Twitter’s fleeting lack of purpose
How did you feel when you watched videos of people gathering en masse at a famous square? Did you find their placards relatable? Did you…
How did you feel when you watched videos of people gathering en masse at a famous square? Did you find their placards relatable? Did you feel solidarity? Or did you get irritated by their insouciance? What were your initial reactions? I focus on initial reactions because they reveal a lot about us. Assuming you’ve never taken part in a protest — let alone a protest that turned violent — it’s important for you to put yourself in the shoes of those who are risking themselves out on the streets. Lest we forget the pandemic is still upon us and these individuals are dragging themselves out of their privilegedness and displaying their anger at full volume. Breathing is the most potent form of protest and they show it by living in the moment. Most of them haven’t themselves experienced unpleasantness at the hand of the system but they are empathetic towards those who have. If you can’t relate to their collective anger, it’s not your fault though. If you choose to degrade their anger, it will be your fault. When a group of people, belonging to a common thread, believe that they are being exploited by a reigning system, only they can dictate the grammar of their protest. Yes, in an ideal world, all protests are supposed to be peaceful. Since we have no danger of living in an ideal world anytime soon, we mustn’t impose unattainable standards on the aggrieved party. In the same breath, we must remember the social contract in place: the power enjoyed by the law enforcement officers is bestowed upon them by the public. Any abuse, major or minor, leaves a lasting dent on the future.
To answer the questions I asked you earlier, when I was watching those videos pouring out of American cities, all I could think of was — “Who is the leader of this movement?”
The past century has taught us that without a leader, there is no direction. If we desire grass-root level changes, we must have reasonable leaders at the forefront. You may find a hundred holes in Gandhi’s legacy but his leadership skills were second to none. He understood India — even before it acquired its present form — far better than most of us in 2020. And he could do so because he grasped his role; a leader’s primal responsibility is to envision. The same is true for the likes of King, Mandela and Vaclav. They led their people through the loops knowing very well where they were headed. The ongoing protests might be slated against racism but in reality, it’s against police brutality. Except for the few truly developed countries in the world, the rest exhibit police brutality at one stage or the other. So, overall, the ongoing movement makes you wonder, what concrete changes will it bring? When was the last time a leaderless movement ever translated to something worthwhile? What happened to Occupy Wall Street? Closer home, what happened to so many street movements that sprouted in our metropolitan cities? The answer is the standard response to “what’s up?”: not much. I can only hope that all the anger at display actually pushes the belated reforms. Failing which, this window of opportunity will go to waste. It’s alright for the youth in a non-affected country to delude themselves with a black DP on their social media profiles but it’s not alright for the aggrieved party to continue suffering.
I wake up at 5.30am in the morning when it’s already quite bright. We have long summer days in Gurgaon, with twilight extending till 7.30pm. After freshening up a bit, I water the plants in our balcony and some that are inside the house. Following which, I fill the water bowl in the balcony as well as the one on our terrace and then I take a bucket full of water to fill three containers placed in the empty lot in our neighbourhood under the Ashoka tree. This entire routine is over within 20-25 minutes. However, during these few minutes, I turn into the SI unit of fulfillment. A one-man army project to save plants and birds from thirst. Everything goes downhill from there.
Does it happen to you that you re-watch a movie after a long gap only to realize that you hardly remember anything about it? Happened to me last week with The Barbarian Invasions (2003). Apart from a few vague scenes here and there, I couldn’t recollect anything at all. Maybe I was really dumb back then. Anyway, this time around, I understood all the cultural references and the Canadian-Frenchness of the movie didn’t alienate me at all. Even the so-called universal intellectualism portrayed in the movie was at peace with my awareness. Which is why I couldn’t help but chuckle at a dialogue near the end of the film. In an intense dinnertime discussion about good-natured knowledge, one of the characters claims that there was no sign of intelligence amongst our species between the era of Tacitus in Rome and Dante in Florencia. That’s a long gap of about 12 centuries. Although it’s a mere cinematic exercise in exaggeration, it’s also symptomatic of Western arrogance as well as ignorance. To believe that no scientific progress happened during the above mentioned timeline shows you how insular the West can be. One look at oriental studies and you’ll find brilliant works in science and mathematics — the very studies that breathed life into Arabic enlightenment and later laid the foundation for Renaissance — tumbling out of Indian and Chinese closets. Sadly, it’s 2020, at the peak of the Information Age, and we are still dealing with such deliberate omissions. Perhaps I should revisit this subject in 15-20 years.
After spending 12 summers on Twitter, I’ve understood that Twitter’s prime responsibility is to help us expose each other’s hypocrisy. That’s it. It might be a terrific place for consumption of instant news — available in many more flavours than instant coffee — but it’s not the ideal platform for discussion. People log in with the sole objective of feeling better about themselves and in this ceaseless pursuit, they enjoy bringing others down. Basic tribalism upgrading to screenshot warfare. Darwin couldn’t have possibly imagined his theory of evolution in this context. Doubling the character limit from 140 to 280 hardly changed anything. Shimmering in our well of insignificance, we let narcissism take the crown. Seldom do you come across a balanced conversation between two people who actually know what they are talking about. More often than not, every tweet is either a cry for attention or for grandstanding. And this applies to a movie star with 5 million followers as well as to somebody with 321 followers. Which is, in my opinion, the greatest leveler of Twitter. About 95% of all those signed up here have less than 100 followers and despite its microcosmic nature, Twitter projects a bigger persona. When a popular tweet manages to hit 100,000 RTs, you must consider the stat that there are thousands and thousands of towns in India with a population greater than that.
If you are a fan of Urdu language, you have to be a fan of Urdu poetry and if you are a fan of Urdu poetry, you have to be a fan of Mirza Ghalib. Always expect a great poet to see things his fellowmen can’t, with one eye stuck on the past and another fixated on the future. Explains why there is a strong fragrance of nostalgia in his verses, a longing for the dear yesterday; but at the same time, he casts a shadow of uncertainty on the future without being downright hopeless. His trolling of Sir Syed is a stuff of legend because it was rooted in practicality. Pretence wasn’t his strongest trait. This happened at a time when Ghalib used to get a hereditary pension of 62 rupees and 50 paise per month from the British. In his own words, he called himself a namak-khwar-e-sarkar-e-angrez. It’s incredible how through his poetry, he highlighted the shame of decline while not leaving a chance to criticize the British for their atrocities.
Politicians tend to inspire schadenfreude whether you are living in a functional democracy or not. They are just like you and me except when they aren’t. The more successful ones hold the key to change but rarely stick it in. If the problems are (already) solved, what are they for? Existential threat. In India, it’s an accepted rule that the status quo should be in the elected officials’ favour. To their good fortune, the naked dance of democracy ensures that the damage is permanent while the perpetrators are temporary. Amazingly enough, there are hardly any stories of natural vengeance from our post-independence polity. In contrast, there are several fascinating examples from the west. French President Felix Fauré apparently died getting a blowjob from his mistress. What a way to go! If that isn’t comical enough, Australian prime minister Harold Holt went for a swim today and never came back. To this day, there are conspiracy theories floating in the sea about his weird disappearance. Yes, we had a PM who drank his urine but then, he lived up to the ripe old age of 99.
Life is full of surprises, no? No. History is. It’s sole purpose is to shock us and make us feel small about our inadequate knowledge. To give you a case study, would you believe that Buddhism played a major role in the the spread of Islam? As of today, it’d be difficult to find compatibility between these two organized religions — Buddhism was the world’s first to organize itself — but in the eight century, they linked up somehow. This historic event happened in the Battle of Talas in modern-day Kyrgyzstan. Abbasid Caliphate was storming towards the east and was up against the Tang dynasty in China. At this critical juncture, the Tibetan army sided with the Muslims. One theory suggests that the Tibetans were following the Mandala principle: you help the underdog today for you will be an underdog tomorrow. Karma. In the end, the Chinese forces were destroyed, thus establishing Islam in central Asia. What’s also interesting about this episode is how the surrendering Chinese soldiers renounced their Taoist faith in lieu for staying alive under their new rulers.
There are many things I can stand — which includes a desi queue — no, it’s not the same as a phoren queue — but induced amnesia isn’t one of them. I lose my peace of mind when others resort to short term memory loss to hide their prejudice. The way one can look at this behaviour can be holistic: humans do what they do without internalizing the whole picture. It’s only when you point it out that people notice. Fair enough. But what can explain the reductive outlook endorsed by our country’s critics-in-chief? A glaring example being Ashish Nandy when he hoped that India doesn’t win the 2015 ICC World Cup because according to his sociological expertise, it will create negative passion in our citizens. Logic went missing that day and is yet to return. Similarly, I don’t understand those who enjoy dissing Chetan Bhagat today — his prose could be fodder for criticism but he single-handedly made a lot of non-readers call themselves readers today — when his work marks the “literary” debut for a lot of them. Lastly, it’s a spectacle to watch the veterans of Twitter and Instagram pretend like they don’t know what Orkut’s testimonials meant to them once upon a time.
Personally, I am averse to the art of argument. Not because I am afraid of confrontation but because I generally don’t find my match. People in my circle, to me, appear underprepared. This is not my pride talking. Just expressing my objective take on this topic.
However, here are some of the tips you should keep in mind while debating:
Never get personal. Low blow is a sign of weakness.
Stick to your point as well as your opponent’s. Don’t digress.
Say only what you know is for a fact. Learn to attribute sources.
Listen carefully and speak boldly. To fight better, keep ears and heart open.
Bad peroration is like finding eggshells in shakshuka. Final punch counts.