Being in your 20’s in India is
tough. For several reasons, perhaps too many to enlist in one article, but
there’s nothing like having a good whine about it after spending a sleepless
night because there was no electricity. The electricity bill for our two
bedroom rented apartment, where two people live amounted to a whopping
16,000 rupees for 2 months. That, after 2 hours of daily power cuts, a minimum of 8 hours
everyday when no one is at home, and the supply voltage so low during peak
hours that none of the appliances work. All this with the hottest summer in
five years. I know, I know, everyone is going, ‘Oh what a cry baby, there’s
people getting killed, doctors mal-practising, and what not, just watch Amir’s
show’. This brings me to the next part of my lament. Television. At this age, I’ve
done my studying, I’ve found my calling, or rather stumbled upon it while getting
shoved around in The Herd, and when I get home after work, I want to switch on
the TV and be entertained. What do I get? Arnab Goswami demanding ‘answers on
the behalf of the nation’. I click the remote and there’s Barkha asking Shah
Rukh Khan not to be a role model and not to shirk from controversy. After
bawling her eyes out and apologizing to everyone in her profession, merely a
year back, she’s back in form. So SRK will do good to take her advice. The
other anchors are screaming their heads off talking about some Team...Anna or Kolkata,
I don’t know, and some Baba...Ramdev or Rahul, I don’t care. I mean, yeah ok, I
do care about all that stuff and I carry out my bit of ‘social responsibility’, but I have worked hard enough to have earnt a few hours of entertainment. If I haven’t,
my parents’ life of toil should have.
There are no sports on because
Neo Sports has the rights to every half-decent sporting event, and I wouldn’t watch
that channel even if I had shelled out the extra 100 bucks to subscribe to it. My
high speed internet isn’t working because of some technical problems, and I can’t
download movies (illegally ofcourse, what’s the point of being in India if I have
to buy DVD’s) because the courts have banned the websites. Meanwhile, the
internet data recharge I got on my prepaid phone has mysteriously expired
before the due date and my phone balance is somehow down to 45 bucks. That’s not sooo
bad is it? Well no, except for when I try to call anybody, there’s a highpitched
voice telling me that my balance is low....in Tamil. She then informs me the same
in English. I could step outside and go for a drive, but after the fuel price
hike, recreational burning of petrol is even more indecent than skipping
Satyamev Jayate on Sundays.
So I am left to sit there, in the
flickering tubelight, sweaty and smelly, (haven’t bathed, no water supply today), wondering
whether my parents spent their lives, making sure I was able to spend my youth, giving exams and interviews, for this? Things better start looking up around
here, and soon. And as my cynical, whiny, cranky, rant slowly subsides, I kind
of start thinking that things will be better. Electricity is back, I call in
sick for the day, I make myself tea from milk from a tetrapack carton, I find a
hack to access a torrent website once the internet is back up, I recharge my
phone online and call the electricity board helpline to lodge a complaint which
is received quite surprisingly in a helpful and assuring manner. I am sure none of that happened to my dad when he was 20-something and optimistic.