time after time

We are approaching the end of a cataclysmic decade. And i have a feeling the next one will leave us as dazed as this one did. Perhaps. Weirdly, this decade seems to have everything except a name. What should I call it… The 2Ks? You could look at it like a series of catastrophes – terror attacks, tsunamis, our democracy beginning to run under a Mario Puzo-esqe family. But there’s also been good stuff, though it doesn’t come to mind immediately! And so stuff from the ages gone by have gotten old and wrinkled and are becoming quaint. Take Friends for instance. Or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I remember drooling over Angel, watching him creep about in the darkness on Star World. And now it’s Twilight. Bye bye MJ, hello Jay-Z; so long Princess Di, greetings Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy?

We are in an age when things pretty much fly past us without us even realising. Then we wake up and we’re 25 or 35 or 50 or 70 and think, Christopher Columbus, where the hell did all the years go? (yes, there are people who say Christopher Columbus; come home and meet my witty grandaunt.) But even if it whizzed by, the first decade of the millennium will be one my generation will remember.

9/11, the exodus to countries like America and Australia, and now the exodus from those countries back to the “Far East”, iPods, ahem George Bush, Harry Potter, swine flu and SARS, Facebook and Twitter and Blackberry… the list is endless. I remember saying a quick thank you as we counted down the last few seconds of the previous millennium. I haven’t the faintest idea what I thanked the powers-that-be for but I foggily remember Nancy Drew making the list. This time, it has to be for all the lessons I’ve learnt in the past decade; for growing up and not turning into the crazy-ass kid who is a drug abuser and skids smoothly out of jail every few months because his daddy owns an MNC or runs a political party. I turned out fairly normal, even though the world around me was pretty insane. And it is insane for everybody now, regardless of their backgrounds.

Happy 2Kteens, everybody (clinks beer mug) and see you soon, hopefully!