Is More Always Merrier?
A few days ago, I had to go to self-isolation suspecting the pandemic of the century. Thankfully, the report came out to be negative and everybody at home, as well as friends, heaved a collective sigh of relief. When you are confined to your room and have little energy to undertake any work, you just cannot help spending your maximum waking hours before the idiot box which incidentally has been rechristened ‘the smart TV’. Though TVs claim to be smart, they have made the viewers suffer from the abundance syndrome. With countless channels and numerous apps like Netflix, Prime, Hotstar, Voot etc, it becomes really difficult to restrict yourself to a particular programme or a channel.
Natasha Badhwar
Where are you from? Where do you belong? As children growing up in Ranchi and later Kolkata, my brothers and I had learnt that the correct answer to this question was “Punjab”. We did not understand at that age why we were asked this question so frequently. We were a migrant family, but children don’t see demarcations in identities till we teach them differences.
On the other hand, when we would actually visit our grandparents and extended family in the small towns and villages of Punjab during our school vacations, we would be asked the same question with equal curiosity. In this context, the correct answer was no longer “Punjab”. We stood out as Hindi-speaking children from a non-Punjabi, urban culture and were now identified by the city where we lived and went to school.