There are two cliches about India. One, it's a society in a state of constant flux. Two, the eternal, unchanging India. I tend to lean towards the latter. Indians don't like change. Once we get stuck to something, we stick to it like a burr or barnacle.

Dowry hasn't gone anywhere. Honour killings are still around. The honking Indian remains a constant on our roads. The cars might have changed from Maruti 800 to Scorpio, but the honking habit is ingrained. Bollywood got stuck with the same formula for decades. The audience didn't complain. As Manmohan Desai once explained in an interview, the twin brothers separated at Kumbh trope works well at BO, so why change it?

Censorship is another idea we can't let go of. Netflix is not as bold as it was when it entered the Indian market. In Hyderabad, the Congress government told Diljit Dosanjh to remove references to alcohol in his songs. He replaced 'daaru 'ch lemonade' with 'Coke 'ch lemonade'. A North Indian manager banned beef in the staff canteen in his bank branch in Kerala, and ABVP stormed Ambedkar University mess because fish curry was being served on Mahashivratri. A 'fake wedding' party in Dehradun was cancelled after protests that it had 'hurt sentiments'.

When it comes to education, the syllabus doesn't change for years. Teachers are resistant to changing it, for that would mean relearning too. Allahabad University students used to tell a story about the same professor cracking the same joke in the same lecture, year after year.

Changes that have been introduced in syllabi currently are not from within, but from without. That sort of top-down change we accept because there is no choice in the matter. It happens with technology too. It's the only kind of change the Indian allows into their world.

When it comes to TV news, at first, we had the droning bulletin on DD. That served us well for 20 years. It was replaced with prime-time debate on private TV channels. This formula has remained unchanged ever since. Get six panellists into a cockfight, a shouting match with a partisan umpire. Twenty years from now, we'll still have a Goswami and Seth 'debating' the event of the day, and making no sense.

The same holds true for CMs. I don't know why, but we treat politicians as members of the family. Once you are in, you're in. Naveen Patnaik's 24-year tenure is the second longest for a CM of any state, after Pawan Kumar Chamling of Sikkim. Jyoti Basu was the longest serving CM of West Bengal, from 1977 to 2000 (now it's Mamata Banerjee since 2011).

In October 2023, Nitish Kumar became Bihar's longest-serving CM when he completed - off and on - 17 years and 53 days in office. Earlier this month, he just entered his 10th term. In Tamil Nadu, Karunanidhi served as CM for almost two decades, over five terms between 1969 and 2011. Jayalalithaa did so for more than 14 years between 1991 and 2016.

Leaving aside ideological differences, thinking like an ordinary citizen, a swing voter, I'd like to see a different leadership. Why? The reason is aesthetic. I'm bored of the current lot. Take Nitish Kumar again. Hell, when he was sworn in as CM again on Thursday, I swear I was back in 2000 again when he first took on the job - for 7 days. It's like watching the same actor in an interminable soap opera. Yawn. Can we change the channel, please?

Across states, across generations, we seem to vote for the same leaders. I have one request I want to put to my fellow citizens: We all love the pen that is Indian democracy. Now, you are writing with an empty refill. You keep on writing when there is no ink left. At least change the refill, yaar. Or stop pretending to write. There's no point turning the pages. Because the sheets are blank, my friend.