Adrenalin, Booze, Cars - ABC of GenNext

Akbar Khan

Posh cars, driven by educated people with a taste for liquor and abhorrence for the law of the land, mowing down pedestrians are a regular feature on Indian roads, as young professionals and scions of ‘respectable’ families continue to live out a new found lifestyle that oscillates between access and excess.

Streets in Bangalore were bloodied early morning on Saturday, when 30 year old Karthik Somaiah, at the wheels of his Honda Accord, crushed to death three morning joggers and a cyclist.

Somaiah, who was drunk at the time of the accident, was later sent into judicial custody to cool off his heels.

Though, Somaiah’s stupor was broken by the crash, the hangover of the incident will continue to haunt families of those killed in the accident long after the young driver is granted bail and goes back to a ‘normal’ life.

Road rash is becoming increasingly commonplace in urban India where blood splattered roads account for cutting short more lives than ‘much hyped’ terror attacks.

Having grown up on a liberal fare of virtual reality computer games like NFS, young Indians, on a heady cocktail of adrenalin and alcohol, often fly off the handle to crash-land into infamy.

Mumbai and Delhi top the table with tipsy young professionals mowing down men on the street, cases in point are Bollywood icon Salman Khan, thespian Raj Kumar’s son – Puru Raj Kumar in the tinsel town and Sanjeev Nanda, Ashana Moga and Utsav Bhasin in the national capital.

The worrying fact is the impunity with which the so called ‘educated’ youth, belonging to apparently cultured families, break the law, their utter callousness and even contempt in which they hold fellow citizens.

Many view the irreverent behaviour as a failure of the country’s education system, which despite years of schooling fails to inculcate the basic moral or civil character in the students, while others attribute it to new found financial freedom and the growing ‘have money-can manage’ attitude.

Whatever be the case, the next time the ‘GenNext’ gangs up, to light candles for a vigil or blast the political system in the country, maybe it should punctuate the jingoism with an analysis of its own behaviour.

Especially, as respect for the law of the land and love and compassion for fellow citizens are the cornerstones of loyalty for the nation, without which patriotism would lose all fizz and simply fall flat as......a love for real estate.