Tag: jatin sharma

Categories
Overdose

The monkey and the cell phone

Jatin Sharma writes on the phone-picture trend that makes us tell the world ‘I was there’ even during a tragedy.

As a child, I heard my mother use this phrase a million times: “Bandar ke haath mein astara.” I always used to wonder how this line could apply in real life. How could someone be compared to a monkey, and how could a little astara in a monkey’s hand seem so wrong? My questions were answered 20 years later, more specifically, with the unfortunate demise of Balasaheb Thackeray.

I’m not debating the most controversial man of our political times. Certain ‘comics’ have joked about him after his death, pundits have spoken about his divisive politics, the layman has spoken about how his entertainment channels were blacked out. Balasaheb’s  funeral became the biggest news in the country and everyone in India was glued to their television sets.

But that is not my point. My point is about how indisciplined and insensitive we have become. I assume that everyone who came to Shivaji park came there because they wanted to pay their last respects to the ekta tiger. But I was amused and amazed by the insensitivity that we have started showing as a culture. In the aforementioned phrase, the astara is the cellphone we carry with us everywhere.

Most of those who attended the funeral were more interested in capturing the moment on their phone cameras, rather than just experiencing it live, quietly. Whenever a news camera passed through crowd, the sight of flashlights and video shooting by every person was evident of how the new age astara has turned everything into a big tamasha. Whether it’s a birthday party or a funeral, people have stopped segregating things in their minds. All they want is one big photo to show ‘I was there.’

Of course, a lot of people would want a picture as a memoir of their leader. But it’s not just about this particular incident, it’s about cell phones as a whole. People are more interesting in shooting videos than cherishing or taking note of their historic presence there. All they think about is capturing their daily lives in a few megapixels, without attaching importance to them being there in person. The things that they could have seen with their very eyes are being looked at through cameras to show the world later.

Their presence at the very spot is reduced to nothing, because they are watching that particular event through a glass that throws some electrons on a cathode ray tube or lights up some pixels.

And what is more stupid is when people take the very cell phones and click and video-shoot themselves at such events and smile and caption the pics as ‘At Balasaheb’s funeral, what great fun it was’.

When I die, my last wish would be that no one should carry a cell phone to my funeral – I would take it very personally if somebody was mocking me after I was dead. I would even haunt them later for doing it. But for now, let me just keep aside this astara and get on with celebrating my life in person.

Jatin Sharma is a media professional who doesn’t want to grow up, because if he grows up he will be like everybody else.

(Picture courtesy www.visualphotos.com)

Categories
Overdose

Happy Diwali in text and spirit

How about ditching that SMS you were about to send and actually calling your friends and relatives to wish them?
By Jatin Sharma

This Diwali, I want to be helpful to you guys. So I’m going to start this piece with a question that everyone must be thinking of by now: How do I wish everyone ‘Happy Diwali’?

For starters, go to your phone’s message field. Type ‘Happy Diwali’, select ‘Send all’ and click. Congratulations, you have managed to wish everyone that is in your phone book!

But have you actually managed to wish someone, or have you just completed a formality? The formality of being in touch, of wishing them on Diwali. Do you really think that that person has taken note of your wishes? Do you really think that person felt wanted this Diwali?

My father once told me, that the more modes of communication in the future, the less people will communicate with each other. Listening to him at that time, I confess, I told my father that he was wrong. Technology would just make life simpler, you could connect with anyone and everyone at any given time. I asked my father, “You must have lost so many of your friends because of less modes of communication. I am in touch with all my friends through SMS and Orkut.” My father said, “It’s just that communication, my son, is not about fake emotions and text. It’s about feeling a touch, listening to a voice, looking at an expression. But I guess I am too old!”

Every time that I receive a forwarded text message now, I remember this conversation. It reminds me of him being so right. We had this conversation when mobile phones used to come in TV remote control sizes, when outgoing call rates were Rs 18 and incoming rates were Rs 16. It was the onset of the generation that was going to take SMS packs and wish everyone in the future.

Though text messages are made of words, somehow I feel they don’t reflect the same emotion. Special days, like festivals, are about the excitement we see around us. It’s more about a shrill voice screaming ‘Happy Diwali’ at us, not a redundant text message that has been sent to millions like us. It’s about coming together, not texting together.

Celebrate this Diwali by calling up your friends and relatives. Make them feel important. Make yourself feel important about having so many people to love in your life. Create a world that is more expressive, not one where a few words that can be deleted by the press of a button on a gadget. Make this Diwali a memorable one.

And I am sorry, but I can wish all of you only in text for now. Wish you a HAPPY DIWALI 🙂

Jatin Sharma, 26, is a media professional who doesn’t want to grow up, because he feels that if he grows up, he will be like everybody else.

 (Picture courtesy www.acne-tv.com)

Categories
Overdose

Relation ships that sail

Jatin Sharma ponders on the frailty of modern-day relationships, and says that love is the heart’s responsibility, not the mind’s.

“I am constantly in love, it’s only that my lover changes,” said Lord Byron, a poet, who was criticised constantly for his conduct in public, and termed as a Casanova in the 19th century. He was considered as a stigma on the British literary society for his flirtatious behaviour.

Who knew that come the 21st century, and most of us will find Lord Byron in us. The more you look around, the more you will see that people are happy changing their relationships like they change their clothes. And that’s because the heart has been replaced  by the mind.

I remember the old movies and I’d fall in love with the love playing out on the screen because it was so pure. Two individuals liked each other and could do anything to be with each other. It was an unspoken love – touching the girl’s hand was an achievement for the boy, their kiss would be depicted by a bee sitting on a flower, flashes of lightning always made them draw closer, albeit accidentally. They wanted to be with each other, but they always exercised caution.  That was a time when love was constant and no lover changed. Lovers died or lovers sacrificed, but love never died.

These days, love dies a natural death every day like the beggar on the street who has not been fed for days. Love has become the last priority in a relationship. Lovers are chosen with ‘fastest fingers first’ being played. And now the smarter we have become, we have also segregated love into several categories: Rebound Love, Time pass Love, Lovable for two months Love, Lovable till I stay in Mumbai Love, Love who I love because he/she is loved by others, Love that is not love but Chalta Hai Love.

‘Chalta hai’ is killing love. We are so confused and so lonely nowadays that we would like things to be chalta hai. We don’t love our lovers, we actually appoint them. Whether she is good looking, whether she dresses well, whether she is considered hot by my friends, whether she is rich, whether she is ‘happening’ – all these questions and more eclipse our very own decision to fall in love.

Plus chalta hai has made that simple kiss a simpler one. We now have such things as a ‘friendly smooch’, a ‘one-day smooch’, a ‘drunk smooch’, and others.

So it is safe to say that relationships are not a big deal anymore. We are so conveniently adding so many words to the dictionary of love, that finding the real meaning is becoming difficult in this book.

Also, we live in an age of ample options. And this realisation of ample options has just made us indecisive and egoistic. We can’t adjust nowadays. We fight and we leave each other. Earlier , if a TV didn’t work properly, people would call someone to repair it, now they just replace it. And we are just reflecting our times and not repairing our relationships, because we feel there are lot of options available. But in the midst of all the options, we forget that for once, we will have to make a choice, rather than rejoicing about all the options we still have. For once we would need to think of ‘us’ and not I. The moment we fall in love and think ‘us’, it’s sorted.

For once, we all need to understand that rather than falling in love, we have to rise in love. Not think so much about it, feel by our heart and not our mind. Because if it’s a heart’s KRA (Key Responsibility Area) to like or not like someone; your mind will make the wrong decisions most of the time.

Jatin Sharma, 26, works in the media and says he doesn’t want to grow up, because if he grows up, he will become like everybody else.

Categories
Guest writer

Hate. Tweet. Rinse. Repeat.

A Mumbaikar writes about the malaise that grips us all – of having a contrary, angry opinion, whatever the situation.
by Jatin Sharma

India is rising but the people in India are lying still. All of us are intoxicated by social networking sites. Any event or incident that becomes news, pressurises each one of us to update our Facebook statuses or tweets. And this pressure has given an impetus to a generation that is like a headless chicken walking on the roads.

Take the case of Arvind Kejriwal. In the entire fracas after he declared his political intentions, what became evident was that we all have started to hate common logic. There is no doubt that Arvind Kejriwal single-handedly took charge to expose different politicians; but there is also ample proof to suggest that people have completely developed a puzzling mindset – that of hating everything that is happening around them.

The moment Kejriwal entered politics by forming a political party, people started talking about how all the dharnas and all the fasts he undertook were under the pretext of gaining political mileage.

But I have a few questions for these ‘thinkers’:

Aren’t the politicians of the country supposed to do the same?

Aren’t the leaders of this country supposed to question and expose the ill-doing of other leaders?

And wouldn’t we like a leader who could make others fear their wrongdoings?

So what did he do wrong by attempting to expose corruption with evidence? Whether he has a political ambition or not is irrelevant. For once, corrupt politicians are feeling the heat. For once, they are being questioned. When was the last time in your memory that you saw this happen in the political sphere?

And another thing: what did we do when he stood as a common man with Anna Hazare? Supported him with a few tweets and a few status updates, and counted how many retweets and likes we got!

I suppose Arvind Kejriwal also understands that to bring about any change, he will need to change his strategy. Without political power, he will just end up as one of those several voices that are muted by the powerful. Whatever his intention may be, or whatever the name of the poster boy is, Kejriwal or something else, for once India should stand up for the greater good.

We can find good leaders only when we can become good followers.  We can become good followers only when we act as per a situation and not according to what people want us to think.

 Jatin Sharma 26, works in the media and doesn’t want to grow up, because he thinks that growing up means becoming like everyone else.

 (Picture courtesy www.indiatvnews.com)

Exit mobile version