You can run...

All nightmares and all dreams can be shut down, can be run away from, except two. The first is the eye - the self - and the second is the media, the latter being the reflection of the former as seen in a hall of twisted mirrors. About the former, I would be delighted to write volumes but not today. It is the capacity of the latter to chase and influence one that scares me more. The very thought that my children will be growing up in a world where 11-year olds commit suicide because their parents didn’t let them participate in reality dance shows, where politicians are ready to fast to death for a vote bank without as much as a second thought about the larger picture of national integrity, where Slumdog wins 8 Oscars, where the Nobel is given for serving beer to world leaders, where Kashif Memon becomes a sensation in the name of Bollywood and where children who fell down pits become celebrities for a day, is spine-chilling. The list of idiosyncrasies is endless and if you are looking for the mirth in the media there is always Google. I am not talking comedy. I am talking horror.

A long time ago, BBC made a documentary series on the street life of Mumbai and the nexus of the underworld, the corporate world and the political world in the 90s (the heyday of Dawood). The series was banned from telecast after it received flak from the Indian Government for casting India in an ‘unfavorable light’. A decade later the producers of Slumdog Millionaire won accolades after accolades and paraded the cast (the children among which have already been unceremoniously forgotten) across the world and bagged 8 Oscars. At the first intelligent look it may seem that the Oscars were given to them simply because the next big movie market is India. But if that was purely the case, even Bombay Dreams would have won Oscars, being much more grim and deserving than the former. But Bombay Dreams was not produced by the Fox Studios. Accepted that this could be the ranting of a paranoid Piscean. But how will you comfort your little mind about this following horror story?

When Kashif Memon got up on stage for the first time and danced for ‘Ik Pal Ka Jeena’ I wished from the bottom of my heart that I ‘jee’ for not even ‘ik pal’ more. And when Sharon Osbourne asked her oh so pertinent question – “Is this the only dance or are there more dances?” I went raving mad. But on new year’s eve, while I stood on a terrace watching people dance to usher in the new year, my worst nightmare came true. They all did ‘the Kashif’! And as I watched them, the words of Sharon the Seer echoed in my head – “By the end of this year, everyone will be doing ‘the Kashif’” (as said in the semi-finals episode). And the fact melted in my brain and ran down my spine like cold mercury – they will make you act like them, whether you like it or not, and more horrifyingly, whether you know it or not. They will not sell themselves like hawkers sell their wares and they will not attack your household like common pests. They will lie through their teeth and convince you to walk the plank because your ship is sinking. They will feed their shit to you till everything else that was you is pushed out and you are filled with the same shit as the next door-impulse buying- commie hating-body image conscious-self selling-perennially half empty-sin fearing-human version of plastic money that they will keep swiping. Since the 1950s they have found a million ways of peeping into our heads and plucking out of there, our worst fears and our most guilty dreams, breathing life into them and using them like flies on hooks. They will keep you fed on an image of the world that will keep you happily drugged but will also keep your paranoid adrenaline pumping. Because you buy most when you are shitting bricks. But to the apparently alert, well-read mind as yours, this is just reiteration of known facts.

To give them the credit for creating such an intricately perfect system that will keep milking us forever, would be more than a little unfair. I’d rather believe it is because of basic human nature. We can blame the mirror for the aberrations but not for whole man in it. And knowing this, it is highly entertaining to watch man scare himself into submission to himself to protect himself from himself and to keep himself from taking over himself – an idea for which Orwell invented the word ‘doublethink’.

In writing this, I am not going to advocate a great social change so simple that it can start from oneself. I am not going to abuse ourselves up for being the invertebrate unintelligent bottom feeders that we all are. I am not going to laugh derisively at the colossal comedy of errors that human evolution is. And whatever I do I am not going to upload this blog post.