Present and the golden age..

Yesterday, on the eve of Kishor Da's birthday I refreshed my music library on the Ipod to get back to the music I happened to love the most. After listening to a few of my favorite numbers, I couldn't help myself from thinking when was the last time I went back to listen to any of the songs I have in my 1990s and 2000s folder. As far as I could think, I never went back to any of those songs after a few months of their release. I asked the same question to myself in the context of movies and I could remember watching Godfather, Untouchables, Sholay, Deewar, Anand, Padosan, Zanzeer, Zanne Bhee Do Yaaron, Khatta Meetha, Chupke Chupke, Mili and many others movies of the 1960-1980 era but couldn't remember watching any of the 1990- 2010 movies again barring a few like Sarkar, Company and Hera Pheri.

I tried hard but I was convinced that I remembered and loved the music and movies of 1960-1980 much more than those from the last two decades. To me 1960s and 1970s represent the golden age of Bollywood even though I do have a few movies I cherish a lot from the Guru Dutt era. When I asked my dad the same question, he referred to the 1940s and 1950s as the Golden Age of music and movies in India.

A few weeks back I saw the movie 'Midnight in Paris'. This movie features a disenchanted screenwriter from Hollywood yearning for excellence in writing and for inspiration. He eventually finds inspiration in what he believes to be the Golden Age of Literature and the City of Light. He imagines himself in the 1920s when Paris used to be home to Picasso and Hemingway, Fitzgeralds used to host parties and critics used to offer real critique of art work. Within his imagination, he discovers that the Golden Age for 1920s youth was the 1880s.

Connecting the dots, that is the message from this yet another beautiful movie of Woody Allen and my favorites in movies and music from the Bollywood, I reached a conclusion that every generation, even the ones that we idealize today, has looked back to a lost golden age. Idea is to let the concept of golden age remain a concept that fills us with nostalgia and gives us a breather from the chaos of our contemporary life. Eventually, we all need to be the eternal optimists and believe that if there’s a real golden age, it’s right now, even if you’re the kind of person like me who tends to be stuck in the past.

Look at it from the other perspective - best part about the golden age in which we live today is that there’s simply more past than ever before, in libraries, record shops, movie houses, and, on-line. I would never want to give up any of it. Our next generation would definitely look at our generation as the golden age when the world in reality became a global village and every one had access to any and everything of the past and present to make their future bright.