Have you ever felt as if the past is repeating itself too rapidly? Well, that’s twentytwenty for you.

This year, without a doubt, has had its fair share of world transforming events: from an almost occurrence of WWIII, to a deadly pandemic, a global movement of racial justice, climate change bushfires, and the worst of them all-Yummy by Justin Bieber.

Let’s take a look at some of the most important (and surreal) events which encapsulate what 2020 was all about:

World War III: 

“I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

 This specific saying of Einstein gestures towards the annihilation WWIII would have brought and in 2020, of all years, this could have been a possibility. To elaborate, China and India have been in a standoff over Ladakh, a Himalayan region, since the month of June. Both these nations leveled accusations at each other of intrusion across the Line of Control which separated the Chinese-controlled territory from the Indian-controlled territory. If that weren’t enough, WW3 hysteria reached a peak after the assassination of Irani General Qasem Soleimani by the Trump administration. Maybe, if these events had escalated, a possible war with nuclear weapons would have taken place and in relevance to Einstein’s prediction, the fourth world war truly would have been based on the use of sticks and stones. If anything, 2020 gave us a glimpse of how fragile our current socio-political order really is. 

COVID-19:

Well then, time to address the elephant in the room. 

Honestly, I would personally like to send anyone who evil-eyed this year to their death bed. The ultimate destructor of 2020 was COVID-19. All the major events planned this year, quite literally went to hell. My heart goes out to the Batch of 2020; we had our hopes and dreams shattered after COVID eradicated any and all chances of us getting a farewell or a welcome. Maybe this god awful year would not have ended the way it had initiated if the people in our country did not resort to extravagant six hundred people weddings, declare the coronavirus as a myth, and of course, if they followed all the required SOPs. Honestly, how ignorant can humans be to disregard a virus which has led about millions of people around the globe to their graves. It seems as if they have taken the acronym YOLO, way too literally. An immense amount of gratitude for GenZ though; their offensive memes, dark humour, loopholes for Zoom classes, and obsession over Among Us made this year not as extremely awful as our decaying social order was striving for. I don’t know who should be feared more, GenZ or the coronavirus? Both seem like equally authoritative competitors with varying themes: death and life. 

Black Lives Matter Movement: 

GenZ is capable of becoming anything they want to be. For them, the limit is far beyond the sky. Major issues like gender equality, race, and sexuality have always been at the forefront for them. Similarly, the Black Lives Matter Movement was initiated after the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man who died on the 25th of May after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by the knee of a white police officer. This enraged the people of America and a war was waged against racism. The BLM protests peaked on the 6th of June, when half a million people came out in nearly 550 places across the United States. Racial discrimination has been a pressing matter which still plagues the world. However, even though it is far from eradicated, the BLM movement is proof that Gen-Z refuses to stay silent on such matters. Humanity is endangered but not for long.

CAIEs 2020:

Oh, and how can we forget Cambridges’ indecisiveness? Shoutout to our homies who threatened our chances of having a stable future by extending the fate of our examinations. No amount of Ghalib shairi can emphasize the sorrow we felt upon receiving our expected grades on August 11, 2020. As a result of this unfair grading process, protests broke out around the globe which resulted in students getting the option of choosing either predicted grades, issued by the school or expected grades by Cambridge. Now honestly, the Class of 2020 will die with this saying on their headstones: “apko tou muft mein grades milein hein”. Cambridge successfully juggled our futures without any remorse and for that, we will never again underestimate their authority.

The Twitter Heist:

On the 15th of July, an unusual event occurred in which a 17 year old went on a scamming spree which I would like to call an “Internet Robbery”. This teen hacked into accounts of prominent celebrities like Kanye West and Bill Gates; even the former US President Barack Obama and President Elect Joe Biden were not spared! The 17 year old allegedly used the Twitter accounts of prominent figures into making people believe that it is them. This was followed by requests for money via Bitcoin with the assurance that twice the amount given will be sent back to the senders. The teen was able to generate more than US $100,000 in one day before Twitter became aware of the hack and shut it down. What seemed off about the hack was that Donald Trump’s account and accounts of the Republicans were unharmed, giving another excuse to conspiracists to come up with different theories regarding the hacking spree.  

Donald Trump:

Moving on to one of the most despised individuals on Earth, the ex president of the United States: Donald Trump. This man downplayed COVID by featuring large events which mostly consisted of maskless crowds of people who suffocated together to greet him. Honestly, if I had a dollar for everytime Trump appeared in public without a mask, God knows I would earn more dollars than Zoom did this year. Clearly, this backfired on him when he tested positive. Now, this situation was not only unprecedented but also deeply ironic, as the virus Trump underestimated now threatened to upend the remaining thirty two days of his campaign. Regardless, the US is now officially trash-trump-free. 

To be fair, I cannot sum up all the occurences of this traumatic year into anything less than a history book which consists of at least four twenty pages and initiates with a few words from Rupi Kaur: “You survived this year – But at what cost”; trust me,  there’s a lot of identifiable shade here.
A majority of 2020 revolved around COVID because of which economies were K.O-ed (knocked out, for the boomers reading this), education became a joke, and wearing masks and sunglasses to Zoom meetings became a trend. Honestly, this year has been one hell of a decade and unless a vaccine is found: 2021 is the New 2020.

Fatima Javaid
TLC Writer