2000-2009: The Thick Black Line

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To borrow a phrase, 'the thick black line historians will refer to years from now' is sure to be the last decade, 2000-2009, the one that divides decades before this from the decades to come.

Starting with 9/11, terror, Islam versus the West, the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, America and the world getting 'Bush-whacked', TWICE, financial doom, Barack Obama, layoffs, multiple terror attacks in India (Gujarat, Delhi, Jaipur, the 7/11 train bombings in Mumbai, the 26/11 seige), besides homosexuality legalized, pink chaddis, the emergence of size zero.. it was too much, one after the other. What a decade!

The 2000s was a decade I spent coming of age: my Twenties. Filled with all the drama and madness that accompanies this age, I spent the '00s (pronounced the 'oh-ohs' in new Internet terminology) maturing alongside (and sometimes covering for news) events have changed our world forever - all 'flashbulb' experiences, personal and professional, too varied, and too vivid, quintessential to the Twenties, but dare not be repeated!

The next decade starting 2010 (whatever shall that be called? The Teens?) will see me in my Thirties, older, wiser, calmer and all too hopefully more inured to what 'news' and life have to offer. Most importantly, I hope it will be spent covering more 'good' news than 'bad' news, and (like every reporter wishes) events of greater relevance and consequence. But as I write this, I come across this news headline: 'Kerala minister turns up at funeral of temple monkey.' Hmm, guess not.

If even the last week of the '00s is any indication, there's slim chance of covering 'hope-filled news' events for the next decade. Blinkered intolerance of Twitteroor's tweets is grabbing the news space this week (Democracy, you there?), Ajmal Kasab is enjoying three meals a day in jail (instead of being executed), and even Obama isn't shining the way we thought he would, his Nobel notwithstanding. The prophets of doom have predicted the next 50 years (starting ironically, with the end of the world in 2012!) to be pivotal in dictating this world's generational survival. And at the same time, the Copenhagen meet showed us what we always suspected: world nations can never agree on anything. Climate change is the most serious threat darkening the horizon, and here we're spending dinnertime blaming each other, while the dinner table is about to be swept away in a tsunami.

You think the next generation is cause for hope? Well, talk to a young person and you'll find technology and morality have one thing in common: they are moving with the same speed in diametrically opposite directions. As one is advancing, the other is becoming more obsolete than ever before (though ironically, the wellspring of morality - dogma and religion - are still firmly in place).

Since we're dwelling on gloom and doom, I may as well reveal what I worry most about spending my Thirties in the next decade: it's living in fear of the N-word. You know what I'm talking about. Cases of uranium being smuggled around in the country are getting too common to be ignored, and our city N-scientists themselves are advising authorities that the nuclear threat is uncomfortably real. I'm told first responders in terror situations in Mumbai are to be equipped with 'radiation dosimeters' - devices that help in detecting radiation. And nuclear subjects remain the focus of terror seminars here in the city.

In the 60 years since electricity was first generated by a nuclear reactor in the US, nations like France, the US, Japan, as also China and India have aimed to increase dependence on nuclear sources of energy - France deriving more than 70 percent of its power from nuclear energy. But many (esp proponents of solar energy) call nuclear energy a dangerous global preoccupation in the long-term, especially since basic questions related to it still remain unanswered - like what is to be done with the 20 tons of non-degradable nuclear waste (radioactive too) produced by each nuclear reactor per year (!!!!).

Incredible for a world advancing at such a rapid speed not to be able to come up with a solution to this, but true. Just as incredible as it being unable to come up with a cure for cancer (another outcome of radiation), but true. It's all a bit like speaking too fast: you end up saying things you haven't thought of yet. Dangerous.

Not too far-fetched then, to expect my Thirties, living in a perpetual terror target like Bombay, to be fraught with bad news, and thoughts of mortality. (And Tiger Woods thinks he's got problems.) But let's be optimistic.. surely the last decade must have had some good news to offer.

Of course it did. While the Lehman brothers and Citibank kickstarted the downward economic spiral, India managed to keep head above water showing respectable growth of 6.7 per cent through 2008-2009. The stock market crashed, but got back on its feet just a year later. If the '90s were wedded to IT, the '00s were most obviously defined by aviation - low-cost airlines which has allowed a maximum number of Indians, like myself, to fly.. more often than ever before, on my own money! Relative political stability, and no war - some plus points there. Indian movies hit the big time too not just in Hollywood with Slumdog, but today, thankfully, we're seeing a greater number of quality movies than ever before. And finally, the Indian cricket team is injected with new blood, and No 1 because of it.

It serves for at least token good cheer. But news just in: Shibu Soren sworn in as Chief Minister of Jharkhand.. and the family of the personal secretary he allegedly murdered is scared shitless. Well. That good cheer lasted exactly one paragraph. All that's left now is for Mayawati to replace Manmohan Singh, and seated astride an army of elephants, galloping down ill-made pitches, we'll be set to conquer the world.

There's no news like bad news, I guess, especially since it comes in a far steadier stream than any other kind of news. If nothing else, the thick black line has assured us of one thing: the next decade - my Thirties, the Tens, the Teens, whatever you or I want to call it - will see a smaller world, with all of us more interdependent than ever before, where a foreign politician's speech could have direct relevance to my life, and most certainly, one which will never have a dull moment!