What sucks the most about being 26
A story of a sad reality and a mirror that shows beautiful untruths.
A story of a sad reality and a mirror that shows beautiful untruths.
Have a look at these pictures (and their captions) -
They all look great and appetising, don’t they?
The food looks bright, picture-perfect, like something you could grab off the screen of your phone and eat straight away.
Well, let me tell you the story behind the pictures.
All of them were clicked during my Bangalore-Goa trip a few days back. I had met up with several friends and we had clicked these photographs together.
Let me tell you a sad truth.
Great food pictures usually have sad stories behind them.
Stories of hungry people waiting for 20 minutes and 100 tries to get the perfect picture, of watching the hot food get cold in front of their eyes, of inhaling the aroma and feeling it settle like a stone at the bottom of your empty stomach, and not being allowed to touch something you paid for to eat, not to merely look at.
Stories of going to extreme lengths to place your platter at unlikely locations so the photograph comes out nice, of awkward body angles and tangled limbs so the camera can be placed at the perfect place, of two people struggling to arrange their food to make it look like it was a solo trip.
(Seriously, who has a bowl of fruits and a glass of wine while bathing in the tub?)
What’s something that sucks about being my age?
Well, I’m 26, and almost everyone I meet is obsessed about social media, about trying to portray the best version of themselves online, about showing that nobody has a life as cool as theirs.
They obsess so much about perfect pictures, that they don’t care their friend is hungry. As long as they get a good photograph, everything else is forgiven.
After all, at 26, living is not important.
Making sure the world knows how extravagantly you live is.