Everyone is talking about Gen Z.
On LinkedIn, on Instagram, in every new fashion campaign, every brand strategy — it's Gen Z, Gen Z, Gen Z. And honestly? I get it. I admire them deeply. They are fearless. They say no without guilt. They put themselves first without apology. They have redefined what it means to be bold and I genuinely look up to that generation.
But today, I want to talk about someone else.
I want to talk about the millennials between 30 and 35 — the ones nobody is really talking about. The ones who got lost somewhere in their 20s and are only now beginning to find themselves. The most underrated generation in the room.
We Were Too Sanskari to Live and Too Aware Not to Regret It
If you are a millennial from a middle-class Indian family, you know exactly what I mean.
In our 20s, family was everything. Parents came first, always. Saying no — to a relative, to a stranger, sometimes even to ourselves — felt impossible. We were so busy being good daughters, good employees, good everything-to-everyone that we forgot to ask what we actually wanted.
We didn't travel. Not really. When holidays came, we went home — back to our parents, back to the familiar, back to being someone's child instead of our own person. The concept of solo travel, of booking a trip with strangers, of staying two nights away from home? Unthinkable. Not because we didn't want to. But because we could already hear our mother's voice: main so nahi paaungi, teri chinta hogi. And sometimes it wasn't even an assumption — it was simply true.
We didn't always choose what we liked. We chose what made sense. The job near home. The clothes our family would approve of. The life that fit inside someone else's comfort zone.
The Heartbreak, the Marriages, the Silence
Some of us carried major heartbreaks into our late 20s and came out the other side so exhausted that when our parents said it's time, we simply nodded. Not because we had found the right person — but because we had run out of the energy to wait for them.
We married at the right time, not the right moment. And many of us are still living with the consequences of that difference.
The ones who fought, who said I will marry only when I find the right person, not just when the calendar says so — they were rare. And often, they did it alone, without support, carrying the weight of family disappointment like a second job.
Quiet, Hardworking and Afraid to Take Up Space
Millennials in this bracket are not lazy. They are some of the most hardworking people I know. But they are also deeply afraid — afraid to lose the job that gives them their only sense of independence, afraid to speak up, afraid to be seen.
Introversion was not always a personality trait for us. Sometimes it was survival. When you grow up in an environment where your opinions are not always welcomed, you learn to stay quiet. You learn to shrink.
And then one day, somewhere around 30, something shifts.
The Awakening Nobody Talks About
Here is what I am seeing now and it gives me so much hope.
The millennials between 30 and 35 are quietly waking up. They are taking their stand — not loudly, not dramatically, but firmly. They are leaving bad marriages on their own terms. They are building businesses with whatever little they have. They are travelling for the first time. They are wearing what they like. They are learning, unlearning and beginning again.
They are doing it without a safety net because they refuse to be a burden on anyone. That's the millennial way — figure it out yourself, quietly, with dignity.
And yes — I am one of them.
This Is for You
If you are between 30 and 35 and you feel like you missed something in your 20s — you didn't miss your life. You were just delayed, not denied.
Your 30s are not too late. They might actually be your beginning.
To every underconfident girl who is slowly, quietly rising — I see you. I am you. And I built Mokti for you.
Because Mokti means freedom. And we deserve ours — even if it comes a little later than planned.
— Surbhi Priya, Founder, Mokti