In Search Of The Promised Land

I open the papers to yet another report that sings praises to juggernaut of the indian industry. Some new exploit that tickles my patriotism(doesnt make sense though, some dude making a lot of moolah doesnt exactly make a difference to me , indian or otherwise).
Everywhere I look I hear how much life has changed since the " old days". How much "globalisation" has made boundaries seem faded. How the world seems to be pouring in and we seem to be going out.
Its true. I still remember the god awful doordarshan that was my only option. The only shoes were bata.. True, life has changed and probably for the better.
But its not just the industry or the market that has changed in its colours and contours. Its not just the things that I wear that has changed. The way we think , The way we act , everything has changed.
Its not just the economy that is getting liberated. The walls are coming down everywhere. In our living rooms , in our minds , everywhere. We are being taken from our safe cocoons and flung into a whirlpool apparently called life where what is right and what is wrong is not very clearly defined. Cross roads where the wisdom of yesterday says right and the voices of today says left.

Sometimes what would have seemed like the right thing to do might not be the right decision. To be quite honest I have no way of knowing . At the end of the day I just hope that the ends justify the means . Would it? Again I rather find out in retrospect rather than make decisions based on speculations that run against the preferred end.
My parents and their parents before them all lived through a gradual or tempered change in their lives.The value system that was bequeathed generation to generation all bore with them this element that grew in that same gradual way.The element that grew or matured according to their collective experiences of their times . A set of tested functions that are known to produce prefferrable outputs. A culmination of the knowledge acquired through decisions made in lifetimes.
This is the same value system that I have been handed down.
This is supposed to be my frame of reference of what is right and what is wrong.Instead I find it to be a set of hopelessly inadequate commandments.

The result is a quandry that we all face at sometime or the other. The shape and content of which might differ but indecision and doubt runs rampant thorugh them.

We have strayed onto uncertain roads in search of the promised land. Places where our fathers havent gone before us. Situations that they never dealt with and decisions they didnt have to make.
What we do in this new land will determine the tomorrow . For us and for those who come after us.