I recently watched a timeless romantic film called Sita Ramam, which displays the concept of love and expression in such a beautiful manner. The film takes place in 1965 when the communication between the main characters is limited to writing letters to one another when they are away from each other and creating small and memorable moments when they are together. It was heartwarming to witness this love story unravel and see the wholesome gestures the characters made to express their love for each other.
As heartwarming as that was to see, it led me on a tangent of thoughts about why it felt so unreal to watch this when it should be the bare minimum done to nurture a relationship. Although this movie was a display of romantic expression of love, I felt that there was an underlying message about the concept of love, which could also be non-romantic. We don’t see as much effort taken to nurture a bond in current times as and we definitely don’t see these gestures of affection as much as we used to. Why is that? Is that something that no longer exists in today’s world?
One possible conclusion that I came to is that society is growing and progressing at a rate that it has never done before. While it’s amazing to witness the wonders the human species is able to create, the growing conveniences as a result of this progress shift the minds of the human population from togetherness to oneself. When there are so many options available to make our lives more convenient, people won’t find the urge to put effort into relationships the way they would and may end up taking more for granted.
I’ve always heard from my parents about how the olden days were simpler and more wholesome times but never quite resonated with it as I thought my childhood was a replica of what they spoke of. However, as we reach 2022 and I am two decades past my childhood, I’ve noticed the shift in society and how older times were more wholesome within the span of my life. I could only imagine how much more of a shift there was from my parent’s time. It makes me question if that innocence and effort seen in Sita Ramam is now history and eradicated from current times. While there is a lot of praise for the progress our world is making in terms of technology and conveniences, there is an evident toll on human interaction which makes me question, did the olden times do it better?
