What I see is a glorification of greed, a cultivation of casualness and manifestations of meanness masquerading as self-expression and exuberance.

You might not have seen a TV commercial for one of these grand cars. Two obnoxious young men want to have fun, which means racing past camel riders participating in a traditional festival in Rajasthan, India. They easily overtake the Ships of the Desert, startling the proud riders and the animals, and pacify them by offering to take their photos... Besting animals with a modern machine, humiliating people who are doing their own thing, making fun of traditions: and this sorry spectacle was meant to promote sales of this particular car. The tragedy is that the advertisement succeeded and has even been rated well...

Another TV commercial on a popular 2-wheeler has an exuberant young man snatch a bunch of balloons from a poor roadside vendor and ride off laughing... as if harassing the weak and the poor is an essential part of the character of having fun and being with it.

This modern obsession with youth denies the virtues of maturity. Growing older does not merely mean that one has less time left to live. It also means we have an enhanced appreciation of the world round us, and for the enjoyment of life, with greater tolerance and kindness. The effect of ageing must mean moderation and a blunting of the greedy self-indulgence of youth, natural and perhaps therefore even proper to their age, which defines enjoyment and fun in ways that do not always have anything to do with the philosophic ideals of being human.

Somehow my thoughts keep going back to my father, and the evolving relation he had with his children as they grew up. He was strict but fair, generous but sensible - and friendly (he believed that if one didn't make a friend of the child by the time it was 16, he would think of the father as an old fool!) but mature. He was always Dad even as our best friend, always there to help, support, advise and guide us - and to correct us whenever it became necessary. Dad never dyed his hair, though he had started greying prematurely. He remained oddly youthful while accepting his age, giving the benefit of his acquired experience and the balance of his years. He remained firm on matters of form as he was in matters of substance. Bad behaviour, lack of basic courtesy and absence of consideration did not mean youthful exuberance - they simply indicated bad breeding!

The trouble with the world today is perhaps rooted in the reluctance of an increasingly large proportion of mankind to act their age. Clinging to the selfish hedonism of youth, they have lost whatever moral authority they may have had and are become role models of the worst kind, giving rise to a further deepening of the generation gap, converting it in fact into a war between the ages, as all pursue the same pleasures....