Prologue

You’re Fucked

“More often than not, the truth really, really sucks. But the truth can liberate you; it can set you free.”

– Some Wise Dude, Somewhere.

I wouldn’t call myself a nostalgic person, and I am not really sentimental, either. I don’t live in the past, and I don’t reminisce much about what could have been.

I mean, sure, I’ll sulk for a couple of weeks after a break-up, but again, not nearly as much as when a dog is killed off in a movie.

Despite my reluctance to be a man of emotion (I still can’t avoid them!), I cannot sometimes help but feel that I was born in the wrong era. I can’t help but feel life would have much simpler in the by-gone era.

People often confuse convenience with simplicity, but they are not at all the same thing.

Life, while convenient today, was much simpler back in the day.

Let’s take a nostalgic trip down the late 80s and early 90s when I was growing up. Music was great, television was endearing, landline phones were a thing, and we still had time to go out and explore the neighbourhood with our set of friends.

Oh, and did I mention there was a good chance that your dreams weren’t dead?

So, I’ll just cut straight to the chase: if you are someone aged 35–40 or under, you’re pretty much fucked.

* (Cue dramatic music) *

No, really! Sure, people aged 40 and older have their own set of problems to deal with. But for us, the millennial generation and the generations to follow, are right at the top of the ‘we’re fucked’ list. And you know what the worst part is? We’re not even responsible for most of it.

“Wait a minute, Zubair, that can’t be true!” I hear you say, “We’re much better off than the generations that preceded us.”

Umm… are you fucking kidding me?

All it takes is an examination of the facts, and you’ll have your answer.

The only point of this exercise is to understand the kind of problems regular people like you and I deal with in our daily lives. I just think it makes sense that we come to terms with ‘why we are in this situation in the first place’.

The rest of the book will focus on the precise approach to living a supposedly ‘better life’. Pinky Swear!

So, let’s take a closer look at all the problems we are faced with, shall we?

1. We Have No Jobs and No Assets.

Statistically speaking, we are the most educated bunch of people that ever existed on this planet. Congratulations.

Yet, we probably have to offer a ritualistic sacrifice to land a half-decent job. Unemployment rates in India in 2019 stand at 6+ %, which is the highest it has been in 45 years! In the USA, 40% of those without a job are millennials.

With an insanely competitive job market, where a college degree is a bare minimum, and it seems like every aspirant has a couple of them lying sparingly on the bookshelf, we have put ourselves in a very, very grave situation.

For those who are employed, we are forced to accept low paying jobs that make us feel like shit and deal with managers who drive us fucking nuts.

Without even realising, your confidences levels are plummeting faster than you can say, ‘I would like another job, please!’

Considering how low paying our jobs are, it’s almost impossible for us to save any significant amount of money, which means it’s almost impossible for us to accumulate any significant assets. Most millennials without prior financial backing can kiss their dreams of buying a house goodbye!

2. We are Paying More for Basic Necessities of Life While Our Salaries Remain the Same.

Reports suggest that India will be the only economy that will not face any significant growth of salaries by 2030, as it has a talent surplus. In the USA, salaries have not kept up with inflation, and purchasing power is the same as it was 40 years ago.

I distinctly remember interviewing for a job pretty early in my career; it was a start-up in tech space. The HR manager who sat with me on the interview proudly gave me a tour of the office which consisted of a pool table, a table-tennis table and, an ultra-modern coffee machine which dispensed espresso (no filter coffee though!).

I remember her saying, “we have free beers for everyone and also a PlayStation!”

I spent most of my day at the office, trying to clear the different rounds of the interview. Not one person in the office used any of the amenities, besides the coffee machine. Even at lunch hour, most employees were glued to their computer screens. After I left the interview, I looked up the reviews of the company, and surprisingly enough, almost every employee had given them a negative rating.

There was no work-life balance, managers treated their employees like crap, the hierarchy was confused and salaries while being low, were sometimes still not paid on time.

What’s the point of having free beers and snooker tables when I cannot pay my bills? Is beating my colleague at a game of table-tennis going to make my stress magically disappear?

Way too many organisations have an incorrect sense of what’s truly important to their employees.

Health care, education, housing, is becoming so ridiculously expensive that we are forced to settle for sub-par quality of these basic necessities of life.

Did you think it was the right of every human being to receive basic provisions at subsidised cost? Think again.

3. We are Stressed, Depressed and Anxious All the Time

Our generation’s tryst with mental health issues was predestined from the time the world, especially Asian countries, decided that mental health was a taboo subject.

With work becoming more intense than ever we are occupied for longer hours, and have a seriously warped work-life balance, leading to increased stress. The rise of social media hasn’t helped either since a majority of young adults have reported feelings of anxiety, low self-esteem and self-harm, related to toxic trolling and bullying faced on social media platforms.

Our stress and anxiety manifest themselves in the forms of depression, obesity, anti-social behaviour, disturbed sleep patterns and, substance abuse. Every little thing in our lives is directly or indirectly, contributing to our deteriorating mental health. Unfortunately, even today, the topic of mental health is considered a grey area in some parts of society.

Statistics suggest that nearly 75% of all mental health issues affect people by the age of 24, and almost five times as many students suffer from a mental health condition today as compared to 10 years ago. Without proper treatment, these students take their frail mental health into the workplace where they experience further pressure and stress. It’s a recipe for impending disaster.

4. Our Education System Sort of Totally Sucks

This is a problem more pertinent to Asian countries, and especially countries like India. Our education system completely misses the point of, well, ‘an education’.

You see, the sole purpose of education, and I mean any education, is to ensure survival.

To ensure you are prepared to face the real world. Our education system fails quite spectacularly on that front.

To this day, the Indian teaching system places almost next to negligible importance in helping students explore the 18+ career clusters, 110+ career paths, and 3000+ occupations that exist in the world. The majority of schools and especially our society, solely focus on the major 2-3 career options, leading students to enrol in ‘coaching factories’.

Soft skills and people skills have never been given much importance, and it shows because out of nearly 800,000 graduate engineers, 60% remain unemployed in India. Their unemployment is majorly attributed to the lack of communication skills.

On the other hand, student suicides have reached a crisis level in India, where a student is said to commit suicide every hour (75,000 students committed suicide between 2007 & 2016).

Having been a student at 3 universities in 3 different continents, a retrospective look at the education system exhibits a deeply flawed structure that considers human life to be way too inexpensive. Intense competition combined with complete inadequacy while handling the mental health of students has landed us in this situation. Unfortunately, the chances of getting out of this rut in the near future seem really bleak.

My concerns with the education system run rather deep. So, let’s leave this be, a conversation for another day (or probably another book!).

5. The Stuff We Consume is Terrible for Us

The food that you eat is killing you slowly.

Poor diets are considered to be the reason behind 1 in 5 deaths across the world. The food that we consume is processed, adulterated, and just plain harmful.

Diseases like cancer, diabetes and obesity, have been directly linked to fast food and unhealthy eating habits. What this basically means is that we have become much more likely to succumb to all kinds of illnesses much more easily. If you smoked 50 years ago, it wouldn’t affect you nearly as direly and early as it would today.

To make matters worse, even the air we breathe is killing us slowly. Air quality in India caused 1.2 million deaths in 2018 alone. The number is said to rise to 2 million soon. The air quality is considered so poor that at least 140 million people breathe air 10 times or more over the WHO safe limit.

13 of the world’s 20 cities with the highest annual levels of air pollution are in India.

And finally:

6. We Are Still, the Bad Guys

Ironically, we are supposed to be the generation with corrupt values. The generation that was supposed to destroy the moral fabric of the entire planet. But the fact is, that we’re the generation that is fighting climate change, social barriers and, all the oppressive systems that were put in place a long fucking time ago.

We should be proud.

All we’re trying to do is survive and find the ability to love ourselves among all the noise, while everyone else remains oblivious to our struggle. No wonder suicide memes and self-deprecating joke are so prevalent. It’s a coping mechanism, a subtle hint at how most of us are well and truly, fucked.