Digital fault lines, real consequences

Stephen Graham's Adolescence on Netflix is a gripping watch. Its four episodes are like frames set in worlds that are totally different—and yet they complete the picture.

- VANITA KOHLI-KHANDEKAR

Stephen Graham's Adolescence on Netflix is a gripping watch. Its four episodes are like frames set in worlds that are totally different—and yet they complete the picture. The first looks at the arrest of Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old murder suspect in the UK. The second takes you to his school where the girl he is accused of murdering turns out to be one of his online tormentors. The third tackles Jamie's psychological evaluation. The last one captures what having a kid in jail has done to the family. The show doesn't cast anyone as the bad guy. It just takes you through a set of circumstances created by social media influences and what it has done to a normal family. The parents' guileless guilt, their belief that their child was safe in his room with his computer hits you in the gut. Not surprisingly, the show has been trending globally. Adolescence is also an analogy for our world today—full of ideological, religious, economic, sociological or geographical ghettos—with no one ghetto seemingly connected to another.

In the past, there were always books, films, a sport, or an event that gave us a sense of a common experience. In the '80s and '90s, it was Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984, followed seven years later by that of her son, Rajiv Gandhi. In 1997, Princess Diana's fatal accident stands out in memory. There was the sheer ebullience of a liberalising country, a sense that we were building India together.