From Jassi to Jesse

What is the difference between Traditional and Modern thinking, I was asked by a panel of experts (for a scholarship thingy), and I, spluttered, raved and ranted, till they realised what a nervous wreck I was and pitying me, kicked me out of the room.

I mused on my way back home, coming up with a thousand different ways I could have impressed them.

I guess the major difference between the traditional and the modern is the way they follow rules. A traditional person follows rules given to him without any reasoning and a modern person makes his own set of rules. This is when we realise that none of us are modern. Caught between a South Indian-demure-devoted-God fearing-obedient-girl image and a perverted-unthinking-crass-hooligan-student image, I realised, I was traditional in both these spheres. In each society that we move, we ultimately get tied down by the respective rules.

Back home, I follow my parents' orders and give into familial pressure and my supposed modern escape to college, has turned out to be the place where I give into peer pressure. The sudden spurt in visits to the beauty parlour, listening to a different tune, enjoying different (ahem) movies, eating out at expensive places, are these things a welcome change...? They just seem to be yet another set of rules that I have followed subconsciously.

What I mean is when you realise that your lifestyle is drastically changing from what it was, how much of it do you ascribe to a simple transition and how much to pressure? Is it a person transforming a traditional thinking to a modern one or is the person abandoning a set of traditions only to move onto a different one?

I guess we all subconsciously like to follow rules. We just choose the set of rules that we like the most and label ourselves and others, traditional or liberal, or whatever. It would be nice to make my own rules once in a while. Nice things, unfortunately, are damn hard to attain( it applies to men, cell phones, books, chocolates, clothes et al).