Intergalactic Emergency

Nothing has taken hold of the lives of adolescents like the internet, and in particular, the smartphone

- Satish Padmanabhan

EVERY generation believes the next one is doomed. When hieroglyphs were all the rage in Egypt in 3000 BCE, the older generation must have thought it would be the end of the Mesopotamian civilisation. When the Gutenberg press started printing in the 1400s, mothers and fathers must have felt books would be the downfall of their children. In my parents' generation, when they were in their teens in the 1950s, radio and cinema were the dark forces that would corrupt young minds.

When my mother would reminisce about her childhood, she would narrate how after much coaxing and cajoling her mother (the children never spoke to their father directly for anything, least of all to go to a movie), she and her sisters were allowed to watch Sivaji Ganesan's Parasakthi (1952) in the cinema hall, in Palakkad in Kerala. This, after my mother's aunts had already watched and vetted it, and deemed it suitable for the children. Sivaji was somewhat permissible, but M. G. Ramachandran's movies were total taboo, as they were usually 'aabasham'—full of 'sex and violence'.

Films were never so kosher in my growing-up years either. If I remember right, the first film we went out to see as a family was Jai Santoshi Maa, when I was about seven and my sister and brother were younger than me. Then an untoward episode happened with Amitabh Bachchan's superhit Don a few years later. My friends in school had all seen it, and had told its story complete with background music many times during the lunch period. I had been coaxing and cajoling my mother to take us to see it (we could talk to our father directly about other things, but not wanting to see a film) and they finally relented.