To The Things We Can Never Have

Have you ever put a spoonful of your favorite ice-cream inside your mouth, while casually sharing a laugh with your closest friends and suddenly realised that you might never be able to support yourself in this unforgiving world?

Fear comes in a number of shapes and sizes but unless you’ve felt this, you’ve never really known it. The reason for this line of thought isn’t surprising, given the nature of the economy all over every land and the unending sea of humans that keep growing on the face of this planet.

A house, a car, a livelihood, it suddenly seems that this generation doesn’t have anything that comes easy. Not that our ancestors didn’t have to put their blood, sweat and tears into everything they earned but here is a strange situation, one where no matter what we do, it doesn’t seem to be enough to warrant a proper state of being in a society which is becoming increasingly chaotic.

You can’t earn enough, you can’t spend enough, you can’t save enough.

It is a vicious cycle. And there is no escaping this. All at once it appears that unless you have parents to bankroll every investment, you are stagnating in this economy. This is the way every up and coming person is beginning to feel now.

How far are you prepared to dive for your object of desire?

This question keeps haunting, beyond the realms of what is right and wrong. It is more about holding onto what you have than making something of your own. And that is a suffocating predicament to be caught in. Right now, if your predecessors are leaving you with enough piggybanks to break, then you are safe otherwise you can break your own back as much as you want to but you will fail to hear the merry jingle of metal in your pockets.

I have felt that more than anything else, this need to own and this economic instability are causing a huge gap between people, as if to create an empty space between the people at the top and the ones trying to climb. Every economy is successful only with a stable middle class. As it stands now, even the upper middle classes are failing to gain a stronghold on jobs, let alone property. And apart from being sad, that, is dangerous.

I am not talking of India, my country. I am not talking of London and the falling bridges. I am not talking of Greece or Paraguay or Cambodia. I am not talking of any place in particular. I cannot. Because everywhere your eyes wander, the state is the same. We are stuck in a perpetual state of not having the things we need and not being able to get to a fruitful enough position to be able to afford them. It is the ‘rich becoming richer and poor becoming poorer’ situation all over again.

Maybe this is what the world has come to, now. Not caring about what the future generations might have to face and filling our own pockets at the expense of those who aren’t here right now, has led to this. And it is the same thing that we are doing.

“How much land does a man require?” Tolstoy asks

Only Six Feet Long – Enough to bury his dead body, apparently. That is enough, he says.

And yet for ages we have plundered on and on till there is no more for nature to give us. The rising prices, the gap in demand and supply, the inability for the government to enforce laws because laws were supposedly always meant to be broken, the lack of clean drinking water for people sharing the same skin as we do, the lack of proper education for children not different from ours, isn’t it all our fault?

It is well documented and better known. Now that we are truly facing the hardships and that the music isn’t pleasing any longer, are we truly bothered about them. Yes, right now, the entire generation is in an emotional crisis trying to digest the fact that not many (read: almost none) are going to be able to afford a life of choice. It is about time, too.

Do you have a sugar daddy? No?

Better luck next time.

The years have seen a lot and it is maybe a tiny bid sad that it is us, the present, who have to pay for the sins of the ones who’ve been here before. As we have twisted the knife further inside the layers of this world, ruining everything that was once glorious, it is our turn to bare our backs and feel the whiplash redden our skin. Somewhere, we have treated Nature, the same.

It is useless trying to run from inevitability. It always keeps sitting on our shoulders, whispering about the sins we can’t pay enough for.

And now that this world is turning against us, one human at a time, we have to accept the punishment dished out.

In the end, the hand that rocks the cradle, also knows how to dig graves.