When Nats ‘woke’ up

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Natasha aka Nats, my 19-year-old neighbour was annoyed, in an annoying Gen Z way.

She'd been away, down a rabbit hole, not contactable, for a month.

Many WhatsApp messages and missed calls later, Lady Gaga Grouch responded by opening her door.

"Yeah Bruh... whattup?," her face was lunar-eclipsed by a scowl.

"Uh… Natasha, you're home? Where've you been? I was worried."

"I was on a staycation"

"What's a staycation?"

(Eye-roll)

"When you holiday at home. Plus to be honest… I was ghosting you."

"So you were literally five feet away… why didn't you answer my messages?"

"Those messages were too passive-aggressive for me, ok Boomer?!"

"Duh huh what's passive -aggressive?" I asked gobsmacked

"Passive-aggressive behaviour is a pattern of indirectly expressing negative feelings instead of openly addressing them," Nats informed me.

I took a moment to calm myself down.

"Yeah I know what the term means, for crying out aloud… we had social abnormalities long before you had social media!"

"Dude, my therapist says this toxicity is not good for me."

"Ok go back into your cave and come out when you're in a less ‘I am my world and no one else exists' zone, we'll correspond then, if it's ok with your therapist."

"Man you Baby Boomers, are all the same," she muttered, as she returned to her hermitage.

I waited as a minute passed, then she reappeared -

"Rude dude who adds ‘fullstops' anymore?... look at these… ‘Natasha, how are you, more importantly where are you??' or this one, ‘Worried about you, please call back, urgent!!' Is there any requirement for full sentences, two question marks and two exclamation marks, is there?… dude it's too curt…"

"Okay, if you think a punctuation mark is passive aggression, and you mistake concern for curtness, I'll communicate in half-sentences even if it makes me seem half-educated."

"Whateves," Nats said, nonchalantly.

"Anyway, don't ghost our maid… she wants to know where you are, and if you need her to cook for you this evening!" I said.

"Huh?… Who's ‘she'?… what's ‘her'?... bruh what are these outdated words… ‘her' ‘she'?"

"Our maid is a ‘she' when I last checked…"

"I'd prefer to use gender neutral pronouns," Nats said, annoyingly.

"Let me rephrase using gender fluidity - our maid called. ‘They' wish to know if you want dinner tonight, it will enable ‘them' to go the market to purchase the required condiments. Will you call ‘them' back please."

I paused. "How's that? Non-binary enough for you, Natasha?"

Lady Chat-terly was not pleased by my sarcasm.

"Rahul bruh… don't make fun… got it… if you're going to show me this condescension, like my parents do, then I'm just… just… I thought you were more ‘woke' than that."

The approaching breadman/andawalla, sensing a hostile environment, retreated hastily.

A moment passed as Natasha re-analysed my status as confidant and I re-looked at the past- present tense ramifications, of "woke" vis-a-vis "awake".

"Natasha… I'm concerned that you are becoming a cliched stereotype of your Gen Z. Blindly conforming to stereotypical lingo, your Pavlovian response to anything seems to lack individual character."

"Will you stop mansplaining me?" she rebutted.

"Did you say, ‘mansplaining'… how can that be a word… please ‘womansplain' me."

"Bruh… there's no word like womansplain!"

"So when a woman such as you, lectures a man such as me, that too who is 40 years your senior, what's that called?"

"Sense," said a poker-faced Nat.

"Never knew that. My bad", I said.

"I'm glad you're learning how to converse in Gen Z-speak," she said.

"That's ‘my good'," I said

"Bruh, not every word has an opposite!"

"Right, so you're saying the opposite of ‘woke' isn't ‘asleep'?"

"Dude… I'm done here, while you're displacing all your inner angst, I need to go and ‘glow up', ciao."

"Yes, you do need to ‘grow up'," I said

"I said ‘glow up', not ‘grow up', there's a difference, Rahul uncle! ‘Glow up' means when a person becomes mature, attractive and confident, both physically and professionaly!" Nats womansplained me, in conclusion.

Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com