Ramayana, Gen Z and the Right to Be Impatient

I recently watched the trailer for Ramayana.

Ranbir Kapoor appeared strangely lifeless. The visual effects looked expensive but soulless. The colours possessed a genuine absence of taste. Everything was enormous, polished and oddly hollow.

The internet reacted predictably. From the depths of Reddit subcultures to the more haughty film critics, everyone seemed disappointed. Much of the criticism was justified.

Black Panther, a film celebrated by critics and audiences, contained visual effects that occasionally looked like an unfinished video game. Many Marvel films had weak villains, predictable writing, generic landscapes and actors staring intensely at tennis balls.

We noticed these flaws. We simply did not care. Marvel was cool.

It was the zeitgeist. Watching the latest film felt like participating in a global event. References became memes, memes became conversations, and conversations made the films feel culturally important. Weak performances were forgiven. Questionable visual effects were overlooked. Formulaic writing was described as “fun.”

The flaws were always present. Our tolerance for them was different.

Now Marvel is uncool. It is corporate, exhausting and slightly embarrassing. The dramatic entrance, the weightless battle, the sarcastic joke inserted immediately after an emotional scene, all of it feels painful. What once appeared spectacular now resembles content produced by an unusually well-funded algorithm.

Ramayana seems to belong to that earlier Marvel era. Unfortunately, it has arrived after the party has ended.

This raises the perennial question: who decides?

Who possesses the mysterious power to guide millions of people towards a particular shoe, film, restaurant, colour or political attitude?

We like to believe that taste is personal. We imagine ourselves independently discovering the perfect sneakers, the hidden cafe, the underrated watch and the obscure foreign film that everyone else will appreciate six months later.

Unfortunately, most of us are not one in a krillion.

We follow trends far more obediently than we would like to admit, while remaining deeply convinced of our individuality. And I am fairly certain that Indians do not decide where those trends go next.

I lived in the United States for eight years and spent my final two years in Los Angeles, the geographical cradle of hype. I watched trends appear, get manufactured, acquire moral importance and then disappear.

It is not entirely accidental. There are entire industries devoted to figuring out what we want, what we might want next and how to sell it to us. After a while, supposedly individual tastes begin to look remarkably similar.

Individuality has become priceless.

Or perhaps price-less, because genuine individual thought is difficult to package and sell.

Taste Travels Faster Than Things

For urban Indians who spend too much time online, the world can feel strangely out of sync.

We watch the same films, follow the same fashion cycles and participate in the same online arguments as people in New York, London or Seoul. But then you put your phone away and step outside.

The pothole is still there.

This is, admittedly, a privileged frustration. People like me can consume the best of global culture on a phone while living in cities that cannot reliably provide a footpath.

Sometimes the delay is five years. Sometimes it is five days.

The difference depends on whether the trend is made of bits or atoms.

Instagram reels, Reddit opinions, workplace attitudes, political slogans and aesthetic preferences can cross the planet in seconds. A teenager in Mumbai, Manila or Mexico City can watch the same video, hear the same joke and develop the same opinion before breakfast.

Shoes must be manufactured, shipped and stocked. Restaurants must be financed and constructed. Movies must be written, cast, shot, edited and rendered.

The internet has nearly globalized our tastes, but the physical world cannot possibly change at the same speed.

This obviously matters for more than bad film trailers.

And this may be stretching the analogy, but I wonder if the same gap explains some of the impatience we associate with Gen Z.

A Global Feed and a Local Reality

Young people today grow up inside a global feed while continuing to live inside local institutions.

They see efficient public transport, clean streets, beautiful campuses, responsive governments and functioning public spaces on their phones. They watch people elsewhere demand accountability from employers, politicians and universities. They absorb new attitudes towards hierarchy, work, gender, authority and personal freedom almost in real time.

Then they look up from their screens.

The pothole remains.

The train is late. The government website does not work. The university administration behaves like a colonial bureaucracy. The employer expects gratitude for basic dignity. The local politician has been promising the same footpath since before they were born.

Older generations sometimes interpret this frustration as entitlement.

Why are these children so impatient? Why can they not adjust? Why do they expect everything immediately?

The Gen Z employee who annoys every Indian uncle with boundaries, bluntness and an unwillingness to worship the boss did not invent that attitude alone. The fit checks, “get ready with me” videos, therapy language, aggressive podcasts and workplace rebellions all travel quickly.

So does the love for practical effects, real sets and films that do not resemble two actors performing inside a green box.

But the makers of Ramayana cannot move at the speed of a TikTok trend. A movie of this scale may spend years in development. By the time it is released, the visual language that inspired it may already be dead.

The Right to Be Impatient

Perhaps living abroad changed my standards. Perhaps social media has damaged my ability to accept gradual progress. Perhaps I have become the annoying returning Indian who spends every conversation explaining how efficiently pedestrian crossings work in another country.

There is always a danger in confusing criticism with sophistication.

It is easy to return from abroad, complain about everything and mistake irritation for insight. India is not Los Angeles, nor should it aspire to become a cheaper copy of it. Better societies are not built merely by importing their cafés, clothes, corporate vocabulary or visual trends.

But rejecting imitation does not require celebrating mediocrity as authenticity.

No national pride should force us to admire bad visual effects. No religious devotion should require us to praise a lifeless Ramayana. No appeal to Indian conditions should turn “chalta hai” into a permanent philosophy.

Obviously, complaining about a bad Ramayana trailer is not the same thing as demanding a functional government. But I think both frustrations begin in the same place: people have seen evidence that things can be better. Once that happens, patience begins to look less like maturity and more like acceptance.

Previous generations were repeatedly told to wait. Development would arrive eventually. Institutions would improve gradually. Indian cinema would compete globally one day. The road would be repaired after the monsoon. The file would move after lunch.

Gen Z seems less willing to accept indefinite postponement. Sometimes that impatience is ridiculous. Sometimes it is exactly what is needed to stop preventable failure from becoming normal.

Until the physical world catches up, though, the frustration will remain.

Our minds will travel at the speed of light.

Our cities, institutions and films will move at the speed of government paperwork.