Book Excerpts

Being Stoned, Shamed, Depressed in the Covid Context | EXTRACT

It’s a strange time for anyone to be alive, and even more so if you’re a teen. That’s what makes Jyotsna Mohan Bhargava’s Stoned, Shamed, Depressed an important harbinger of change. The book chronicles the confused journey of Indian teens to adulthood – along a road that is full of temptation, where boundaries are easily blurred, and where the lure of easy adventure, often in the virtual world, can unleash events that have repercussions for years to come. Read the epilogue from this eye-opener to understand the Covid impact on the younger generation.

EPILOGUE

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, people understandably let it weigh them down. The walls of confinement that came closing in brought our fast-paced lives to a standstill. There was also the fear of losing a dear one, of saying goodbye to a life of normalcy. We scampered trying to keep our jobs intact and our fitness levels up.

School life will not be the same for many months to come even once regular classes resume, and the young ones may finally appreciate the value of open spaces now that they can no longer take them for granted. Having hidden behind the anonymous walls of cyberspace, they are now yearning for an actual playground. The digital world was never a substitute for human touch, even if the last few years played this out differently.

But for some children, their loneliness is likely to intensify. After the initial newness of home-schooling and online classes, it became merely another dull routine. The homework remained unfinished on the tablet nearby. All the extra screen time made them edgy. They got headaches and were easily distracted. Some craved a physical book instead of yet another download. Many, finally, wanted to meet a friend in the park.

Did the physical isolation push our children deeper into the comforts of a smartphone?

With this over-reliance on gadgets now, checks and balances have never been more crucial. Monitoring where our children’s tapping fingers take them is important. Addiction to gaming, anonymous role-playing, revenge porn, sadfishing … all this is even more tempting when time seems to move slower.

Even before the pandemic, some children were emotionally vulnerable. Mental health is the elephant in the room. During the pandemic, we need to understand how these children are internalizing their anxiety. Drugs and vaping did not stop during the lockdown. It is not just the adults, but our collective human journey has taken a different trajectory. How the parents and their children both stack up in a crisis defines us.

However, Covid-19 being a situational crisis does not take away from our underlying concerns. Challenges may look different today, yet the essence remains the same. Change is a constant, not embracing it has been at the core of our struggles.

Gender battles at their level are only getting magnified, yet we prefer not to warn our children about sexual harassment in workplaces. Instead, we let them figure it out. Perhaps one of the biggest revelations in this book has been to debunk as myth the ‘girls locker room’. It exists. The girls are aggressive, homophobic and as ready to corner glory − infamous or otherwise − as the boys. They know that leaks are almost 100 per cent, yet living in the moment, they cannot seem to stop themselves.

Most of these actions are poignant pleas for help. I hope this book shows families the way to engage. It is the only way forward.

During an online session about teenagers and their lives today that I moderated, an eighteen-year-old spoke about how rampant vaping was in schools. This led to a flurry of comments from parents saying that they had no idea. Parents who asked me the subject of my book have almost immediately clamped down on hearing issues like substance abuse and sexual bullying.

Is this also a sense of entitlement that allows us to continue in a comfort zone believing this doesn’t happen around us? To say our children are resilient is default mechanism. Exposed, they are nothing but fragile.

There may not be a better time to get our children back into our offline embrace. During the lockdown, nature grabbed some of its lost beauty back and showed us how truly magnificent our habitat could be if we just slowed down.

What, then, is stopping us?

To read more, pre-order your copy of Stoned, Shamed, Depressed here! 

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