Our Rootlessness

Sixteen years ago, Computers worldwide were affected by a bug, Y2K. As year
1998 was represented as XX98, 1999 as XX99 and so on. When 2000 clicked,
machine did not understand what XX00 is, as it is 1900 or 2000.
The transition of machines to the new millennium was complex, similar to the
condition of our generation. As we entered new millennium, it was not just about
changing dates in our homework column. These millennia bring an era of
information or too much information.
As internet spreads, we find ourselves in the yahoo chat rooms, chatting with
people of different cities, countries and continents. Age, sex and location were
conversation starters not Enders. Orkut and Facebook became our new identities.
Globalisation became a popular phenomenon, as an eminent economist
describes the Globalisation as the world is becoming a flat place.
Amoral lifestyles in How I Met Your Mother and Friends were our generation
fascination. Japanese anime were cute and Spartans were our motivation. Some
of us get fascinated by war movies and efforts to bring democracy in Middle
East. I discovered that Nagaraj, Dhruv and are not wholly original entities, like
many other Bollywood flicks.
On the light of this new exposure & knowledge we started questioning our
identities. We found the power to unlearn and relearn. With this power, we are
creating ourselves continuously. When we are away from home whether in
colleges hostel, doing jobs and internship in different cities. We were no longer
strictly behaving as Brahmin/Baniya, South Indian/North Indian/Bong, and Upper
caste/ Lower Caste. For good or bad, we cut the chords we were attached to, and
became Rootless.
And look where we are now, through this rootlessness, we became a generation
of wanderers. We switch cities, companies and partners. We practice atheism
one year and Buddhism next year and never taking our identities seriously. Our
cricket icons retire one by one and we started fascinating new franchises, clubs
and leagues.
With constant flux of all this, Reasoning finds a way. We understand what it
means to read, write and understand critically, to prepare for CAT and UPSC
critical reasoning & current awareness section. We spent hours on Wikipedia to
know many isms, Marxism to Capitalism, Taoism to Fruedism and so on without
actually understanding anything.
Fortunately or Unfortunately, Rootlessness has become the fountainhead of our
generation.