Every generation has had a Z phase. Every generation has rebelled at the right age, filled with leftist rage.
Every generation has had people cheering them on. And every generation has had people calling them useless. Parasites.
Every generation has suffered a lathi charge. Often rubber bullets, and some were unfortunate enough to be hit by live ammo. Dead.
Every generation has had politics placate them, making them feel important.
Every generation has been promised the world. And every generation has survived betrayal.
People have immolated themselves and the government has turned a deaf ear. People have only blocked roads and the government has given in.
This baptism by fire is part of life in this unfair and lovely world. Don't fear the fire. Don't play with it either.
Don't lose hope. Don't be too high on the hype either. No matter what they tell you, you will be the world to your family and friends. And no matter what they tell you, you are not unique. Either.
You will appreciate what life has to offer much better if you ever made a 36+ hr journey in 2nd class sleeper across India in peak summers.
If by any chance you fall asleep, the seat sticks to your skin. You are forever short of water, the window is like a 21 inch hair dryer. You wish to splash your face with water for some respite, the water in the sink is boiling. The only respite is the guys moving around with buckets with icy water, with an assortment of cold drink bottle submerged in it, sold at the rate of an arm & a leg. You settle for a chilled Frooti. It tastes so godly that you write about it on Twitter 20 years later :)
Today’s Bengal reminds me of Bihar of the 90s, the only difference is Non Resident Bengalis are more proud than Non Resident Biharis. The latter often hide their identity by burying their mother tongue influence with practice, the Bengalis still pretend they spent their childhood in the lawns of Satyajit Ray.
Glad to see Laalu alive to see his family getting decimated at the polls.
Thousands of 90s kids who had to live away from their parents in boarding schools just to avoid getting kidnapped, thousands who had to forfeit their ancestral land as a bribe to get a clerical job, millions who studied hard under a lantern or a petromax to somehow escape the jungle raj. All of them, across the world, doing well, now looking at their phone screens and the numbers, and smiling. This is victory.
They were silent when Tagore's house was vandalised. They are silent when Satyajit Ray's ancestral home is demolished. Indeed, they are complicit to the systematic erasure of Bengali Hindu identity is Bangladesh. Yet, they will be first to scream if someone sings a Tagore song by one note off.
People have a fundament right to be illogically bigoted and parochial . It’s just that it’s also our right to shut them out and not listen to them either .
For a decade America grew this toxic DEI & gender ideology; exported it to every country extremely successfully
Now people in Europe get arrested for misgendering, protesting men in women’s spaces etc
America then ditches everything in 24 hours while the rest are stuck 🤣