The Pioneer

Capitalism has liberated India. The advent of the open market economy and the IT and mobile revolutions have resulted in a business and corporate boom. With half of the national population below the age of 25 and the middle class woman joining the workforce in strength, this has changed paradigms in the social and cultural worlds. Or has it?

This is what Palash Krishna Mehrotra sets out to explore in The Butterfly Generation, a memoir and a comment in parts, written from the perspective of an insider — a young Indian trying to make sense of the churning taking place in the youngest nation of the world. Refreshing, authentic and what a relief to read more Indians writing about Indians, as vital questions need to be asked, taboos broken, constructs and stereotypes examined or leastways brought to fore; but are we truly the butterfly generation? Have we finally come of age at long last?

The author seems to think that we have. Today’s young children in the city are being brought up on different values; false shame and undue respect for authority are not immanent in their character. Their parents’ lives have metamorphosed and they are finally ‘flying’ — earning more than their parents and leading a different lifestyle, wearing denim and cocktail dresses, listening to heavy metal and Indie groups, watching ‘iconoclastic’ reality shows like Emotional Atyachaar and even rethinking the “romantic notions of chastity and fidelity”. Pleasure-seeking 30-year-olds are dropping acid and mescaline like there’s no tomorrow, lapping up the freedoms denied, making up for lost time. The average Indian’s attitude to work has changed and we are witnessing on the McDonald’s and Pizza Hut shop floors “the birth of India’s first English-speaking working class”. While celebrating

St Valentine’s Day is frowned upon in pockets, recent court judgements have created “space for homosexuality in public life”.

The book can be read on three levels: Gen X reminiscing about life in socialist India and how far we have come, Gen Y still being challenged by our ingrained habits of hierarchy and hypocrisy and sadly succumbing to them all and, most delightful, the author’s own take on the nature of the Indian race — what it is to be Indian. We come to pick up a lot of facts on how to find an apartment in Delhi, where to find a drug pusher should one need one and the various locations of the posh and flea markets of the great Indian capital.

Butterflies or not, we, however, do not warm up to either the new kids or ‘kidults’ on the block. Their unfamiliar mix of individualism and discretion comes across as self-serving, their not-so-unfamiliar blend of hedonism and opportunism seems effete and, at best, a weak apologism for Western culture. The new Indian is skilled but shallow, talented but not spirited, level-headed but not ready to address answer or really act on matters ethical and political. Their bravado is confined to urban chic and the rave. But the author, himself, is reticent and non-committal; he does not confront them with these uncomfortable inferences.

There are simply too many things going on in Butterfly for it to be effective as a single narrative. Caught between being a personal essay and analysis, its gaze bypasses the real movers and shakers, the NRI computer engineer settled abroad, the doctor and the academic researcher, the CEO and the bureaucrat, the real face of rising middle India. Thus the studies are objective but insular and limited in scope. They say nothing we do not already know. As a creative work, it is honest, racy and engaging but also cold-hearted, not candid enough and lacking angst. It is important as a document of the times.