We are the 90s kids. Those who learnt to scape their skin on the edges of stories. Where summer meant stealing mangoes . Where evening meant cycle rides and endless cricket. Where TV means Scooby-Doo and Tom and Jerry or Swat Katz or basically, Cartoon Network The 90's Cartoon Network. Where school meant stealing lunchboxes and being "outstanding" students meant standing outside classrooms in punishment. Our scars are memories cause words got brushed off too easily. And each scar tells its own story. These are Stories that we now share on Facebook and Instagram like trying to photograph ghosts. a thousand words to underline an inspirational picture just waiting to harvest ten thousand upright thumbs.
This is a space where the number of likes mean being liked enough. Where being social needs a media.
And we have learnt the evolution of time by studying the evolution of technology .
From the battered Nokia to the touchscreen phones that have turned laptops , TVs and music players into the grandparents whose photos hang in memories.
We are addicted to selfies and our self takes precedence over the we. Where we dictate the worth of your 'self'.
Where worth is measured with IQs and EQs and we stand in long queues waiting to be initiated into rat races that score our mediocrity. Where scores of 99.9 can get you a seat in college but 99 cannot. Where numbers are the only way we have learned to measure infinity. Where life is quantifiable by ranks of progress and level of failures and success.where suicide is quantified by the level of failures and success. Where connection is lazy swipes of left and right . As powerfully easy it is to discard someone, we forget that we are just as easily discardable. Like rows of paper cups , we are sitting ducks to the inevitable, entitled be there. Letting grief and regret grow in vases often too small to grow in until they flower when we least expect them to. We let our schooling interfere with an education. We teach our children patriotism like it was a tattoo to be inked on our tongues and minds, a uniform to be worn in a permanent war to prove ourselves to the world.
And in this chaos,
We are called to build walls.
Walls against the alien.
Today, I tell you that we have been building walls all our lives. And we have been paying for them .Walls so high that even ladders dont reach the top anymore. That every minute we try to peek out, we are afraid of intensity of the colour behind . We will not build walls, sir. We will learn to break them down. We will learn to wake up like those seeds sprouted after spending thousands of years in jars in the pyramids. We will shake our heads in delight like being watered for the first time. We will grow from the dust of our own skins.
- Janet Orlene
We will learn to rise.