We’re a sad generation, with happy pictures, time-bound to our apple watches and Fitbit’s timing and tracking our steps with no joy to walking anymore, capturing with our lenses to post the morning but worried about the tan, rushing to drink the lemon water with a dash of honey to miraculously dissolve the fat that stuck stubbornly just like Dobby. The joy of drinking one’s tea gets marred with less milk, counting calories in the biscuit intake or the rusk that had been the staple of India since time immemorial. One rushes to tackle the day again bound to the screen fiddling for news, absorbing the blue light, dealing with information over Whatsapp, some true, some fake and the endless scrolling to the reels and TikTok laughing away one’s sorrow or sadness or disappointment and some like me connect with ones children via FaceTime.
We are prisoners to our phones, chained to them with an invisible umbilical cord, without parole. But, sometimes, we get carried away with all the scrolling spewing hate, being rigid and divisive, spewing venom dividing based on religion. If technology has given us umpteen benefits, we should also remember the dark, dark times of Hitler, Stalin and Lenin and all the dictators who spilt so much blood that the earth is permanently red there. A ghostly whisper still carries forward the pain and anguish…
How is that instead of learning from this pandemic and it’s fatal repercussions we are all back to the sam e, we all just needed to be human and act human . Man is at its dangerous place in history , either we survive or perish at this brink where climate change has altered us , and our insensitive mannerisms are so marked that we want to kill first and ask later just cause the person is dark or practises a faith different than others . I write away , punching on a keyboard hoping to reach all of you , my faceless readers set apart virtually .
And here, our plant doctor ( an illiterate man who has green fingers and can resurrect anything ) can forecast everything just by the mere turn of the wind and the position of the sky.
We have forgotten to be one with nature but instead will download an app. To be calm! As Sema said,tussi ulajh Gaye ho, and that hit hard. A generation now afraid of showing genuine emotions hides behind an emoji because it’s safer. I hope we can reclaim the more straightforward, uncomplicated, calmer life minus the humdrum of an app or a so-called reminder on our Apple Watch that tells me to walk or climb the stairs as I have been inactive! Nerds who read this, maybe this is the next startup, how to unwind and relax minus an app telling me not to.