Does Size really matter?

Scientific studies claim that our brains are shrinking. In a world of inflated egos where a family of four requires a 27 storey mansion, Gen Now takes pride in their thimble sized devices while our dreams have assumed mammoth proportions – size indeed is a conflicting issue. Is big always better? We are still groping in the dark about the implications of this evolutionary trend but do our shrinking brains actually indicate that we are getting dumber?

Our young live in a copy-and-paste world and see nothing wrong in it. Life’s greatest mysteries are just a Google search away. Protests are registered through online campaigns – click to fight child abuse, free an activist, save the seal, stop global warming. We do not let such trivialities come in between us and our comforts, we let facebook take care of it. People are battling Farmville addiction, fighting with angry birds on their mobiles, having cyber-sex and breaking up on the social networking sites. Is something really wrong with us or are we just evolving?

Let’s take a few case studies.

Case 1 - Our Desi Livingstone, Dr Binayak Sen. The man, a gold medallist from Christian Medical College had a bright, moolah laden future laid out for him. He could have set up a Nursing home, ill treated the wealthy and made a killing out of it. And what does this strange man do instead? Goes off to the jungles and dedicates his life treating the tribals. And here’s when it gets dumber. Not happy with playing Santa Claus to the poor and doling out medicines for them, he goes ahead and starts dabbling with human rights. Yeesh! Does he not know the poor have no rights! Imagine fighting for their right to live with dignity. He should have just let these chhota people living on the fringes, die of malaria, cholera, hunger. Who asked him to fight on behalf of nobody’s children, when he could have led an air-conditioned life, watched NDTV with his nightcap and joined some online campaign to ease his conscience. In this David V/s Goliath battle – size did matter.

Case 2 - Our much loved Celebrities. Says who, celebrities need to be cerebral. If they need to feel nerdy despite their pea sized brains, they can always sport librarian glasses and quote from the Mahatma. Like our high on life, Ms Lohan has revealed in her New Year's resolution - "Today is the first day of the rest of my life 'The future depends on what we do in the present.' -Mahatma Gandhi" I hope she’s aware of his celibacy fixation– they didn’t call him the Mahatma for nothing!

Here are a few more pearls of wisdom from our much idolized –

So where’s the Cannes film festival held this year…Christina Aguilera

Internet is a great way to get on the net….Bob Dole
 

 I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother & father….Greg Norman

AIDS is just a little more worrisome than a common cold and it’s curable, so just go out there & get it done….Kajol

Smoking kills. If you are killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life…..Brooke Shields

And yet we idolize them?

Case 3 - Mainstream Media is relentlessly dumbing down its readers, listeners and viewers. A national daily devotes an entire article to tweet nothings exchanged between a ballsy woman and a cricketer whose spinning balls spell trouble. Kangana’s implants, Amir’s Dog, Kareena’s weighty drama grabs national headlines. Rakhi Sawant dispenses Insaaf on TV and a dozen demented women bare their claws over a Rahul Mahajan. A past her prime Ms Anderson’s entry in Big Boss sends the nation into a tizzy - of course size matters. Switch on India TV and you immediately want to flee the country to someplace far far away – maybe even Reykjavik. Camera mein kalaa jadoo….Khatarnaak batak…Khoon peene wali nurse…And the anchor is looking earnest, trying to scare the living daylights out of you. It always works.

Case 4 - The government definitely thinks we are dumb. It taxes our income, expenditure, gifts and assets, with the assurance that it will be utilized for development. It is used for development but of a different kind - the minister’s many bank accounts in the Caribbean islands. To ensure our netas get a truly global outlook, we fund their trips to Germany en-famille to study the drainage system intricately. The CM’s MIL gets a flat, the MLA’s son’s career goes sky rocketing. And we love our politicians so much that we gleefully pay millions for their Z class security. While we the aam admi, pay bribes to get even a faulty meter replaced, do not expect police help because they are too busy taking care of our VIPs. We are content at cracking jokes at the ineptitude of the representatives we elected. So who’s dumb?

There are some who may argue that the shrinking brain should be of no concern to us. After all, not many of us utilize our grey matter to think. Some of us use our hearts, while many use the below-the-belt appendage! So who cares about the size, big or small.