What the media explosion hasn't managed to kill

“I know what you are doing, I am as media savvy as you,” I growl. Its insulting to my intelligence when girls think I don’t know what they are doing when I catch them staring at the insides of their bag with sudden interest or worse smiling at their crotches.  These days one cannot bear the urge to respond to a funny text. However everyone is silently texting and not jabbering loudly, sparing teachers from comparing them to ‘fish markets’ like they have done since time immemorial.

What is it like to be a teacher in the era of media explosion? Grey clouds hover over the Bangalore sky and a mild rain wets the windowpanes. Just as I cuddle further into the folds of my comforter, I am woken up by a string of beeps. Not the chiming of my alarm that I expect to hear but texts that read” Hello ma’am, do we have college today?” and other variants such as “Maaaaa’am, the road outside my house is flooded.” One kind soul throws in a “Good Morning”. N stirs in his covers, as he sees me furiously typing away, “If the government declares a holiday, it is.” An answer well known, but yet they badger thinking their 30-year-old mentor in pyjamas through some divine intervention will grant them one.

The more media savvy you are, the more accessible you are and therefore the cooler you are considered. With the death of text messaging, Whatsapp has changed the student –teacher dynamics. Classes have groups, so instead of laboriously texting every sleepy girl, I post on the group, to which they respond with beaming smileys or crying yellow faces. Now they catch me ‘online’ and clarify their doubts. Virtual tutor to the rescue.

Writing notes has now become passé. I’m either asked to mail the ppt or let them take pictures of my notes, to be posted on the group. While sitting at the library the other day, I caught one of the class nerds roaming around with an iPad. She was busy leafing through a book and taking photos. Bigger images and better resolution you see. Well, I am just happy she was visiting the library.

As exams draw closer, the Whatsapp messages become more frantic. Photos of the exam timetable are now circulated. As the clock ticks, answer papers are anxiously filled with feverish scribbles that I have to play detective to decipher.  Acronyms go on a rampage. Sry mam no time. Hv to rite ASAP.

Facebook cannot be far behind. Everyone waits for that one girl to test waters and send you a request. I quickly scan my profile, hunting for any unsavoury photos or tawdry conversation and contemplate if my dress could be a few inches longer in the display picture. For once you press ‘accept’, the floodgates open and there is no looking back. I get a sneak peak into their colourful lives, their vociferous rants and interesting alter egos, just as they do. The stalking becomes mutual.

Internet inter-connects and reconnects, especially after a class graduates. Come teacher’s day, the same Facebook wall is splattered with messages of love and fond memories, reassuring me of my love for the job. Students from various batches write in from diverse parts of the globe to say hello. Lines blur as we chat and exchange stories It’s always nice to hear the ping of an email, especially when it’s from an old student, who writes in to say that she is studying journalism from Columbia University. Strangely it invokes maternal feelings, seeing her fulfil what I couldn’t. Sentiments overload, computer crashes.

While I am revelling in this euphoria,I receive a tiny envelope by post that reads “Dear Shakti Ma’am’” in beautiful calligraphic handwriting. From Shreya it says.Shreya was one of the quietest girls in class.She sat in the left corner,made eye contact at times, and rarely smiled.  But her assignments oozed of creativity and a very rare mind. She hardly spoke in class and I barely interacted with her too.

 A little handmade card emerges and reads “ Dear Shakti Ma’am, Thank you very much for your classes. I  really miss them.”

Media be damned.This feeling is unparalleled

-Originally published in the column 'Pop Pourri' The New Indian Express, Bangalore on 26th Sept 2015.

life in the age of the selfie

Everybody has their spouse’s one best friend that they want to impress. Mine was Shravan who enjoyed mothering N. When we first met, I expected him to run his checks, to see if I complied with the background information that he had been collecting. Just as I was about to exchange a few mundane pleasantries, he remarked, “Hey Shakti you look just like your FB profile picture!” I blushed. It was the best compliment I had received. He had just aced my test.

We are the generation whose thumb eternally twiddles the phone camera and editing software post that. We want to document everything. And showcase on social media thereafter. Our motto being, let’s take a flurry of pictures, the odds are at least one of them will look good. Every time we wear a new dress it warrants a picture. Meet-ups must always end with the customary group huddle for a selfie. We also like to stage the candid shots.

It’s hard for me to compete with these gym selfies, the filmy wedding albums, party pictures that incite our FOMO, ‘the exotic vacation albums’, and certainly not the scrumptious food platters. Right now I can contest only in the ‘see -how -cute -my -baby –is’ category, and the chronic lack of sleep isn’t helping that cause either.

There comes a good day, when the sun bathes the room with perfect lighting, the hair behaves itself and the zits make a brief disappearance. I employ the perfect angle at which my cheeks appear less chubby, and flash the perfect number of teeth. Yet I have to plead my innocence with #nofilter!

I recently read a story on HP inventing a new wearable camera, which is always on to capture all our life moments. Well Google Glass is already here. But let’s face it; we aren’t leading the most exciting of lives. We never meet the cute co-passenger we have instant chemistry with. Adventure is when we get lost in the maze of our city traffic. Instead of being the ‘cool’ person that I think I am, I am now busy scrutinising the colour of my baby’s poop. Imagine, our wearable cameras are going to churn our footage more boring than an apartment lobby’s CCTV.

  At the risk of sounding old I must say that I marvel at today’s young girls’ enthusiasm and effortless posing for the camera. I had shepherded a bunch of 20 year olds on a college trip. “This is the temple where Buddha attained enlightenment,” said the tour guide. “Wow” they chimed. Out came the cameras. Inhibitions were shed, tresses were tousled up and hands were strategically placed on the hips. The girls who I had labelled as coy magically metamorphosed into pouting divas. The next one-hour rushed past in furious clicks from different angles. By then everyone had forgotten who Buddha was, including me.  

During all the marvelling I realised that I am in the process of raising one of gen –next too. I still look cock eyed in all my futile selfie attempts, not knowing where exactly to focus, but my eight-month-old daughter never misses the target. Evolution has already prepared her for the survival of the fittest!

When N and I decided to get married I squabbled (unsuccessfully) with my father over doing away with the reception. “I feel stupid, standing and clicking pictures,” I groaned. My legs throbbed with pain. “But how else will we know who came?”  My mother argued. As an afterthought the albums certainly helped given that the whole spectacle seemed like a blur. Our parents may be a generation older but we are no different, this desire to document every moment seems to have only doubled with ours. 

We will never find the sepia toned photo, partially crumpled and fading at the edges, in the pages of a book and remember the story behind it. We are owners of hard disks with gargantuan masses of pictures that will perhaps never be revisited. Here I am, desperately waiting to document my daughter’s first walk. She’s probably going to fall fat on the floor not being able to see her mother’s reassuring smile. Well, obviously it’s hidden behind the camera.

-Originally published in the column 'Pop Pourri', The New Indian Express, Bangalore, September 19th 2015

'Are we staring at our phones too much?

My husband, lets call him N is what you could call a ‘screen junkie’. It’s a deadly affliction that can damage a few grey cells, distort vision and even break up a marriage. He has this perpetual need to stare at some screen all the time; TV, a phone, a laptop, anything. A recent study concluded that the average youngster in India spends 10 hours of his day watching some screen. They were talking about N.

Its 8:oo AM .The phone buzzes signaling a flurry of incoming emails. With eyes half shut and crouched in the darkest corner of the sofa with a teacup precariously hanging down the crook of his hand, N sifts through the mails, mentally planning the day (that’s what he claims). While sitting on the pot, it’s Facebook scrolling time. In between he attends to a few Whatsapp pings. At office it’s another painful eight hours of drubbing away on the laptop, multitasking with several pages open. Back home at 6 pm, he flops on the recliner and starts playing FIFA on the Xbox, his eyes transfixed on the animated Arsenal men. And as he ‘distresses’ I sit beside him and talk to his right ear, recounting the day with a motley of news, gossip, and grievances.

 When we first moved into our apartment all the furniture were arranged against the wall, pointing at the TV, as if to say that the guests who come in should also watch the on going cricket match with minimal interruption. I suggested a conversation pit, to arrange the furniture in right angles so that we wouldn’t have to lean forward while talking or talk to each other’s side profiles. N finally gave in, but not without making some disparaging comments about womenfolk having to talk all the time instead of just chilling. Our conversations are now punctuated by sitcom laugh tracks and Arnab hollers through our dinners. Sometimes we call it a day by binge watching some television show on the laptop.  The iPad is another story. Everyone I know strongly condemns the use of it by children until they have one of their own. With parenthood the iPad transforms into this magical device that gives one some ‘me time while our child is busy learning to make cup cakes with Barbie.

Stuck at the traffic signal or waiting in a queue?  We fish out our smartphone and start reading an inane forward on a chat group or analyse our friend’s photo shopped display picture. What starts of checking one trailer on YouTube slowly cascades into a chain of random videos. Time flies by. The other day at the endoscopy Centre, while I was busy choking on the tube that was lunging into my stomach, the doctor was hell bent on giving me a tour of my insides on the TV monitor to my side.  A screen to the rescue once again. “Can you see your heart pulsating against your esophagus?” he said. My dying wish was not be a witness to own heart stop beating.

Until the smart phone happened I loved sitting in airports for hours, for the sheer people watching potential it offers- the whole gamut of human idiosyncrasies and relationships on display.  But these days I catch the young engrossed in swiping right and left on Tinder profiles much like a videogame while married souls like me kill time by checking what’s for dinner on the ’Fresh Menu’ app.

Whatever happened to good old reading and staring into empty space? Spa rituals and Suryanamaskars must make way for the more important digital detox. When I did suggest it to N the other day, he looked at me flummoxed as though I was accusing him of infidelity.

It’s unfortunate that for most of us work is on the laptop. For instance, this column isn’t going to write by itself. But have you caught up on this new Game of Thrones fan theory that is doing the rounds? Maybe I will it read now, while my brain gently warms up.

Originally published in the column 'Pop Pourri', The New Indian Express, Bangalore 29th Aug 2015

Death by love/ Reel love?

The cherubic heroine gets into the city bus without taking a second glance. The hero looks at her with surprise and remorse. The bus starts and catches speed. Our good-looking young man drops his bike in haste and makes a last minute dash for the bus. Love is all he needs he realizes. As he paces up the road panting he makes a handsome leap towards the door. He traps the heroine between his athletic arms and peers into her eyes. Catcalls, woots and shrieks reverberate the theatre. Dulquer Salman has just managed to make a thousand hearts pound with love. Mine just cringes and wants to duck for over.

This is a scene from a movie where a young and working couple, soon after a couple of coffees and a bunch of cutesy zingers decide to move in to a plush PG accommodation, replete with artistic walls and dotted with Fabindia furniture.  Predictably they tumble into love and holy matrimony thereafter. But were there scenes to show the deepening of the relationship? No. Perhaps the mundane and the triviality of everyday romance? Definitely not. The director doesn’t care to tell us what makes the couple tick, or what happens after the love butterflies in the stomach flutter away. But yes for all fluffy romance the end cure seems to be marriage he seems to say. This from a director who made the mature ‘Alaipayuthey’ is a cause for worry. “Five steps backwards!” I shout. But should I blame him? He will ask me, doesn’t art imitate life?

I inhabit a world colonized by digital natives who spend way too much time perusing though social media. I live in the era where beauty is routinely instagrammed and life is filtered to perfection. We crave for instant pings and faster Internet. It’s a generation that places enormous importance on the visual aesthetic and will therefore lap up any movie as long as it looks visually stunning. Perfect locales, exuberant cinematography and great looking actors. We will pack the theatre to the rafters. Superficiality be damned.

Personally, I don’t remember when I took the monumental step from being an incurable romantic to one who cannot watch a romantic movie without wanting to sigh every half an hour or hold my head in agony. I furiously skip the ‘Romedy’ channel on TV. I deplore romance novels. Valentine’s Day brings out my worst. But this from a girl who cried while watching ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’, and worse ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.’  Not my proudest moment, but its been a learning curve. Hence there is hope. Through my long road to salvation, I have learnt that most women suffer from a delusion, a misconstrued idea of love thanks to these picture perfect rom coms. Women have high expectations out of love, just as men have about women, and their bodies.

But all one is needs is good old reality to ruin life. A good lashing from a heartbreak, a couple of failed relationships and evolution occurs.

Have I become the cynic, the one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing? Truth is painful, but it sets you free. You soon realize that no guy isn’t ever risking boarding a running bus for you. No one ever waits in the pouring rain just to hear you mouth ‘I love you’. Guys who write songs for you are seldom found and ones who remember very moment they spent with you do not exist.

Movies preach love. But they never tell you that love comes in all shapes and sizes. Some times distorted, and most of the time oblivious to the naked eye or guarded heart. Or that the best kind of love is finding a person who you can talk to for hours and be comfortable sharing silence. They never tell you that romance is not just a phantom kiss or a stolen glance. It’s feeling alone yet not lonely. Mostly, it’s becoming a nicer person.

Now that old age has set in and wisdom has bloomed, let us bring on the melancholy ones, the dark, somber movies that have layers to analyse and make one sob.

-Originally published in the column 'Pop Pourri', The New Indian Express, Bangalore August 27th 2015

Why so Serious ?

It was an idle Tuesday afternoon. A minor banter with a friend on Whatsapp snowballed into a furious row. I was almost teary eyed and had just composed a long essay presenting my side of the argument and posted it on the chat window. I glanced furtively as the two grey ticks turned teal. He was ‘typing.’  “LOL”. He went off line. My tears turned into new shade of rage. I pinged him incessantly determined to squeeze out a longer and more satisfying reply.   He did get back but he retorted, “It’s after all a Whatsapp fight, why are you taking it so seriously?”

Whatsapp conversations. Likes on Facebook. Zingers on Twitter. Are we supposed to take them to heart? Or do we dismiss them as casual gestures that are meant to be seen for that instance and forgotten the next?

The landmark ruling by the Supreme Court of USA saw an eruption of translucent rainbow profile pictures on Facebook through out India. While most saw it an expression of their solidarity with the judgment and as a positive step towards gender equality, a faction of the population dubbed it as yet another ‘cool’ fad that people blindly resorted to without understanding the real ramifications or realising that our country is grappling with bigger issues. When our India is far from such verdicts, why celebrate  ‘Americanism ‘and American popular culture they seemed to say.  It is true that much before USA, 29 countries other countries had already legalised same sex marriage!

 I am happy sitting on the fence. What’s the big deal? Yes people changed their profile pictures to say it’s a positive step for mankind. Yes it was for just a day. Yes I definitely think its mob mentality and most of them don’t have clue about what they are doing.  But should we squabble about it so much?  Most acts on social media are fleeting and transient. They last till the next post on ‘Game of Thrones’ becomes viral or our friend posts yet another model like selfie from yet another exotic location. Public memory is inversely proportional to Internet traffic.  We do now inhabit a world colonised by digital natives, where people believe in the adage “if its not on Facebook it doesn’t exist” and when beauty is routinely instagrammed and filtered to perfection, the biggest compliment I’ve got was when a friend remarked that I looked just like my Facebook profile picture!

Deepika Padukone made a super stylised video with flowing hair and a stoic demeanour hoping she would be seen as the next bra burning feminist scion. Instead she was vociferously attacked on all media platforms. Every line was scrutinised, dissected and deplored.  People spent hours debating the video’s pseudo feminism and elitist portrayal. But I ask, are the arguments on social media worth our time? Yes we all emerge as hotheaded and opinionated bastions of righteousness. We refuse to take crap. But how many of us truly assimilate what we witness on social media and take it to the supposed next logical level; constructive behaviour perhaps? No, we like to play out a mini tamasha akin to ‘The Newshour’, where everyone agrees to disagree and nothing concrete ever emerges from the debate.  We sleep over it .We move on to something else that catches our fancy.

When neither of us walk the talk, why talk so much? As someone very wise pointed out, on Facebook of course, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and a social media over reaction.

- Originally published in the column 'Pop Pourri',  The New Indian Express, Bangalore- 26th Aug 2015