Time Capsule

It was the 28th of February, and I made the mistake of opening an email of my Facebook memories.

14 years ago: Class 10 Science tuition farewell party

13 years ago : Class 11 Farewell 

12 years ago : Class 12 Farewell 

11 years ago : A singing competition during a college fest

7 years ago : My sister’s marriage

I believe it was around 5 years ago when I forgot about Facebook’s existence and stopped posting. 

6 years ago : Last updated profile picture

I first created a Facebook account when I was in class 10. It was the new big thing, at least for my generation. I looked forward to the time of day when I could come back from my tuitions, sit in front of my clunky PC, switch on the CPU for it to make a noise similar to what a car from 1900 in my imagination would, and log into my Facebook account.

Even though social media platforms have become such a big part of our existence now (I literally have some Reel or Short playing all the time in the background, which is concerning to say the least), I don’t really look forward to them. They just are. Somewhere around. Making some noise I tune in and out of. And I don’t mean it in the sense of ‘our phones and the internet are actually creating more distance between us, you know?’. I think we all know that by now. 

What I am referring to is the element of curiosity and the desire to share our lives for what they really were. There was a time, right in the beginning, when we posted 200 photos under an album titled ‘Randomzzz’ not to get followers but just to share what we are up to.

Now I look at my Instagram feed and I barely get a post from someone I know - it's just a mood board of carefully crafted aesthetics and vibes, or memes of how we are all screwed but you know, funny. It’s just our collective misery or impossible highs. Nothing in between, no space for normal. All our brains are by now, fried from dopamine boarding, so there is nothing left but empty husks hoping for one last ounce of excitement, one last hit. The need for connection has been replaced with stimulation to keep your eyes open, or a way to prove how you’re faring better than it might appear, or just a way to dissociate.

I do admit there is a tendency to romanticise a past that did or did not exist, that maybe it was always this way and I just didn’t realise it because I was too young to notice. I do understand the inclination to look at the past with rose colored glasses.

But looking at all those memories from the time I was 15 was nostalgic to say the least. It was the short and sweet period of time when I could share my own story growing up without the baggage of the external world yet. As I was going through my memories, it was like looking at your childhood photos (for those of us who still have them in a physical form) and just seeing how you evolved over time, without careful selection or filters. Just existing - experiencing a different era at different stages of your life. It’s your own time capsule. 

When I got the ‘14 years ago’ notification, I was lifted from the sofa of my room back into the uncomfortable chair of a home I no longer lived in, in front of a computer table with a white, embroidered, stained-with-pens-over-the-years, cloth. Suddenly I was 15 again, excited to post a song lyric, begrudgingly play Farmville with my sister and ‘poke’ a friend for the 17th consecutive day. The ‘11 years ago’ notification took me back to the last day of my school when I was still taking my photos with a Digital camera and not a phone, when I wore a saree for the first time and my feet were killing me and I realised the pains of womanhood that would now never leave me, when I got a photo taken in the parking lot of my school which I kept as my Gmail account picture for at least 4 more years, when I was waiting for my Board exam results. That 15 year old or 18 year old me had no idea how my relationship with technology, just like my Facebook status, would grow beyond complicated. 

How I would click lesser and lesser pictures every year and any pictures I clicked would come with the ‘is this one worth posting’ subtext. 

How I would increasingly exist in the future memory of the present instead of the present itself. 

Perhaps part of it is our increasingly complex relationship with technology and social media and part of it is just growing pains, so the memories of our formative years mean much more to us than the more adult memories. Hence why I felt a lot more going through the versions from 7 years ago than I did for my Instagram feed of the past 6 years. 

As we grow up, the milestones get fewer and farther, and when they do happen the joy might not be as universal like how graduation or college fests might be, and not all of them might have felt ‘Instagrammable’. They might have been in the quiet of your room, when you did not receive a pat on the back from a group that is undergoing the same stage of life as you. Maybe you received a phone call or a message here and there without an extravagant celebration. Maybe you didn't want to ruin the moment by picking up your phone and clicking a photo - and instead wanted to just be in the present. 

What previously used to be a clearly defined Moment might just be your life with good and bad phases, the lows a little easier to bear and the highs not as universal anymore. 

Irrespective of how I choose to (or not) express these moments now, I did feel a sense of overwhelm when I went through my Facebook memories, all on the same day (or at least posted on the same day), years apart. We often don’t know at the time how representative these moments might be of the stage of life we are in. Looking at them all together felt like a cool way to experience a good 7-8 years of my life in roughly that many minutes, watching friends come and leave in my comments section, timeline and life, the games I played and then phased out, the extreme normalcy of it and not just the celebrations - essentially a good chunk of my experience of growing up. 

It was like watching a different person growing up in seconds but still being that person at the same time. And for that, I felt grateful for having experienced a pretty decent life. 

I do wonder if it is possible for the generation growing up today to not be exposed to the excess display of social media, and the answer is probably not. But just like our previous generations could not have imagined the adolescence we actually experienced, we probably cannot do the same either. They will find their own way to create memories and create their own time capsule in a way that will feel special to them when they look back years later.

Perhaps on another 28th February, years later, they find themselves sitting on a special chair in a home they no longer live in either, going through their life again.