Erasing memories, one technology at a time

We are running out of stories. Yes, that's exactly what is happening with us. In the quest to be fast and furious, our era is getting erased quicker than ever before. We are left with nothing to share with tomorrow. Do you really think your food pictures on Instagram say anything about you? Exactly. Unlike us, our grandparents and parents had real problems. Problems that could translate to matters of life and death, even. Giving rise to real stories. Stories wherein my dad escaped his schoolmaster's daily beatings by fleeing to Bombay at the age of 13. The story got better as his struggles rose. Working in an Udupi restaurant and sleeping in the kitchen only to be woken up with a splash of water on his face at 4am to chop 20 kgs of onions. My mother used to walk four miles to reach her school. Everyday. We don't have those problems. Our roads have potholes but we can travel anytime. We may have the occasional blackouts but there are enough plug points to charge our laptops/phones. Water is abundant that we squander it at whim, completely overlooking those heartbreaking pictures of people struggling with potable water. Let's not even talk about food and its utter wastage by our generation. Come to think of it, our stories have moved from alphabets to numbers. We are constantly chasing number—both offline as well as online—in terms of salary and web parameters. Maybe tomorrow, when our face is plastered with wrinkles, we'll have stories on how we achieved those numbers. And a few embarrassing screenshots decorated by terrible grammar and seven exclamation marks.