A. M. Gautam is a writer from Haridwar who lives, for the most part, in Bangalore. He is an alumnus of IIMC and his work has appeared in various Indian as well as international publications. His interests lie primarily in cultural commentary, speculative fiction, and multilingual literary exploration.
<p>There are 440 million Millennials (born between 1980 and 1996) in India today. They constitute 34 per cent of the country’s population and 46 per cent of the workforce. They are the chief wage earners in most households. They are the first generation to grow up in a non-socialist economy. Consumerism permeates every single aspect of their lives. The food they eat, the workout regimes they follow, the language they speak, their professed ideological and political beliefs—all these are dictated by capitalism. Great bodies and English-speaking skills are crucial social aspirations—not only to boost their self-worth but also to make them stand out in the fledgling world of Indian dating. They are the first generation tasked with navigating a post-truth world where all assertions are double-faced, elastic, and subject to wilful misinterpretation. All these facets of the Millennial generation are speculated about but poorly understood. </p><p>So, who are Indian Millennials, really? What are the attitudes and lifestyle choices that define their views on politics; gender and sexuality; work and income; caste and class; love, marriage, and family; mental health and well-being, and much, much more? In this eye-opening book, A. M. Gautam (a Millennial himself) travels across the country, meeting Millennials in small towns and big cities, to provide a fascinating account of one of the most distinctive generations of our time. Of the many insights he provides in the book, the chapter ‘The Bodies of Millennial Men’ unearths truths about the uneasy relationship male Millennials have with their bodies; in ‘Millennials vs the Apocalypse’ we see the anxieties and general sense of doom Millennials are prone to; </p><p>in ‘Eat Your Fear’, he talks about the confusion and fear Millennials have about food—and their love affair with the avocado; in ‘Millennials in the Moonlight’ we meet Daksh, a software development engineer, who worked as many as four jobs to make good and how this schedule finally did him in; in ‘Spiritual, Not Religious’, we sense the growing disillusionment of Millennials with traditional religions and how they are seeking fulfilment in non-traditional spiritual organizations; ‘Our Monochromatic Tongue’ demonstrates the tendency of Millennials to resort to hyperbole and how this is draining language of its power—any offbeat thing they experience is ‘surreal’, each bowl of ramen is ‘AMAZING!’, each new step in life is ‘a life-transforming experience’, and they must always ‘deep dive’ into ideas. </p><p>Through these and other stories, the author paints a vivid picture of a generation that has often been misunderstood as effete, sanctimonious, confused, ineffectual, narcissistic, and sybaritic. He argues that from climate change to wage equity, body-image issues, sexual liberty, and much else, Indian Millennials have made positive and much needed contributions to Indian society, activism, politics, work, and culture. Millennials really do want to make India and the world a better place, more than any previous generation, perhaps, and they are trying to make this come about in their own inimitable way. This book shows us how.</p>
