“Hmmm… too toxic, bruh… couldn’t breathe… I needed to get out of there…. needed a break,” she said not looking up, as she scrolled up and down, buried in her blue screen.
Illustration/Uday Mohite
Natasha aka Nats, my 20-year-old neighbour, dawdled over to my house, she seemed laid back, languorous and a bit lazy, dressed in a brown blouse and skirt, unlike her customary black T-shirt and blue jeans.
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“Hello Nats, what’s up?” I said.
“Hey Rahul, bruh,” she nonchalantly replied, her head buried in her iPhone screen as she busily solved cross word puzzles, world crises, WhatsApp conflicts, and wars in different countries.
“Shouldn’t you be at work?” I asked… “It’s midday.”
“At work? No, no, bruh I left that place. It didn’t work out, not my kind of scene!”
“Left that place, meaning? Didn’t you join a month ago??” I emphasised.
“Hmmm… too toxic, bruh… couldn’t breathe… I needed to get out of there…. needed a break,” she said not looking up, as she scrolled up and down, buried in her blue screen.
“A break,” I repeated, gobsmacked, “you needed another break?”
“Needed another break, meaning?”
“Five jobs in one year, Natasha, you’ve been on more breaks than actually working”
She looked up, irritated, while she eye rolled me thrice.
“Hey man don’t be an uncle! All judgie and all…”
“I’m not being judgemental, you’re 20… what break do you need, who do you think you are Vikrant Massey?”
“Look, I’m Natasha Dhillon… my generation, we don’t take shit, don’t put up with shit, and when we feel the shit, or someone gives us shit, we walk. Life’s too short, dude, and if you don’t like my lifestyle, Rahul bruh, whateves,” she said with cheeky nonchalance.
“How do you take a break, tell me, how do you afford it, with no salary coming in? I’m guessing with not too much savings, paying exorbitant rents, you order non-stop from Swiggy, packages come in night and day from Amazon and I know because you’re not home half the time, so guess who they deliver too, plus the discipline. Where’s the self-discipline that you need to inculcate the rigour? One day you’re working at a call centre, the next day its computer graphics, then AI, working at animal shelters, when are you going to settle down to a job, a profession, a break from all this hanging around, spending your whole day lost in your mobile phone!”
“Dude, you’re 9-5 philosophy is so obsolete.”
“By the way, what’ this all brown look?” I asked to momentarily change the conversation.
“Duh dude, this isn’t brown, merely brown (double eye roll). Pantone wouldn’t be happy with your loose broadstrokes!”
“Pantone?”
‘They’re a company that have a colour of the year, this year its mocha mousse.”
“Talking 0f the colour of the year… you do know that Oxford Dictionary has a word for the year, 2025, kind of refers to you guys.”
“Dude, all Oxford’s words of the year, refers to us guys.”
“Nats, frankly it’s not a complimentary word at all, in fact its two words. Brain Rot.”
“So what are they so worried about?”
‘That you kids will go from robots to morons to brain dead in a few years!”
“Dude in any case, what does brain rot mean?”
“It’s the decline of mental or intellectual abilities that result from consuming large amounts of low quality or unchallenging online content… also refers to content that is of low value.”
“Yeah… content that is cringe worthy!, I know I know,” Nats said, with a double eye roll.
“Nats, you have a brain... why let it rot?”
“So you want me to spent the whole day reading Kant and Kirkegad, and Plato and Aristotle, and all that intellectual stuff, you look down on our Insta reels, you look up to World Cinema.”
“Look, everyone of these Words of the Year have been chosen because they are worried for your Gen… their concern is you will fade from Gen X to Gen Ex to Gen Extinct.”
“Whats your point, Rahul bruh?”
“It’s simple, Nats. Take any of the words of the year, whether its Oxford’s ‘brain rot’, or Cambridge Dictionary’s ‘manifest’ or Dictionary.com’s ‘demure’… they all reflect the concerns, anxieties and aspirations of the digital age.”
“I wish the world would stop worrying about us, dude, we’re sorted. We’re far from becoming Gen Extinct. We’re Gen Extraordinary. Got it. Now see you, bruh… I have some Amazon packages to receive.”
Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com
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