom asked. When we accentuate on what is wrong with society the maladies are numerous, one seemingly more overwhelming than the other. But I would not leave it that, in fact rendering this as our starting point. When you refer these questions through a religious point of view or as culture and traditional obligations I would not know if we are solely impartial. Therefore, bypassing them I would rather ask directly: ‘Do we indulge our children?’: ‘Do we indulge in corruption?’: ‘Do we perpetually play a blame-game?’
To be frank, I do not know much about culture and identity in a Naga context. I haven’t grown up in a village or learned to read and write my mother tongue, and the displacements in my childhood years are a reflection of what I have missed out. I reimburse by placing a strong patriotism within me. When I observe laidback lives on familiar topography or lifelong friendships there is usually a sad tinge of envy in me.
Overlapping of culture
I say it again, adaptation, adaptation, adaption is our elixir to survival. Especially for ethnic-indigenous people like us. Adaptation does not mean erasing the traces of our previous culture or overlapping it with another establishment, But contextualizing our past into our present through adaptation. While within this topic I will also bring in personal accounts or observations from my own life and the ones around me so that we may learn from one another. These accounts are as personal as you may view your own and I hope we can interrelate through this. The overlapping of culture is inevitable and consuming. We human beings aren’t exuberant about change; in fact long after an establishment has been demolished we still cling on to imaginary figments that such is our resistance to change.
Here you have the strict parent, the overbearing, controlling parent who has not changed what his father’s view was of him. I have heard many flogging-stories and still impetuous nature of disobedience, perhaps nurtured from childhood. “No, you will not wear bellbottoms or keep your hair long like your peers.” “You may not go out with so and so friend for a picnic.” Restrictions, restrictions. And even though this happened a generation before me I am to see its resurrection in impeccable imitation of the previous one even in my own generation. I don’t really know who to sympathize. The parent cannot trust the child and the child can never confide in them, an unmistakable chasm grows. Fear and intimation is the outcome, not respect or understanding. You destroy each other’s lives, not just your own. Anger is a seed that is contagious and cultivates from one person to the next. ‘I will not turn into my father’, is exactly what you turn into with one’s own children.
The passive-observer
I am not a parent and I cannot impart parenting skills but anyone who has a parent is not ignorant about manipulation. “He/she can be manipulated to say yes.” I remember my brother nagging about a guitar, guitar, guitar and finally he got a guitar. The same with his bike. A slack behavior can make us realize that your ‘no’ can eventually turn into a ‘yes’. But although rules can be bent, somethings can not be compromised. Or can they? Your inability to compromise on certain moral or ethical issues marks respect and inflexibility. Then we also know our limits.
It is not only the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ bit of parenting but also where a parent refrains from confronting on anything. I know in my grandfather’s village the old pastor who brandishes a stick around the thehou* after his adult son whenever he comes home drunk. Amusing sight, yes, but a certain reverence is also set aside at the same go. I also know how null confrontation has left some of us completely incapable of asserting themselves. We learn to manipulate and evade from questioning our ourselves too. There is no stability to lie back on, no confrontation to put us on our spot. Everything is done at our whim that there is no need to address ourselves and our shortcomings. Our method is manipulation, even if that is trickery.
The indulgent- parent
I would not need to cite out instances without your own observations of these as well. Indulgent-parents, indulged children. This pattern usually follows male offsprings who are indulgently spoilt without any restraint. There is no right, there is no wrong. There are no moral or ethical values. It is simply indulging the child in whatever want (not need) he/she desires. Sometimes I think to myself that I have not seen such indulged children in all my years in Europe as I see here. My French friend and photographer who have been to Nagaland since the 90’s sat and reminisced about the changes occurring in Nagaland. She tells me, “everyone wants to be a ‘Hero’. Before when I talk to the youth they were more matured than European kids and responsible too, thinking about their future. But nowadays everyone just wants to be a hero.” Its shows in her photographs too- two boys dressed in western clothes and toys in hand defiantly looking into the camera while thirty minutes ago she had taken a photo of a boy carrying cattle-feed on his back. Here again, excluding cultural obligations- devoid of religious topic- I simply ask, what does that imply? Are we turning into China with obese and self-indulgent generations still living with their parents? Or South Korea, lost in a world of materialism and physical appearances?
Society
The society is unhealthy but our reaction is not resulting in any healthier or more positive outcome. Factional killings, corruption and the government not able to give firm administration and justice for crimes. But the outcome of a public is general deterioration in their quarters. You’re not able to protect or avert them from what is already see-through in society. Indulging them with a superficial image is only encouraging them to further de-value any values that may be left. One generation may be able to exist in a superficial bubble but that is not consistent in the generations after, the outcome resulting in a chaotic assemblage. And to think, this very generation will be the same generation who will take on society and its many maladies.
Conclusions
It isn’t so much the loss of culture and values, receding religious values. No, in fact just direct a question to yourself- How much of this will impact me in my future? The indulgence of entertaining any of these vague modern-westernized notions for immediate consumption will have its consequences for generations to come. I am not implying that one should go back to the old ways but contextualize, contextualize what you are adapting. Else, what is the point of adaptation at all? I may not have an authority to speak about our own culture or a personal account of the transitions we have gone through but I feel I still have an input to address the sagging girdle of society. This I have done so here.
