SURPRISE!

In an ideal world, nothing should surprise us. Absolutely nothing. Every little thing that happens or happened or shall happen would have a precedent. Be it India faring poorly at Olympics or ministers shamelessly partying in Rio or corrupt babus getting caught (to be bailed out soon) or the irrevocable mix of politics and violence in sensitive zones or the falling standards of journalism...and so on. Our imagination, fueled by excessive information in this digital era, can't outreach itself anymore. It has peaked like never before. We are finally at a stage where the word surprise is as redundant as the term breaking news. By the time, it reaches its audience, the news is already broke. And tired. Every generation likes to believe that it's the coolest, the most intelligent, the most self-assured of all. Alas, that ain't the truth. We cringe at David Bowie's clothes as much as Prince's hairdos or Cher's bellybutton; although they were the dominant forces of change in pop culture. Times change. People come and go. Events rise and subside. The course of history is edited by the key figures. However, the world we live in today owes a lot more to technology than the world that existed before the World War 1. 100 years ago, our species was fully capable of getting surprised. We awed as well as aww-ed at the silliest things. We don't have that luxury anymore. Even humour is not safe from the avalanche of memes. That's what technology has achieved with its overwhelming advents. There's no going back on the data we've harnessed so far. From the minutest of scientific details to the widespread of philosophical speculations, is there anything that has the potential to truly surprise us? If you ask me—which you won't lest i reply—the answer is no. Unless we see Loch Ness emerging from the water or alien spacecrafts dropping from the sky or Yeti sliding down the snow right into the camera.