The first videographed discussion took place at a senior center in New York

 By Mukund Mehta, President, Indo-American Senior Center, New York

NEW YORK (TIP): Ashok Vyas, President of Insight for Creativity LLC — dedicated to spread ideas of peace and harmony through creative video programs – and Program Director with ITV Gold since the turn of this millennium, has launched an innovative televised program titled ‘’Dialogue Generation Square’. This lively forum for two-way communication between generations took place at Indo-American Senior Center in Queens earlier this month. Mukund Mehta, President of the center, said he bucked the prior trend of having senior guest speakers addressing their members on subjects like taxes, Medicare/Medicaid, health, and legal issues, and instead helped organize the program focused on riveting discussion of divergent views and opinions between two generations, namely, seniors and youths.

The program elicited frank dialogue between seniors and youths on two topics – ‘Generation Gap and Technology’, and ‘Respect for Age or Knowledge?’ — involving participation by two seniors and two youths for each episode. The participants for the first episode were Dr. Himanshu Pandya and Mukund Mehta as seniors and Neil Zaveri (finance) and Ms. Rajni Raghunath (office manager) as young participants. Dr. Nilesh Soni and Mrs. Gopi Udeshi as seniors and Shamik Shah (3rd year student at Stony Brook University) and Sapna Vyas (software engineer) were the participants for the second episode.

Ashok Vyas stressed the necessity of community events involving seniors and youths for better understanding and bridging the gap between generations. He appreciated the senior center’s enthusiasm and cooperation for participating in the project. Acknowledging his viewpoints, Mukund Mehta assured him that the inaugural discussion would provide impetus to undertake more social events in the future.

In the two-hour recorded TV program, Ashok Vyas posed interesting questions to the panelists on a myriad of issues relating to the two episodes’ topics generating candid responses which brought out dissimilar viewpoints on certain issues between the two generations. It was evident that the rapid technological developments influenced heavily the younger generation’s quick adaptability to the technology compared to the previous generation. The unchecked use of smart phones, texting, and social media by the millennials shaped their thinking and made them logic-oriented compared to tradition-oriented previous generations of baby boomers and generation X.

During the lively conversation on the topic whether technology bridged or widened the gap between the generations, panelists opined that flexibility, understanding, involvement and adaptability initiated by the older generation would bridge the gap. Although knowledge is vital to command respect, the panelists concurred that age should equally be respected, which is an accepted norm in our Indian culture and tradition. Interesting divergent views were expressed on multi-tasking since a young participant fond of multi-tasking personally argued against it whereas a senior favored it due to time constraints resulting from a full-time job, traveling, social events and household chores.

Frank dialogue between seniors and youths divulging their personal life experiences, family events, family structure, cultural divide between India and the U.S. and the impact and influence of technology stimulated the program. Mr. Paresh Shah of PareShah Financial Services, and the father of Shamik Shah, the young participant, addressed the audience praising the program and reinforcing the necessity of having more dialogues on community issues.

Ashok Vyas’s lucid and humorous style of shepherding the debate kept the audience spellbound and glued to their seats for two hours. President Mukund Mehta thanked him for his innovative concept to get together seniors and youths to air their views and to bring along his production team of camerapersons on a Sunday.

Ashok Vyas in his concluding remarks thanked Indo American Senior Center, and Sathya Viswanath, Chairperson of ITV Gold, for supporting this project.

Insight for Creativity plans to organize ‘Dialogue Generation Square’ series every month in collaboration with various organizations. This will be available on Facebook and YouTube. The first two episodes will be shown on ITV as a part of the ongoing series ‘Insight Tonight with Ashok Vyas’ on 26th Feb & 27th Feb at 7:30pm.

Insight for Creativity LLC is founded by Ashok & Sheila Vyas to create and promote positive video content. Anybody willing to participate / help in coordinating or sponsoring this interesting series may approach Ashok Vyas at insight4creativity@gmail.com or Ph: 917 573 7775