Cyber Hub

Nothing can bring home the truth than a visit to the Cyber Hub for dinner that one has aged and is slowly relegated to the group, that often begins any conversation with a prefatory statement “blessed was it in that dawn to be alive/ to be young was  very heaven”.  Cyber hub, established in 2013  in the upscale satellite town near Delhi caters to the  gastronomical needs of young men and women( young today ranges between 18 and 60) whose average salary is higher than that of a upper middle class family,  who are among the best paid people in the country and who can therefore afford the pricey fares in these restaurants.  Being close to the IT hub, it caters to the well placed men and women working in the Cyber city during weekdays and on weekends, it attracts reasonably affluent families from Delhi and adjoining regions of the capital. On an average Cyber hub has around 25000 customers everyday among its 52 restaurants, bars and pubs. The cuisine served is not any fancied or extraordinary fare that one does not find elsewhere or the ambience an exclusive one. But the price of each item compares with any restaurant in a three star hotel. An Indian vegetarian dinner for two should cost a minimum of Rs. 2000 and this does not include drinks ( soft and hard) .

Despite the prohibitive fare, there is a constant coming in of people and one hardly finds any restaurant with an empty chair. Most of those who come early (around eight in the evening) are family groups and before they troop out, the young crowd from the neighbouring offices saunters in -and always in twos and threes. Unlike the formally dressed oldies and their prim and properly attired families, this group is casually dressed with men carrying their trademark business bolsas and women with vintage backpacks, casually slung across the shoulders. No wonder most of them are on the heavy side as they frequently make their nocturnal foray to these restaurants that serve Indian dinner known for its generous use of oil, salt and spice. In the next two decades, whether we score on any other distinction or not, it is safely predicted that India will have the distinction of having the largest diabetic population, thanks to the deskbound jobs where young men and women sit for six hours at a stretch besides poor calorie management and sedentary life style.  If diabetes is on the increase, so is the cardiovascular disease rising at a rapid rate. I learnt from a young lady working for an IT firm saying she leaves home around 7.30 in the morning and returns around 10 at night. On those rare days she does not eat in the Cyberhub, she eats on her way back home the packed cold dinner she had brought with her in the morning. Her husband returns home an hour later and they exchange only two words every day- “good morning” before they leave and “good night” before they turn in. Between the two of them, they earn lakhs of rupees but they have no time to spend except in the Cyber hub!( and hopefully not on the doctors)

As I walked along the long winding corridor that housed different restaurants, I noticed   young girls standing at the doors that open on the visitors with a huge grin inviting them to enter with the corner of their eyes.  It is a difficult choice to make- whom to oblige and whom not to. You meander through the entire corridor and tired, you decide to enter anyone of the restaurants to grab a bite before returning home. Since one had waded through a dense traffic on the way to the Cyber hub- that turned  a ten minute drive into a nightmarish marathon lasting ninety minutes- it is prudent to keep  enough margin to return home before mid night. But for the young, time does not matter at any hour of the night. For them the night walk to the cyber hub after a daylong staring at the computer is a rhapsody on a neon-lit night.  They come not because they are hungry (they all seem well fed even before they sit at the table), but by habit to chew the rag before returning to their hearth-less homes.

 Abba’s famous lines:

                                                   Money, money, money
                                                    Must be funny
                                                    In the rich man's world
                                                    Money, money, money
                                                    Always sunny
                                                    In the rich man's world

kept buzzing through my brain. I was confused. I saw the young people in high spirits with not a care of the world, unbothered by “the fret and fever of the world”, smug and secure with the numerous credit/debit cards lining their wallets.. They have the best of “resume” virtues that contribute to their professional success. They appear self confident and are sure of a still higher status and position in the times to come. When I looked at them, I developed a complex as I had never enjoyed such gay abandon even in the heydays of my professional youth.  I belong to that old generation that looked at today as a step up on yesterday and a build up for the future. From our childhood we were told to be concerned with the future and keep all fun in abeyance and save every penny for tomorrow that may not spell good times. The constant refrain dinned into our ears was “save for a rainy day as the times may be tough in the future”. Yet another ominous warning constantly bombarded into our psyche was “waste not, want not”. For us there was never a today but only a tomorrow; no enjoyment for the present, but wait for it tomorrow (as though future had guaranteed it). The meticulous attention to the credit/debit entries in the bank pass book and the constant conversion of saved rupees to fixed deposits that would mature after ten years with accrued interest was the only way to use our money. Eating out was frowned upon unless it was a free wedding lunch or dinner. Visits to a cinema hall were deemed a luxury and therefore were a rarity. We loved money- but only to see it in our bank balance and not for spending as these youngsters do today.

Times have changed. Even old people like me now  visit these special places but unlike the nonchalant spenders of today, we pay the bill with shocked and bewildered reluctance and then work out  how cleverly we can scrimp on the tips to the waiter.

The question that props up within me is whether we were stupid and lost out on fun and enjoyment all these days or whether the present generation is a lot more wise in splurging their prosperity with no care for the future. We scrimped and saved for the future of our children- educating them and settling them in life; we scrimped and saved so that we could meet our health expenses in our old age. I have heard many of my father’s generation putting aside in a small trunk a tidy sum for their funeral expenses. There was always the fear of the unknown future that blocked any sense of enjoyment. But then there was the satisfaction that the money was well spent in the cause of the family though we personally denied ourselves the joy and excitement of our youth when physically and mentally we were in a position to enjoy life at its fullest.

But that is the argument of the young people today. If you don’t enjoy now, when can you enjoy- certainly not when you have lost your agility, alertness, energy and even a love to enjoy! Your waiting for that day when you can savour life to the full is like waiting for Godot( Samuel Beckett’s play where Godot never makes an appearance while the two central characters wait for him to deliver them from a life of abject boredom and ennui). “Make hay when the sun shines ‘’ is their credo and they live for the day, by the hour, by the minute, by the second. Looking at the hordes of young men and women, laughing, chatting, fooling around, indulging in  fun and frolic, I wondered if they had a thought for any other person of a different and less privileged class , of a  lower and deprived group who struggled to have at least one square meal in a day.  But then, I had my own conflicting argument that even we with all the saved bank balance did not think beyond ourselves, our sons and daughters and their sons and daughters. The two basic differences are we had the feeling of living for our progeny while the modern young men and women live only for themselves and secondly we never enjoyed life (not even now in our old age as we are constrained by age related illnesses) while the modern youth goes full blast to enjoy, knowing that this time will not come again.

I envy the present carefree generation because I was never care free.  But do I dare now enjoy as they do? I was reminded of Eliot’s Prufrock who after asking the question “Do I dare disturb the Universe” chickens out and accepts the fact

                                           I grow old ... I grow old ...

                                           I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

                                           Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?

                                           I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

                                           I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

                                       I do not think that they will sing to me.

The visit to Cyberhub made me realize that I can never be a part of it. For me it was a visit to another world- the Cyberspace  or the virtual reality- an artificial environment where one  suspends belief and accepts it as a real environment so long as one is there. Out of cyberhub, I was back to my old self-neither desiring joy nor lamenting the denial of it. I learnt each much stay true to his/her generation and not seek after a reality that is not his/hers.