<img style="float: left;" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2023/feb/Rahul-op_e.jpg" alt="Rahul Da Cunha" width="200" height="69" />Natasha aka Nats, my narcissistic 19-year-old neighbour, popped by&hellip; her nonchalant swagger, indicated she was generationally happy (meaning her joy wasn&rsquo;t personal, but peer related).
Nats carried with her that air of cocky overconfidence as if the Evolution of man really began in the early 2000s.
&ldquo;Rahul bruh&hellip; wattup, wattup fam?&rdquo; she cooed smugly (&ldquo;Fam&rdquo; is short for family, dear reader).
&ldquo;Natasha, you seem in a surprisingly good mood this morning.&rdquo;
&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that mean, dude. (Eye roll) I&rsquo;ve been on Cloud 9 this whole last week.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Why are you so chipper?&rdquo;
&ldquo;&rsquo;Us young ladies have taken &lsquo;success&rsquo; to another level,&rdquo; she said, proudly.
&ldquo;Us&hellip; who&rsquo;s &lsquo;us&rsquo;?&rdquo;, I enquired.
&ldquo;Us 19-year-olds&hellip; Ask me why&hellip; ask me how?&rdquo;&nbsp;
&ldquo;Why and how have you 19-year-olds taken success to the next level?&rdquo;
&ldquo;Hrmmpph, never thought you&rsquo;d ask. First things first&hellip; our girls&hellip; our under-19 girls have won the inaugural World Cup cricket tournament, man&hellip; woohoo&hellip;they just cruised through the tournament and crushed the Brits in the finals. These are girls mostly from small towns in India&mdash;Hooghly-Chinsurah, Balitkuri in Basnagar, Siliguri, villages in Hyderabad, Madhya Pradesh&mdash;many of them have overcome some real hardships to get where they have. This is a victory for all of us Gen Z&rsquo;ers. We live vicariously through them, man I would have loved to see the expression on my dad&rsquo;s face, when we won.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Care to explain?&rdquo;
&ldquo;Papa is the ultimate chauvinist, doesn&rsquo;t like women to succeed in what he assumes are male bastions, like sports. My own sister, Namrata, was a sensational state-level badminton player for Punjab. Gopi Chand saw her at a local tournament, invited her to train at his academy in Hyderabad, but my monster papa put his foot down.
Ughhhhhhh, then got her married, imagine if Sania Mirza&rsquo;s family had stopped her from playing tennis. I&rsquo;m so happy for these girls&mdash;many have gone beyond rigid family restrictions, fought patriarchy, battled the regressive beliefs that relegates us to &lsquo;your place is in the kitchen&rsquo;, this is serious &lsquo;nari shakti&rsquo; ! I tell you bruh, any cricket official tries what that wrestling federation guy did&hellip; these girls won&rsquo;t just stage a dharna, they&rsquo;ll just shove their cricket bats where the sun doesn&rsquo;t shine!&rdquo;
&ldquo;Okay, I got this rather graphic picture.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Talking about graphics&hellip; my first graphic novel is ready!&rsquo; I took a breath.
&ldquo;A graphic novel! What&rsquo;s it about?&rdquo;
&ldquo;Ok, let&rsquo;s begin at the beginning&mdash;so I saw the BBC documentary, dude.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Which BBC Docu? Oh you mean, the BBC documentary&hellip; the one about&mdash;but it&rsquo;s banned, Natasha!&rdquo;
&lsquo;That&rsquo;s right, Rahul bruh. But this is the internet age, you know me, right. You know us, under 19-ers, tell us something is banned or it&rsquo;s out of bounds, we&rsquo;ll be even more determined to get it, and we did, we saw. It was &lsquo;awes&rsquo;,&rdquo; she smiled rebelliously.
By now Nats&rsquo; eyes had glazed over&hellip; the good mood was replaced by a black mist of intent.
&ldquo;What&rsquo;s your graphic novel about?&rdquo; I persisted.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s called&mdash;The Adventures of N.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s N?&rdquo;
&ldquo;N&hellip; she&rsquo;s my female superhero, the first ever Indian female superhero.&rdquo;
&ldquo;What does she do? Your superheroine &lsquo;N&rsquo;?&rdquo;
&ldquo;Dude, she&rsquo;s a superhero&hellip; there&rsquo;s no such thing as a superheroine!&rdquo; (Eye roll) She&rsquo;s a Gen Z warrior princess&hellip; a kind of 19-year-old Joan of Arc meets Rani of Jhansi meets the Black Widow.&rdquo;
&ldquo;And what does she do?&rdquo; Natasha smiled.
&ldquo;Man, what does she not do&hellip; but long story short, she goes after bigotry, she goes after bad men with their biases, she tames bullies, and beasts and barbarians&hellip; so each story&hellip; she takes on a new baddie that befalls us here in India&hellip; bastards that beat their wives&hellip; bhakts that feel they own the land.
But she&rsquo;s 19 so she has modern superpowers, she doesn&rsquo;t need to fly rooftop to rooftop, she has AR (Augmented Reality), she has AI (Artificial Intelligence), she has Metaverse at her disposal&hellip; she&rsquo;s an AI Avenger, she&rsquo;s a hard-nosed hacker, she&rsquo;s a cyber crime crusader, she&rsquo;s a virtual vigilante&hellip; dude, she&rsquo;s something else,&nbsp; my N.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Sounds amazing&rdquo;
&ldquo;She is! Okay dude&hellip; gotta bounce.&rdquo;
And with that, Natasha aka Nats aka N disappeared into the night.
Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com
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“Natasha, you seem in a surprisingly good mood this morning.”

Here’s Natasha aka Nats aka N

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Here’s Natasha aka Nats aka N

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