If there is a way to feel old without being old, I think I’ve just found it. The songs they play on the air are so lifeless, lacking soul. It’s music, for sure, but it’s become lacklustre, trite. Has everything gone downhill since then? It sure seems to be. I can’t look at the paper with a straight face anymore in the morning, nor can I get on board with the latest fad, only to forget it tomorrow like what I had for luncheon yesterday at the canteen. Everything looks so cynical to my mind, and so jaded to my eyes, the foregone conclusion that the world has moved too far whilst leaving me behind. The things my parents and grandparents told me about the world sure seemed brighter than what I originally thought. That’s because after tasting history and culture, I find the things of the modern age to have fallen from grace, by comparison, a shrivelled shadow of the former days. Here I pine for the days I never knew, reliving the days I never experienced, wishing I could go back to a time that never was.

Chehara Vitaran