To the ancestors
Remember childhood? When playing meant outdoors, with bats and/or balls? I can smell days from my childhood, sometimes. A sudden whiff of the cricket bat whose grip was permanently lost, the cement of the parking lot we played in, the rubber ball we used for months, the food being cooked in the apartments above, and the sweat of all my friends, combined. My mind labels it ‘the minute you played that square drive in the parking lot and felt like a pro’ and everything about that particular minute comes back to me in a flash: the weather, the smells, the weight of the bat, the feeling. Does that happen to you? Do you smell your childhood? Do you taste the days gone by?
Nostalgia calls upon us all from time to time. It stops us in our tracks and plants tiny pecks on our cheeks, like the first breeze that announces the oncoming of spring. For a while now, though, I’ve noticed a pattern when my parents and their siblings respond to nostalgia’s call. Their reminiscence is usually comparative and full of disdain for me and my generation, as if our mere existence has broken all the rules of what a childhood should look, feel, smell and taste like. My parents and their siblings were all born between 1960 and 1980, and I was born in 1993. Yep, I’m a millennial. Guilty as charged.
As they sat reminiscing their childhood in the tropical summer heat, it disappointed me that we – the millennials – have earned no respect in the eyes of the generation(s) before us. I happened to note down some of their favourite highlight reels and how they seem to have a pathological need to hold their childhood in comparison to ours (the millennials). I didn’t want to argue then, because nobody deserves to be told that their childhood wasn’t as good as it could have been. Also, a consequence of my introverted nature is that my comebacks and counter-arguments will always arrive late by a few hours or days. Apologies, but here it goes.
Gadgets
“We had no TV, no Xbox, no DVD or BluRay players and phones,” declared my uncle, beaming with pride. “All we had were sticks and stones.”
When we were children and you had to feed us, you used the cartoon shows on TV. You were the parents, you called the shots. You had the money, you bought these gadgets, and you still continue to extract full use out of them all. How is it that you buy us something, knowing full well that it dials down the quality of our lives? And how is it that our usage of them makes them toxic, but yours makes them useful?
Sigh. What can I say, we migrated to cricket and football, because we were all ardent fans of Sachin, Gilchrist, Messi and/or Ronaldo, so we didn’t need sticks and stones.
Habits
“When we rode bicycles, we never wore helmets,” said my other uncle. “We played until dusk, and at the end of the day we all sipped juice from the same tall glass. We never had any health supplements.” I could see his lips broaden as the taste of the juice came back to him, the contagion of his smile causing me to mirror it.
You grew up in independent houses in rural neighbourhoods with barely any vehicles on the road. Cycling was then, what motorbike-riding is now. It’s how everybody in town got to places. Remember what happened when you moved to urban cities? We grew up in neighbourhoods where the traffic was almost as dense as the population. Don’t complain about our helmets, tell us how wonderful you felt without them, and then police us when we don’t wear them. Pick a side. What’s next, how much fun it was that you never wore the seatbelt until the law made it mandatory?
As far as sharing a glass of juice goes, you drilled it into our minds that sipping from someone else’s glass is unhealthy. You told us germs would enter our bodies, remember? You grossed us out.
I will concede that our eating habits aren’t as healthy as yours, but are you really ridiculing the fact that some of us need supplements? Infant mortality was abundant at your time, and your generation had siblings that never made it to childhood. If they had any means possible to improve their health, would you ridicule them too? Also, our clans sip from the same glass. We just never told you after the first instance, because it’s not the end of the world, as your overreaction to it suggested.
Culture
It was my grandmother’s turn. “Your generation has no culture,” she scoffed. “No prayers, no respect, no character.” Her anger was transparent, and if her age and her asthma didn’t slow her down, she’d ride a horse into war against the millennials.
We have no culture because we have relationships that don’t end in marriage, and we date before we know what’s good for us, says my grandmother, in whose time culture was an amalgamation of homophobia, racism, casteism and religious intolerance, the results of which I still see in her (and in her children, as the result of her upbringing). Two of my closest friends are outside my religion, one’s an atheist, like me, and two are very religious (and in my ‘religion’). We have relationships because it’s in the natural course of life. It’s a chapter in learning to manage our feelings, to experience everything that is a part of crash-landing into adolescence. For every instance of their saying “I’ve been past your age,” I’m in shock as to how they don’t remember the beauty of the first crush (and the euphoria if it was mutual) and the desire to be desired. The dopamine rush of the first touch, the taste of the first kiss. That’s our culture. We sideline our differences and relish our experiences. There’s our character.
It seems incredulous to me that millennials are the first generation to understand that respect isn’t something you get because you’re older and experienced. It is earned. In your attempts to demand ours, please don’t play the age card, okay? We respect beliefs too, FYI. We also respect beliefs different from yours, for which you call us heretics. Therein lies your problem.
Water under the bridge
We make friends who are just as real and dependable as yours are. Just because we use our phones to communicate and you had the option to meet in person each evening does not dilute the essence of the love I feel for the people I’ve forged friendships with over the years.
The fact that you enjoy Ilayaraja on cassette tapes and I enjoy Steven Wilson on iTunes does not make my musical taste worthless.
That you have a great rapport with relatives and I don’t, means nothing more than you found your peer group in the antechamber of the house you lived in, and I found mine at the frontier of the neighbourhood. The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb, you know. I’m only quoting your ancestors here.
Yes, some of us don’t want children. We have our reasons, and we won’t forego our principles to appease you. It’s called integrity. It doesn’t deprive us of character that we don’t want to play the roles assigned to us.
You’re not the last generation to listen to your parents. You’re not the first generation to listen to your children. And you know what’s funny? Your parents — almost undoubtedly — looked at you the way you look at us. It’s a cyclic process that victimises us all.
I’ve been on the receiving end of unwarranted scrutiny and wanton banter simply because I’m a millennial. No generation is perfect, after all. I laugh as much as you do, I cry as much as you did, and I try to emulate all the good in you, but here’s what you seem to have forgotten: I’m as flawed as you are. And you can’t undo that. I’m in your bloodline, remember? It’s a wonder that you think what I am has nothing to do with you.
Before you hurl more accusations at us millennials (that are devoid of substance), how about a look in the mirror? We’re adults now, and we juggle a million screaming, racing thoughts in our heads. We take time to slow them down and deliberate. Sometimes, the silence in our heads is deafening. We meditate, we play, we sing, we run. We accommodate. We harmonise. We plough through. We’re still figuring things out, and evolving, just as much as you are.
We’re a generation of broken hearts and broken people. We’re sad writers and poetic comedians. We’re musicians, salespeople, entrepreneurs, nerds, dancers, coders, sportspeople, marketers, designers, teachers, and singers. Like a friend of mine believes, the cosmos is within us.
We’re tired of being declared guilty until proven innocent.
