Thirty Days Among the Natives
The adventure began, as most modern adventures do, not in the Amazon rainforest but at Jantar Mantar.
A spirited young protester, full of enthusiasm and the sort of confidence usually seen only in Labrador puppies and management consultants, looked at a middle-aged policeman, flashed an elaborate hand gesture, smiled brightly and declared,
“Unc Pro Max… Vaste Guna Huia!”
The policeman froze.
Now this gentleman had spent nearly three decades maintaining law and order. He had dispersed unruly crowds, negotiated traffic snarls, survived political rallies, cricket celebrations and wedding processions involving DJs who believed silence was unconstitutional.
But this…
This appeared to require either an interpreter or a software update.
The young lady walked away, perfectly satisfied that she had communicated something of immense importance. The policeman remained rooted to the spot, wearing the unmistakable expression of a man who has accidentally opened the owner’s manual of a Japanese washing machine.
I felt an immediate kinship with him.
That evening, in the spirit of scientific inquiry and mild self-harm, I decided to spend the next thirty days on Instagram, studying this fascinating tribe known as Gen Z.
Christopher Columbus discovered America. Charles Darwin explored the Galápagos. I discovered that I had absolutely no idea what anybody under thirty was talking about.
The first obstacle was the language.
English, which had served Shakespeare reasonably well and helped us pass our school examinations, has apparently been retired. Gen Z now speaks a delightful dialect assembled from abbreviations, emojis, hand gestures and expressions that sound as though somebody dropped Scrabble tiles into a mixer grinder.
Words like Rizz, Delulu, Slay, No cap, Aura, it’s giving, Cooked, Mid and POV floated across my screen with alarming confidence. By the fourth day I had begun suspecting my phone had quietly shifted into a language available only to cheerful extra-terrestrials.
Then came the hand gestures. Our generation used fingers mainly for pointing at maps, saluting seniors or counting borrowed money.
Gen Z can conduct an entire conversation using two fingers, one raised eyebrow and an expression suggesting the rest of humanity is still operating on Windows 95. Communication has become wonderfully economical. Why use fifty words when one mysterious gesture can leave four generations confused simultaneously?
The second discovery concerned happiness. This generation celebrates everything. Coffee deserves applause. Rain deserves a video. Sunsets deserve orchestral music. Dogs deserve fan clubs. Finding a parking space deserves a victory dance. My generation treated happiness rather like a fixed deposit. We invested it carefully and planned to enjoy it after retirement.
Gen Z spends happiness like pocket money. Sometimes recklessly. Always enthusiastically. I found that rather refreshing.
Then there is work. My father belonged to a generation that stayed with one employer for forty years. My generation believed loyalty was a virtue, overtime was patriotism and annual leave was something other people took.
Gen Z possesses an altogether different philosophy. If the office Wi-Fi is slower than expected, they begin updating their résumé. If purpose disappears on Wednesday, resignation becomes a serious Thursday activity. Initially I dismissed this as youthful impatience. Then I wondered whether they simply refuse to confuse employment with existence. Perhaps there is a difference.
Photography has also undergone dramatic reforms. Our family owned one camera. Every photograph required planning worthy of a military operation. People stood perfectly still. Children were threatened. Someone always blinked.
Today a youngster takes forty-five photographs before the coffee becomes cold. Admittedly forty-four are deleted immediately because they fail to express the emotional status of the cappuccino. The surviving photograph, however, receives more attention than our entire family album.
Relationships have also modernised. We wrote letters. Real letters. On paper. With red or green ink. Some even carried perfume. The arrival of the postman could increase the national happiness index of an entire neighbourhood.
Today’s romance unfolds through typing indicators, disappearing messages, screenshots and emojis whose meanings appear to change every fortnight. Cupid has evidently acquired broadband.
Yet beneath all the technology I noticed something surprisingly old-fashioned. Friendships remain friendships. Hearts still break. People still laugh too loudly when they are happy and pretend they are perfectly fine when they are not.
Human beings, despite software upgrades, remain gloriously human. The greatest surprise arrived quietly. These youngsters possess an astonishing ability to enjoy ordinary moments. They celebrate small victories without embarrassment. They laugh easily. Dance without invitations. Travel without waiting for promotions. Eat dessert before reading the medical report. Wear outrageous clothes with complete confidence.
Somewhere along our respectable journey through careers, mortgages, meetings, deadlines and blood-test reports, many of us quietly postponed joy. We became experts at preparing to live. They have inconveniently started living while still preparing.
Of course, they are not perfect. Neither were we. Every generation imagines it invented common sense and the next generation misplaced it. Our parents looked suspiciously at our bell-bottom trousers. We now examine purple hair, cryptic captions and impossible vocabulary with identical concern.
History, I have concluded, possesses an excellent sense of humour. One day Gen Z will discover a newer generation communicating entirely through holograms, telepathy and emojis that probably require artificial intelligence to interpret. They too will stare in bewilderment and mutter, “Kids these days…”
And somewhere, an elderly policeman will smile knowingly.
As for me, thirty days among the natives did not transform me into Gen Z. I still search for my spectacles while wearing them. I still type with only one finger. And I still have absolutely no idea what “Vaste Guna Huia” really means. But if it translates loosely into “Life is too short to forget to Smile”, then I suspect I have finally understood Gen Z.
But somehow it no longer matters. Because behind the baffling vocabulary, impossible hand gestures and alarming enthusiasm for photographing breakfast, I found a generation that laughs freely, dreams loudly and refuses to postpone happiness until promotion, pension or prosperity. They apologise less for being themselves.
Our Generation mastered the art of making a living. They seem determined to master the art of living.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to photograph my cup of coffee. Apparently… it’s giving.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lt Gen Rajeev Chaudhry (Retd) is a social observer and writes on contemporary national and international issues, strategic implications of infrastructure development towards national power, geo-moral dimension of international relations and leadership nuances in changing social construct.
