Saturday, October 19, 2013

The New Breed

I always wanted to write blogs, but was never able to gather enough words to start one.Even if I would have the first sentence, it always seemed difficult to land on the next. Partly because you wanted something good, somthing worthy enough to be called a blog. After all of this I have come to realise that all it takes to write something good is a strong feeling which is an outcome of a stream of thoughts and related anecdotes may be. Btw, I like the word anecdote..;).
There is this new book Palash Krishna Mehrotra has written- The Butterfly Generation.It has stories about us; guys like us who are coming to terms to the new life that India offers to its younger generation. A life of exploration ,freedom and waywardness. Stories which are full of hope and dispair at the same time. Sometimes it becomes infectious and you start to feel similar pangs.There are always guys with a lot of character,grit and attitude.But they are few.Most of them turn out to be crumbling beehives.
I just finished this story about a small town guy from Bhopal who works in call centers; rotating between a lot of them just to avoid the feeling of stagnation. A ploy to fool himself out of the mediocrity of a predictable life. He is also a smacker who has come to believe that life's happiness is all about making easy money out of faking accents to buy his daily dose of happiness. He started off as a hindi call center guy of Bhopal airport which is more like a metro station. So basically he has made progress in life.:)
All this while I have been listening to 8tracks. It is a new music site which has playlists created and promoted by its users. I am listening to a playlist called 'Creatures' and am wondering about the tastes of the guy who has created this. The songs are really soulful but have trendy beats at the same time. I think they call it indie or something.  You can keep reading the book while the music is on.So basically they are kind of background songs. I wonder if this guy has a similar tendency of having things or people in his life which or whom he definitely wants to have but never wants to engage with in any serious way.He is a drifter!!
And so are the characters of this book by Palash. They all seem to be in a hurry barring the writer; the book has been written in first person. We are a restless generation.Aren't we?. I wrote this from my smartphone in may be twenty minutes. We all are in a hurry to acomplish things, or may be to write blogs ;)

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