F***, what’s this?

My friend, Nandini Mehra, updated her Facebook status message recently. And here’s what she had to say:

Four million people homeless. Thirty-three trapped miners sing the national anthem and smile for the camera. Two new planets are discovered. They're very far away and very hot. A man skins an animal alive for its fur. Ishaan chases rainbow bubbles across the grass towards the baby pool. Claps his hands when he finds bubbles don’t burst, they float on water… at least for a while. The world makes no sense to me today.

The world makes no sense to me either.

It was a rude awakening, things were changing too fast around us and some of us, the not-so-savvy ones, were being left behind. Advertisements made fun of those who didn’t really have the latest version of mobile phones or weren’t ‘with it’ when it came to job interviews, didn’t know the latest pick up lines and were basically still figuring out our surrounding.
The 70s children – we the unfortunate souls – got left behind by a railroad of ambitious brains that woke up one morning as said, “Nothing works without more money or more technology.”

What happened to us? We chased our dreams and found glass mirrors with pretty pictures on them all around us. These were not the same dreams we had initially set out to chase.

What happened? What really happened?
There is nothing to curse about modernity. It’s good for every step we take towards the future. But when did lose ourselves? What did we trade in return of shiny new technology that seemed to make everyone’s lives simpler?

My friends, who were with me, through the years, judging me and then changing their mind, but never leaving my side, we are stuck. Rather desperately in a situation that no one trained us to get out of.
Dear Nandini, sorry for stealing your ‘status message’. Your one statement triggered a torrent of thoughts in my head.