What if I were Castaway?

Survival is an issue that's concerned me for a while. Am I the type of person who can become obsolete? Would I be able to look after myself if I were castaway? How spoilt am I? How much do I, and all of us, take it for granted that we will always have everything we have now?

After a nerve-wracking morning, and also a couple of conversations yesterday with some clients, it re-occured to me how much we've all changed and how dependent we've become on technology. My 40 year old clients were reminiscing about how excited they were when teh fax machine came out, and how slow and noisy it was! And how the first time they came to India there were only 3 channels, then a year later, there were 6, and how now, about 15 years later, it's filled to the brim with all sorts of technology that's cheaper than the West etc, how there's a an ipod-cum-cellphone in the works now and how people are gonna buy that and how tired we get of technology every 6 months.

Talk like that, though spurred on by nostalgia, gets me really sad as to what we as a society have become. Slowly, joint family comprising 3, if not four generations, and various assorted branches, have split over the years due to various property prices issues and moves. Then, in a few decades, generations of effort and tradition involved in maintaing the values of togetherness and tolerance shattered with the rise of the nuclear family, and it is already observed here that unmarried children already have homes of their own.

Is it a progression? From an entire family - parents and two children, sharing a 15x15 room with an attached bathroom, to a house filled to the brim with possessions and thats still too small to provide them with enough 'personal space'?

From one car for 20 people to one car per person? From no driver for a car at all to life completely coming to a standstill, accompanied by various fits of impotent rage and helplessness when one of the many employed doesn't show up?

From Doordarshan Chhayageet on peaceful afternoons surrounded, babied and loved by loyal family servants to hundreds of channels, the internet, and incurable restlessness and boredom, even on the part of 8 month old babies after playing with a textured noise-making multiculoured bauble for 10 minutes!

From live friends who are sucked into their own vortex of job, marriage, career, weight loss, to online strangers who sometimes mean more, or are more necessary for survival simply because they are there when you need them.

I know I'm one to romanticise a past I barely remember, and that people who have actually lived through them are grateful for some of the changes, but when I can't watch a fairly interesting movie without checking my mobile phone at least twice, or hold a general conversation comprising everyday banalities about my day and my interactions without becoming conspicuously impatient, Houston, we have a problem.

*snort* telling the West, which has pretty much been the unwitting originator of our lifestyle problems (to make a blanket generalisation) to solve them.

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But seriously, what if I were castaway? What if I were shipwrecked on an island? How would I survive? I hate extremes of temperature. I cant sleep without a blanket. My skin is too soft and gets abraised easily. I cant tie knots or sniff trails or make tents or eat meat. I cant fight of wild animals or wander around for hours without getting lost. I cant tell which berries are poisonous. Insects gross me out. How would I live?

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On a related note, I think the worst decisions I ever have to make (and invariably the wrong ones) are choosing what to keep and what to discard. Murphy's Law, the colours and styles that come back in fashion are those I just threw away, and they NEVER fit the same or look as nice the next time around.

Also, if I were in an airplane crash, what else would I take with me besides my passport and papers? My chapstick, a change of clothes, a book or two, maybe music, money, my phone... Gasp! glasses and contact case! Lotion! I would definitely try to sneak down a bag or two.

Methinks I would simply drown with the weight of my possessions.

Come to think of it, that's what we're doing to our spirits.