ONION GENERATION

‘’Why aren’t you cooking delicious meals these days?’’, my master’s son asked.

‘’ Why aren’t you going to the market to buy some onions for storage, since the price is inflating? All the time you have been creative in making fool out of me with your excuses.’’

My master’s son being enraged uses ‘cuss word’ because they say it’s cool to use such words in response to such black marketing and food insecurity but hesitates to plough the field. ‘Lazy thighs and taste-craving tongue’.

Ha… ha...He reminds me of my generation, our generation, our ‘onion generation’. ‘Onion generation’ gets its name as an abstract to our generation who is living up layer by layer. Just like how delicious it makes a food(world) with its voice, ideas, and dream and humanity and becomes pungent on storing for longer periods of time with toxicity, growing militaries, widening gap between rich and poor, energy demand and conversion of globalism to protectionism and so on. They want to spend money and live lavish lives today but postpone appreciating people and being too loved ones for tomorrow. In one word they are admirers of ‘Hail tomorrow’. Something is happening, they keep it for tomorrow, earn money risking health and tomorrow want to spend money to maintain deteriorated health and so on.

Just like my price value fluctuation, my value goes up while teaching my older parents English and Social media then drops down when I ask them for money. As my cultivation is dependent on my master’s interest whether they want ‘instant onion’ or ‘quality organic onion’, my masters are also puppets of powerful nations and national politicians. That is the reason why ‘onions’ are imported and youths are willing to get exported propagated by herd mentality. Once new harmful bacteria tried to invade me, I asked my neighbor onions but my voice started shrinking until these bacteria knocked on their home. One minister visited fields for regular check-ups in well-cultivated onion fields and wrote ‘everything is perfect.’ The irony is that, after some random voices about the situation, they held a conference on the other side of the world and the problem existed on one side. Why didn’t we complain earlier? Because many of us had no time to think instead of solving hunger issues, paying rents, paying school fees, and so on as rich gives money to rich and poor keeps on becoming poor. Well, I am also the one who doesn't take any headache from politics and exploitation unless I am directly affected by these microbes. Instead of active participation, like everyone does I love the ‘blame game’.

My master was preparing a new dish and I was so excited, I loved my master but now I hate him as he didn’t prepare. I am someone who is easily excited and easily demotivated. My parents start sharing their old struggle story, but time has changed right. I dream of cars but no roads, I dream of a mansion but not about the space, wants to breathe fresh air but hesitates plantation, want instant success and fame but a bit lazy on hard work. I want everything instant, be it using shortcuts because that is the best. In our onion society, rampant bigotry, sexism, racism do exist. For example, dark, discolored onions are not sold much so our masters color us to be visually attractive because no one cares idiosyncrasy, do they? My masters have been planting genetically engineered onions and my older onion grandparents are worried in fear of the disappearance of ancient values, originality, and scriptures but I don’t care. One day, I clicked my picture on Instagram but I got only a few likes, on top of that I have so fewer numbers of followers as compared to someone less pretty than me. I have started feeling unworthy since numbers are the only way to judge my potential. We don’t go online, we live online. Money is my goal. Every onion household has either a Youtuber, an Instagrammer, or a Tik toker. Though we all look alike we are divided by onions themselves in different names and classes. My parents complain we are unable to foster meaningful relationships. I am filled with drugs and I have started getting resistance to these pesticides, I think I am growing less tolerant making me prone to death and low energy. Our older generation and our future generation are looking for ‘onions’ basically because they want us to be equally acceptable to vegetables and fast foods.

and opportunists.

As I already mentioned, we live in layers. Our protective thin covering makes me feel like I am ‘living in a bubble.’ The scales are what we display to the world and social media, we are not open about being racist or sexist to be adopted but we pretend to be open-minded, ‘feminism’ is left far behind, women are finding these words fancy, impulsive followers and materialistic competitive. We love spending more time on technology than nature, we prefer short term pleasure, artificial beauty requirements, and cosmetics. 

However, you know what we have got a voice to raise for oppression, erosion of civil rights and liberties, systemic endemic corruption by government and departments. We are exchanging our cultures, gender stereotypes are vanishing day by day. As a matter of truth, our generation is the first generation to focus on the individual, allowing for personal growth and development. The sad part is the generation gap is so widened every year.

In the core, we all know that our generation is falling into the trap of mirage and we need a guiding torch to utilize our strengths away from ‘onion generation’.

 A generation of wise.