Deep seated memories - # infinite

Oscar Wilde in “The importance of being earnest” wrote – Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us. How true. December 30^th, around eleven o clock in the night while I was returning to my room, the moderately cool breeze teleported me to the same time three years back. The year was 2008 and I was in Bangalore.

A newly joined job in a remote corner of the city and the end of the year was a perfect recipe to find an escapade. And I did find an escapade in the then recently released movie – Ghajini. The much awaited Aamir Khan starrer was a must watch and a plan was hatched with Pravat, his young uncle and his friend. We met at Rex theatre. It was cold December evening and the crowd was thin. We had dinner at the moderately priced place of Brigade road, American Corner (if my memory srves me right with the name). Well if you are expecting any special thing to happen, I am sorry to disappoint you.

We enjoyed the movie.  It was close to 1 a.m when we retuned back to Pravat’s place, almost 18 kilometers away. The empty road, the speeding old bike and the cold breeze. Teeth clattering and humming ‘behka, main behka...’ we came back.

Today three years later, I messaged Pravat if he remembered the incident. He had forgotten. Then he called and then him being the meticulous person that he is, recalled about the bike, the ‘Big Bazaar’ which we crossed while we were discussing how cold it was and so on and so forth.

But we both agreed on one issue. The issue of time flying past at a rapid speed. It doesn’t feel if it were three years back. Those were tough days in more than one way. The memories formed in those days have found a deep seat in the brain. Time flying quickly is again an issue of perception. For some its longer to bear and for some it is like a few months.

The mere date, the cool breeze was enough to take me back to three precise years. The memories that are written in pages of a thick invisible book in the brain are brought to the fore when the conducive environment arrives. Very less of the text gets deleted. It is all stacked up there. Both good and bad.

It is amazing how the memory works. Like the Scottish novelist James Matthew Barrie wrote “ God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December”.

News Media – Veena Maliks and Sunny Leones

Two central functions of news media are credible information giving and being critical-investigative-adversarial. The first function is quite simple to understand and if the second function is to be delivered in an oft used word it would be ‘watchdog’. There however exists another paradigm of ‘pastime’ function of media. Also called as whiling away the time pleasantly, which the French called the ‘pleasure principle’, this aspect of news media is certainly proving to be a stirring a hornets’ nest. It is only when the pastime function of media overshadows and obliterate the two central functions does it become an issue to be pondered upon and condemned. And the present day news media is just doing that.

The case in point would be two ladies who have become household names, courtesy the ‘footage’ they have received in the past few days. One of them had a primary qualification to fame by being a former girlfriend of a match-fixing tainted Pakistani cricketer, and the other a non resident Indian who happens to be an actress of exotic movies in the US. Veena Malik and Sunny Leone. Both were roped in by the Big Boss, a show run by Endemol, who get their fair share of TRP’s by attracting such controversial names. Should a TV channel resort to such gimmicks to grab eyeballs is open for another debate.

The story however doesn’t end at that. It begins right there for the news media and the entertainment media. In the rat race of media where channels sprout like mushrooms, all trying to edge past others, be it in the cyberspace or on the television sets, it boils down to who grabs how many eyeballs. And it is at that point that titillating takes over ethics. Advertorial revenues are directly proportional to TRP’s and number of clicks online. That TRP in itself is not a fool proof method is another issue, but more about it later. And nothing sells better than controversy, especially of the fairer kinds.

Another factor that compounds the issue is lack of regulation. Regulation is one word bound to create hue and cry with regard to freedom of media, but as Justice Markandey Katju, president of Press Council of India, recently put it – “no freedom is absolute”. It is responsibility which gives freedom its sweet taste. His comments though unfair yet true regarding the level of aptitude that media professionals possess can in a distant fashion be linked with this issue. Half the graduates of journalism wouldn’t even know who Justice Katju is, forget about his scathing comments. A testimony to that would be to forget for a moment about the content concerning the above mentioned ladies, the crass language used in reports further aim at objectification and sensationalism.

Believers of absolute freedom retort with a view that no one is forcing upon these ladies on the audience, whatever be their credentials, and one may choose either to watch or refrain from watching them or news related to them. But when leading newspapers and news channels (leading here would mean subscribers and viewership respectively) dedicate enough of space and time to news related to either concerning posing for a magazine, offers of movies, their relationship status and preferences, their dressing style or the lack of it, and any and many such trivia, de facto thrusting the ‘news’ on audience of a large spectrum results. And that is unwarranted.

The second claim of a hypocritical society is often raised who would endorse Veena Maliks and Sunny Leones but would not acknowledge their presence in the mainstream. Even though it would qualify for hypocrisy, for matters of private choice it could as well be so. Would claimants of broad mindset agree with authority that they have been hypocritical, or call it espousing personal choice over popular beliefs, ever? There is absolutely no discomfort about the choice of lifestyle a Veena Malik or a Sunny Leone has adopted. They have all rights to it. It is about the undesirable infiltration of their lifestyles into the TV and its impact on society – children and adults alike which is a matter of concern.

As Justice Katju put it, entertainment by news media is essential but only to a minor extent. It is imperative that in a growing society, which has moved from impoverishment to prosperity in few decades, the role of media, often dubbed as the fourth estate is paramount. Social responsibility overweighs the need of cheap entertainment. Intellectual development, critical thinking, credible information giving, watchdog, should take the front seat. Not the Veena Maliks and Sunny Leones.

Philosophy of Miniaturization

Our computers have more or less shrunk into objects that can be held in hand. That it was inconceivable a few decades back is a fact. The device in hand not only makes calls, plays music and movies but brings any information to the fore at the touch of a button. All said and done it is as of now the concept of miniaturization, where our world has been brought to our palms. Hold on, not only has the computer shrunken, shrunken has many other things today. Relations, attention span, nature, space, they have all been miniaturized.

The population of world recently reached seven billion is right, but the same increase applies to the available space on earth, or the natural resource it has is not true. So when there are more people and less resource, what is the way out? Miniaturize! Imagine the space desktop computers would occupy as compared to laptops or tablets (for people of Stone Age – if laptop is notebook, tablet is a sheet of paper)! The same applies to the cordless phone type mobile phones of yesteryears.

The gramophones gave way to cassettes, both audio and video, and cassettes to compact discs, they to DVD and now DVD to Blue Ray discs. Moral of the story – Miniaturization at its best! It will be a bit difficult for a kid of today to calculate the number of video cassettes that would equal the movies in a DVD (for the simple reason being he/she has in all likelihood not seen what a video cassette is!). Now let me not talk about data storage floppy disk (anyone remembers the 5.1 inch ones?) and flash drives (floppy vs flash!!).

Material goods of everyday use like telephone and televisions have all been miniaturized beyond imagination and are on the verge of the next revolution of being invisible (or see through as we may better call it). Our books have shrunk and are largely finding it in hand held gadgets. That large families have shrunk is not a recent trend, but small car for the small nuclear family is a smart and pragmatic marketing concept.

The more buying power we attain the smaller the goods become that we buy. The other day I went o buy a Rs. 5 Munch chocolate and it had miniaturized to the point of rapacious laughter. At the end of the day we will get used to it. The concept of small and cosy has been hard sold to us and projected as the dream of millions.

Sadly enough we as humans have also miniaturized. Our attention span has miniaturized, with us not being able to help but switch channels at the drop of the hat, checking mobile phones every minute or fidgeting with anything around. Our bonding with people have miniaturized, we see people as objects increasingly, only analysing their worth in terms of return of investment (our ‘marketing friends’ are so familiar with the term). The forthcoming generations’ faith in God has miniaturized, their respect for the elder, the institutions have also miniaturized.

While some miniaturizations have changed the world and our personal lives for good, other miniaturizations affecting the core of us human beings have had a contrary effect. And if anything amongst all the miniaturization is getting inflated, it is our egos, corruption, earthquakes, terrorism, unrest, prices, tsunamis, diseases, distances between hearts, and yes last but definitely not the least inflation itself.

(Acknowledgement : Idea of the article is a discussion with Bijay Kumar Barik and Snigdha Mishra)