This book tells you about millennials' attitudes towards nearly everything

A M Gautam's 'Indian Millennials: Who Are They, Really?' deconstructs millennials by studying their behaviours towards body, food, culture, religion, spirituality, ideology, technology, and internet

INDIAN MILLENNIALS: Who AreThey, Really?

Author: AMGautam

Publisher: Aleph

Pages: 262

Price: Rs 699

In his first book,  Indian Millennials: Who Are They, Really, Bengaluru-based writer A M Gautam personalises the quest to understand the millennial cohort — people born between 1981 and 1996 — in 14 neat chapters that study their behaviours towards body, food, culture, religion, spirituality, ideology, technology, and the internet. Previously, a book that tried to attempt this was Snigdha Poonam’s Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing the World (Penguin, 2018). But her book was more of a sociopolitical study hinged on the apparatus of ambition and desire. Mr Gautam hyper-focuses on the formulation of one’s identity from the vantage points of personal and political events that helped shape the millennial generation’s attitudes towards nearly everything in this book.

Identity is, inevitably, tethered to the singular tool of presenting yourself to the world or being seen by it: The body. Mr Gautam talks of being scrutinised by a gaze that holds plus-sized bodies in an undesirable manner. Being fat-shamed, disparaged for having “man-boobs”, and condemned for not working out enough to “be in shape”, he slowly treads towards being sold on the idea of being fit. He writes, “Our current obsession with muscular male bodies, everything they represent for us (masculine strength, for instance, or a disciplined life), what we do to get such a body, and how we feel when we are successful or unsuccessful, are all things that are connected to each other by our age-old relationship with fat.” That outlook has contributed to the explosive growth of the “fitness-wellness industry,” which, he notes, is now a “$4.4 trillion ecosystem”.

In the subsequent chapter titled “Millennials vs the Apocalypse,” he examines “humanity’s response to climate change and other environmental crises”. He leverages his experiences of growing up in Haridwar to understand how much concern his generation displays towards climate concerns facing them. For example, he discussed how people would pollute the holy river, thinking that it would not only purify those who take a dip in it but would also cleanse itself per Hindu mythology. He also notes that those concerned about health would still drink extremely coliform bacteria-infested water. Further, he addresses the question of how the country and the world view the situation. “On one hand, there are various reports from international publications dubbing Ganga as the world’s most polluted river, on the other hand, the United Nations put Namami Gange among the world’s top ten restoration projects in 2022.”

This juxtaposition of optics shouldn’t make one feel good about the latter’s efficiency. Mr Gautam points out that the “majority of the planned projects languish in dusty files, never even started, let alone completed” and that “66.8 per cent of the drains that ended up in the Ganga were untapped or operating without any treatment capacity”. He also discusses carbon footprints. The tech-savvy generation’s choices here seem to matter the most. From choosing an earbud to streaming to having “muesli with milk”, how many sacrifices one is willing to make is perhaps the question one must ask themselves.

One of the most interesting essays is “About The Kashmir Files”, the controversial 2022 movie about the 1990 exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from Kashmir. This is where Mr Gautam’s arguments demonstrate the width of his interests, showing how art is overtly or covertly an act of persuasion. Citing George Orwell’s famous essay “All Art Is Propaganda”, he tries to dissect the culture of influence through motion pictures in which a range of nationalistic feelings are evoked. From Gadar to Roja to Dil Se .

In “Truth & Lies. Writing & Identity” he pries open the fault lines of identity politics. It’s not so much “who gets to tell a story” but who doesn’t get to tell it. It begins with a protest that was staged against Arundhati Roy’s introduction to B R Ambedkar’s seminal text Annihilation of Caste,  later published independently as The Doctor and the Saint.  Mr Gautam’s essay reminded me of a talk in an earlier edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival on cultural appropriation. Should one attempt to cancel an effort that helps provide visibility to a larger audience, or would that be considered an act of hijacking an agenda? A range of authors, incidents, and works are quoted in this essay and each drives us towards questioning this perverse desire of categorising people into “us versus them”.

Another similar essay in which identity and ideology are examined is “At Thirty, Am I Still a Liberal?” Ms Roy re-enters the narrative with her “Love Laws” in Mr Gautam’s “The Awaaragardi of Millennial Hearts”. By offering the grounds for his friend Sanjay’s failed first marriage, he tables the debate of desirability, notions of betrayal, and insecurity of a millennial male.

However, it is the chapter titled “Anti-CAA Protests and the Thing about Silence” where one’s position in society determines the immunity or vulnerability to state oppression. “Performative outrage” and “Apoliticism” are other themes that Mr Gautam’s book highlights. However, this is where he tries to balance too much, appearing “woke” as he cites the “risk capacities” of individuals to avoid being judgemental. The argument isn’t convincing, for no one is entirely safe or sacred when a war is raged against them precisely on those grounds. The essay could have been extended to an attempt to share how ideologies are getting weaponised. Barring this, Mr Gautam’s writing is crisp. His book is immensely readable. Some may say that it has come before time, but, in my view, it’s something that he may have to relook and revise as newer trends present themselves.

The reviewer is a Delhi-based writer. On Instagram/X: @writerly_life