The whole process of mainstreaming the alternative has a political
as well as economic current running underneath it, but I wonder about the aura
that the alternatives lose when they become the mainstream.
In my university there are many alternative paths through the
bushes that cut the ways towards various places shorter. There used to be many
more a couple of years ago. Yesterday, while taking a walk through a road,
which used to be an alternative once and has now been concreted to provide
"better" convenience, I realized that it does not retain its romantic
yet scary essence anymore. I started lingering upon the thought that how the
alternative loses its purpose when it is mainstreamed. It begins as a
revolution to destabilize the establishment or just as an option to diversify
the usual and then it gets stabilized itself, it becomes the usual, the
establishment.
