A lot of people, whom I interacted with on the year 2012, said that it was a
year with almost all the contents a regular year has. But apart from being
regular, it was a year with end of many remarkable things.
If we talk about entertainment in India, it was end of an era with passing of
stalwarts like Pt. Ravishankar, Jagjit Singh, Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna and many
more. In my childhood I used to think that these people will never die, because
they are super humans, But they passed away. Entertainment in India was already
changing at rapid pace, but with passing away of these legends and even the
last brigade superstars like Mr. Bacchan, the Khan trio and other third
generation superstars getting older, the original Hero oriented Hindi cinema is
witnessing its sunset. I don't know who after Mr. Bacchan, SRK or Salman Khan
would be able to create that magnificent mass appeal. Same goes with music
industry, where few people used to rule the hearts of audiences for like ages.
Now everyday we get new singers with great talent on reality TV show and every
other person have their personal favorites. Now the entertainment in India is
more accommodating to experimental and innovative ideas and there is space for
almost all kind of music and cinema.
Sports, seen a great makeover in India. Everybody was talking about Schin's
retirement, but when he retired, everybody was asking for more. It might have
happened for the first time in any religion that even God retires. The Indian
team is a completely new cadre with a constant change in its constitution. And
with the changing formats and high performance expectation it is unlikely that
the game cricket would produce any more Gods. On the other hand, Olympics
brought us our new found love for games other than cricket (I believe at this
point those games are still "games other than cricket" in India). One
could easily spot children around their locality holding sport accessories
other than cricket and our performance at Olympics made the entire world say
that India is coming up as a serious sporting nation.
Importantly, last two years in Indian politics witnessed remarkable and
probably never before events which thoroughly redefined the outlook of entire
nation towards how politics runs in India. Be it protesting for Lokpal or Delhi
gang rape victim, the youth of India have shown their concern in great appeal
and sent a clear massage that everything will be made accountable and
answerable. There were many incidents in India where the government was on its
knees for wrong reasons, but this time people fought for the issues which were
rather national and indeed crucial for better governance and national life than
merely cast or state oriented crap. Needless to mention that vote out by
citizens in states like UP, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Gujarat
showcased India Inc.’s willingness to change and promote development politics.
The gap between government and people is getting narrowed down day by day which
is a very positive sign.
History says when there is a great instability in the world, it splurges
into quarrel and keep becoming more instable until it does a significant
destruction to start afresh. What have seen recently is not in assertion to the
history. There is a great political instability in the Middle East and a
greater economical instability around the world. May be this instability is not
getting resolved that fast but what is interesting to see is the world is not
getting into quarrel, instead people are showing sign of patience and nations
are joining hands to work collectively and come out of crises.
People around the world are making fun of the Mayan calendar and doomsday phenomena
as we succeeded into year 2013 without even a slightest harm to human
civilization, but I don’t reject it completely. Who knows the ancient people
had wisdom to see that there will be a great transformation in the human
civilization and that the generation at the end of year 2012 will rewrite the
future of human kind and the ancient Mayan marked it as the end of
controversial living, end of orthodox mindset, end of living by someone else’s
belief, end of calendar made by them and beginning of living by knowing.
