Degeneration gap

Ira Pande

We have all lost so many friends, family members, young people who had promising futures — that many feel they have run out of tears and words. As we grow older, we keep going back to a time when life was not so complicated or so full of pain. Perhaps this is why nowadays I often find myself taking refuge in old memories that have so much to remember with joy and laughter.

Our generation has had its time: this is the age of the millennials, a moniker to describe those who are now in the prime of their lives. They have the energy, the opportunities and the confidence that many of my generation have lost forever. However, it is not age that separates us from this brave new generation, but an entire worldview and an attitude to life so alien that I often wonder how it came to pass that we no longer speak the same language. Not a generation but a degeneration gap separates us, I feel.

This generation grew up in the decades when India was at a promising cusp: the pain of Partition, the early years of struggle and poverty, the low self-esteem of most Indians had receded substantially by then. Many of us middle class folk had put behind us the suffocating ties of old clans and kinship, moved to big cities and lived the classic nuclear family life of a couple with two-and-a-half children. Like the Baby Boomers of the 1950s in America, this generation that had emerged from the post-war years was finding its swagger and confidence again. Industrial development, access to higher education and the prosperity of secure livelihoods gave the Baby Boomers many years of comfort and ease. Within a few years, however, came other problems — racism, college dropouts, social delinquency and sexual freedom gone rogue that created a fresh set of challenges.

All this was, however, nothing as compared to the tectonic shift that came with the rise of the digital age. As more and more people got hooked on to their digital devices, human nature was radically refashioned. Once upon a time, we greeted strangers on the road, sat next to unknown passengers and chatted, made eye contact with other human beings and learnt life’s basic lessons from our families and teachers. Now the stimulus is almost entirely received from social media. The loneliness of individual lives makes millennials reach out to similar souls across the world so that their own confusion and isolation become easier to handle. Naturally, such relationships lack depth and emotional involvement and so the sense of loneliness and isolation is enhanced rather than reduced as we reach out to more and more ‘virtual’ friends.

The addiction to phones is a case in point. There is not a single young person I know who does not carry a phone everywhere — even to the loo! The fear of losing out on information (no matter how trivial and inane) is so acute that many sleep with their phone in their hand. Is it any wonder then that the mobile phone has destroyed family conversation in the evenings or around a table?

I find the millennials more concerned about what is happening in some remote island in the Caribbean than in their own neighbourhood. They have forgotten how to greet people because they can’t emote until they send an emoji on a phone. Look around you and see how many young people make the time to talk to their parents, siblings or relatives in a day. Then compare it to how many times they have communicated with unknown strangers that day and you will figure out what I am trying to say.

I could go on and on but my limited point is that this is the generation that we are leaving our planet to. These atomised souls who cannot articulate a single thought that has not come out of a WhatsApp post or some other form of social media will one day decide how to take the world forward. The patience to wait and let life take its normal course is another casualty. Constant stimulation only reduces the threshold to suffer boredom and routine tasks. On the other hand, my generation that grew up without all this, not even a TV, has infinite patience as compared to them. We are accustomed to the fact that most things happen in their own sweet time, so wait without fidgeting or cursing an app that won’t open or a person who likes to talk at length. I swear I will never make fun of the uncleji who takes time to warm his mental batteries before answering a simple question: after all, he grew up when there was no electricity. Delays infuriate the young: they want everything now and will walk away if the phone is put on hold. Instant gratification, whether of food or entertainment, has blown away the joy of waiting for life’s pleasures. Above all, it is depleting the earth’s resources at a frightening pace.

The millennials have done some tremendous work in the sphere of technology and wealth generation: I hope they spend some time now on building human bridges destroyed by greed and selfishness. Sharing the vaccine with poorer countries is a good starting point. Let some good come out of this wretched virus.

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