Learn. Unlearn. Manage.
Content, whether good or bad, must aim to reach a wide range of audiences. This could sound unfair but think about it: a good content spreads on the merit of being good enough whereas a bad content spreads on the merit of its badness. Both play a key role in reminding the society where they stand in terms of taste. But the most ironic bit about us is we tend to enjoy good content as much as bad content. We smile with good content and laugh at bad content. For what they are worth, both entertain us. Goes without saying this analysis doesn’t apply to our loved ones or the content they create naturally. There is a reason why your dad’s old jokes are so bad that they sound good.
Speaking of engagement, doesn’t it bother you that Osama bin Laden didn’t get the credit he deserved (while he was alive and even after his death)? His status as arguably the first global vlogger is undermined by his other ‘achievements’. Here was a soft-spoken fellow who loved football (Arsenal was apparently his favourite club), completed engineering (unlike me), was super-wealthy (Saudi oil, anyone?), got crazy ideas about jihad (height of personal transformation) and caused mayhem in several continents (his impact on future jihad recruits isn’t studied much; similar to kids picking up tennis racquet because of Federer). And despite all these, he created fine resolution videos hiding in the deepest of caves and released them internationally via Al-Jazeera (a news enterprise that criticizes everything except Qatar). There were times when he made videos on a weekly as well as a monthly basis, depending on the urgency of his ‘peaceful’ messages. Wonder how he got good internet connection in those godforsaken crevices while I struggle with Vodafone in the capital city!
With the ongoing protests against CAA/NRC, we are learning a lot about our youth. It’s not that they don’t care. Just that they didn’t care to show how much. With the crowd bulging peacefully in metropolitans like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, the naysayers should take notes. For one, these young folks are practising the very power of democracy. Two, we are not a fascist state (yet). Three, the first two points assert that a democracy like ours nurtures by the active involvement of those who’d rather not stand in line to vote. It might be cool on social media to beckon Mussolini’s fascism and Hitler’s Nazism to seek resemblances in our story but we are, thankfully, far from a decline — both moral and structural — of those levels. If anything, a positive outcome of these protests is that our youth is not only understanding the importance of being politically aware but also acknowledging the downside of being privileged enough to ignore politics. An encouraging start indeed.
As a kid, there was a phase (there were many such phases) when we (kids in our chawl) wanted to be a pulis (police) and catch chor (thieves). In our minds, the one in uniform was always the good guy and those he puts behind bars were the bad guys. It was only after growing up a little and reading about the country we live in, it became obvious that the distinctions aren’t always clear. The good guy can be a bad guy in uniform too for various reasons. Personal. Political. Predatory. Etc. Today, if you scroll through your Twitter timeline, you’ll see several videos floating around, featuring folks in uniform. They are either being brutal to the public or being brutalized by the public. As is the case with people suffering from ideological differences, they stick to their truth. The Right is busy flaming only those videos where the mob is beating the shit out of police force while the Left is pushing the narrative around police overreach. Either way, we are supposed to forget that these people we call police are one of us and they too hope to go home at the end of the day.
Every time I read about the intense battle for #1 YouTube channel (based on the number of subscribers), I become convinced that there are some battles worth following. Imagine having to deal with the uneasy stress of churning out cool videos so consistently that you don’t lose your subscribers. I can’t. On the other end of the queue, I am least bothered by unfollowers whether on Twitter, Instagram or Medium. I can afford this because I’ve designed my profile (on each platform) under the pretext of aloofness. Of course, I want others to read my work but at the same time, I feel no obligation to engage critically. Although I accept that dialogues enhance creativity, I don’t have the energy to keep fueling rhetoric. My mantra is simple: post and fuck off. It keeps me safe from public conversations while allowing me time to read, understand and learn more. Conversely, the PewDiePies of the world are rocking a different boat altogether. They cast the stone of engagement before anything else. For me, expression gains higher priority while engagement is more of an accident.
The past is filled with errors as well as opportunities to get better. What we did wrong earlier doesn’t need to be repeated. Calling something a norm doesn’t make it normal. Change is upon us and we must change. From the values we build our society on to the codes we embed our children with, nothing — absolutely nothing — is beyond reproach. Criticism is what keeps the change relevant. Otherwise, we stagnate and attract decay. On this line, it’s fair for a woman to expect her family (hers as well spousal) to not confine her to the kitchen. She might have aspirations of her own and she has only one life to put herself to test. Kids are shared responsibility and placing the crown of onus on one person is bitterly wrong. At least in today’s world. Yes, things were different in the old days where a father strived under the sun and the mother laboured inside the house. However, in that setting, of that era, the blame shouldn’t fall on the father for being sexist or the mother for enabling patriarchy. In all fairness, it’s either the selfish kid or the rigid system that ought to go under scrutiny.
When you reach an age where you see more and feel less, it’s a warning. Maybe this is the stage where you should reboot your thought process and rattle your belief system. New facts, old truisms. Nobody is innocent anymore and everybody looks out for their own interests. We like to think of ourselves as the messiahs of humanity but deep inside, we miserably fall short on many fronts. Perhaps the antidote to our shortfall lies in experimenting more and thus, learning much more. What if that’s when the real change might dawn? After all, who doesn’t want to change the world? We all want change but we aren’t sure yet about ‘what’ or ‘when’ — those questions tire us out. Justifiably. The answer, by a long shot, lies in changing ourselves first. And once that is accomplished — which is never — we can think of changing the world. And being naive enough to believe that we can change the world is a worthy start to changing the world.
When you tell me a story and I listen to it, what is going on? Let’s list out some factors: you, me, our common timeline, your story, my interpretation of your story, your intentions, my lessons… what else? I guess we are missing out a huge factor of this exchange here: arrogance. For some reason, we think our stories are worth retelling. While growing up, somebody told us that there are millions of stories waiting to be told and we believed that invisible person. So, we started building relationships (family and friends) so as to keep the channel of storytelling open. What’s a story without a listener? However, less arrogance and more trust in these transactions exist. It become monumentally arrogant when a writer writes a book and assumes that his story is worth telling to absolute strangers he’s never going to meet.
Expect me to shock you with random question. One of my favourites is “what would you like your last meal to be?” and it usually elicits sentimental responses, with the worst being “maa ke haath ka khaana”. Worst because why would you want your mother prepare your last meal? How inconsiderate is that? OK, it was a tricky question anyway. Nobody in their right frame of mind would enjoy their ‘last meal’ knowing very well that it’s their last meal. But this doesn’t stop me from constantly googling the last meal of famous historic characters like Jesus, Ashoka, Buddha, Akbar, etc. And while I am at it, I also google how tall people are. Turns out Napoleon wasn’t really short by the French standards of his days and Guru Hargobind Sahib was reportedly over 7 feet tall.
The engine of a good team follows the tracks of a better manager. In my entire professional life, this is the only part where I’ve headed a team. Even though it’s a very tiny unit, it counts as I’ve learnt a great deal from managing the members. Also, we trickle as a leader and take forward what we learned from our managers — the nice as well as the not-so-nice principles. In my view, Charles Carson (of the fictional Downton Abbey) is an ideal manager: he is loyal, fair, strict, industrious, unapologetic, wise, articulate and most importantly, kind. Somebody worth aspiring to be like.
