My Post-Girls Rant

It’s a lazy Saturday morning and I am up at 9 30 which in itself is a great accomplishment, the reason: I can’t seem to get the last episode of Girls out of my mind. My fingers were literally itching to write (even though most of the time I just ramble without making any sense). The series has caused a lot of uproar among the critics’ circles. A lot of people hated it because of its self-indulgent portrayal of today’s youth. One such person said this:

“is a television program about the children of wealthy famous people and shitty music and Facebook and how hard it is to know who you are and Thought Catalog and sexually transmitted diseases and the exhaustion of ceaselessly dramatizing your own life while posing as someone who understands the fundamental emptiness and narcissism of that very self-dramatization.”

And I realized that is what we (I am generalizing at this point) or the people I know around me do these days. It’s a me-world. Time magazine made the personality of the year as “You” as in every person is being lauded for their accomplishments. There is a constant need for approval from our peers, from our superiors, from random people we pass by. We want to make a good impression. We want everyone around us to think that we are having a ball.

And when we are depressed/irritated/dissatisfied about anything, our first thought is to vocalize, talk to friends, update the same on those innumerable websites and rant on blogs. There is a constant need to over-dramatize the smallest of the things.  My friends, who were both broke went on a shopping spree and blew 30k in one night. I went over to their place to check the loot. I had one question. Why? And the quick answer, I was feeling low so I thought I would go and buy something to make me feel good.

Money is not an issue. Credit my friend. Blue frog is the prime example. I have been frequenting place, let me tell you it’s not cheap. But you see kids all around spending the same amount of money. When we were kids all we could do was smuggle booze and listen to Pink Floyd and feel all non-conformist :D. How naïve we were!

I met this guy yesterday; we were batch-mates in undergrad. Anyways so we started talking and 90% of the conversation revolved around what he has done, where he has been and what has he been up to. At one point it sounded like a self-propagating agenda. Much later I asked him about it, he casually accepted the fact that yes I am this way, as if it’s a genetic trait. He was very unapologetic about it. I work my ass off so why shouldn’t people know about it even though I hate it most of the time.

Then there is another kind. This friend of mine was a consultant like me but has just bagged his dream job. He is managing ITC Grand in Mumbai. He is the youngest person to be offered such a role. I met him the other day and he couldn’t stop cribbing about how his personal life is shot to hell because his girlfriend is in another city. Seriously! So there is no way people can be satisfied with what they have in life and keep quiet about it.

Coming to the Indian literature these days, all we see is humorless self-indulgence. All the chic-lits and metro reads talking about the new-age men and women with their trials and tribulations because of our ever changing culture. There is nothing much to write about these days. I agree there can be many a-topic that can be chosen. As the very true rant from Girls again says:

“Cultural criticism. How about years of neglect and abuse? How about acid rain? How about the plight of the giant panda bear? How about racial profiling? How about urban sprawl? How about divorce? How about death? How about death? Death is the most fucking real issue. You should write about death. That’s what you should write about. Explore that. Death.”

Who wants to read about all these things? All people do these days is watch reality shows about 3^rd rate celebrities. Reading is a dying hobby; even those people who were avid readers have stopped whatever maybe the reason.

I feel lost sometimes, there is nothing that interests me because everywhere I turn around there is another person with their “so-called-problems/hang-ups” that they want to vocalize. Is it just the last signs of youth before we become nondescript middle-aged men and women?