Hear Us Out, Please.

Dear People Aged 40 and Above,

Hey, what’s up? Yes, that’s how we greet each other in this generation. I’m sure it’s not as cool as Namaste or ‘Paeri Pauna ji’ but it’s not that bad either if you think about it.

I know you think of us as people who have no manners, no respect and absolutely no values. But that’s not the case. I’m not here to disregard all your teachings and ‘Sanskar’; I’m just here to present the case of the younger generation. We aren’t as bad as you think we are.

We may not have seen the hardships of life as you people have; we may not have had to work right from scratch to earn a living but that doesn’t mean we’re a bunch of losers. A spoilt brat is not made overnight; it’s the way he’s brought up. Who’s fault is that then? Not his, I’m sure. If his parents have given him a good life, all the super electronics and the best of clothes, is it his fault that this is the life he is acquainted with? Is he supposed to throw it all away just because you want him to learn how it is to live a poorer life?

Yes, you had your obstacles in life. We do too. We have a lot more competition than you people did in your time. Earning a name among a population of billions is not that easy. It’s not like we get everything on a plate. Just because we don’t go through the same difficulties that you did, doesn’t mean we don’t face difficulties at all.

It’s a convention in many houses that one needs to be a doctor or an engineer to be called successful. That was years ago. In today’s world, the one who tries something new and different walks the path of success. We explore new ventures; we walk the unknown. Doesn’t that make us more daring?

Getting married as soon as a girl crosses 21 years of age isn’t appreciated anymore. Girls aren’t burdens. It’s not like they’re living with you just to be fed properly and then sent off to another house. We live in a modern society. A girl has as big dreams as a boy does. We want you to recognise that.

You say we have taken all the wrong ideas from the west. If a boy is sent abroad to study and he becomes an NRI, he’s respected but if a girl tries to do the same, she’s getting out of hands. Moving on from gender discrimination, weren’t you the people who taught us that there is a big wide world out there which is yet to be explored? You taught us to dream and then you crashed all those dreams. We didn’t ask you to be what we wanted. Why is it the other way round? Aren’t we more independent now? Isn’t that the first step towards salvation? Getting rid of all boundaries?

Our dressing style, our eating habits, and our odd time tables don’t match. We like to experiment, to discover ourselves. We believe in casting ourselves out of this cocoon. How is that bad? Yes, we will make mistakes. But you did too, didn’t you? Just because our choices aren’t the same as yours doesn’t mean our decisions don’t affect our lives as your decisions affected you. We will learn, just like you did. We can’t live the same way for the world isn’t the same as it was before.

You taught us to adjust. You taught us to make the best of what we have. Isn’t that what we are doing? You say we don’t save anymore. That you used to work so hard that you earned for the entire household and a family of 6 or 7 and still had enough to put in a bank. The economy in your times was much different than what it is today. If the prices increased, the work load also did. Just because we aren’t doing much of physical work doesn’t mean our work is useless. If we’re working hard and partying harder, how is that bad? We keep a balance in our lives. We don’t see the need to save for someone who would never appreciate our hard work. That’s your complaint, right? That we don’t appreciate all that you’ve done for us? We would like to learn from your mistakes and not land ourselves in the same regret-zone as you did. We earn for ourselves and we enjoy that. We save too whilst not compromising with living our lives. It’s today that we live for, not a tomorrow we haven’t seen.

Let us breathe. We deserve to be given a chance. We deserve to be taken seriously. We aren’t ‘loose characters’. We aren’t that bad. Please don’t look down upon us as if we’re scum. We deserve to be heard.