Sensitivity: The Price of Selfies

Image Source: Crosswalk

Last week, I came across the article taking a dig at blatant insensitivity shown from all sections of the society in the horrific Robinson Street case of Kolkata. While it became another hang out destination for selfie-obsessed people, media raced into reporting every possible detail about the house without even verifying the facts. A Kolkata based theatre group even completed 75% of the script for the play they will be making on the incident – even as the Police is in the middle of the investigation and lot of facts are yet to be confirmed. A Durga Puja organizer is already planning to put up a pandal this year at the venue. Media is adding its own fiction to the half available facts to make it sensational TRP spiraling breaking news. Reporters broke all the possible laws to get access to the mentally ill son of the 77 year old man who burned himself down and alleged to have been staying with skeletons of his two dogs and his sister.

In the last couple of months, this was the nth story I came across showcasing mass insensitivity shown by the public towards very serious issues. While media has often taken a lead in terms of setting the insensitivity benchmark, if the public is doing the same, it will be incorrect to attribute the behavior to media only. Having said that, it is also important to see that two different causes are driving this behavior.

Media insensitivity is primarily driven by commercial interests associated with the TRPs. People love to watch sensational news and the one who is able to sensationalize anything and everything, grabs the maximum eye balls. Reporting news, just as it is, was the trend of 90s Doordarshan era. While we would want the journalists to be more responsible, it is easier said than done. If we want them to worry less about TRPs and worry more about reporting the most accurate news, it requires a change in the way public select the news channels to watch. Expecting it from media is foolish. It cannot happen, thanks to game theory. Even if someone wants to desensationalize the news, they won’t do it because of the risk involved with losing out on TRPs.

Talking about people, obsession and pressure of being popular in the social media era rides high on people. Recently, I came across a radio commercial of a theme park that claimed that you will get more likes, more comments and more friend requests if you take selfies (they had another term for it) at their theme park. Otherwise, the person will meet a miserable death in solitude (that’s coming from me!). A real estate company aired a radio commercial that showed a man narrating his misery of ending up liking his friends’ world tour selfies on Facebook as he wanted to settle in Mumbai and hence, couldn’t afford to go for world tour. But then he purchased a flat at the township constructed by this company, 50kms away from Mumbai, which had architecture inspired (not copied) from the buildings across world famous cities and now he can take selfies inside his township which will make him popular among his friends.

A large part of this obsession and pressure comes from the peers. Before social media, the peer competition was only restricted to the real world and people hardly used to know what their current 700-800 FB friends are doing with their lives unless they communicated 1:1 or during gossips but not to a great detail. While the competition still stays, the speed and the detail with which people come to know about the “rocking” things happening in their friends’ lives has increased. With posts sharing overly rosy picture of their lives to make others jealous, one has no idea what kind of sh*t others go through on a day to day basis.

And then the more time people spend in peeping into others’ all-rosy lives on social media, the more they feel insecure about the quality of their own lives. When the insecurity rides over common sense and more importantly, humility, incidents like Robinson Street or the one of the Statue of Two Hercules or the one of Nepal tragedy happen.

Only when we stop evaluating our lives with the number of Facebook friends we make, number of likes we get, number of retweets on our tweets and number of shares on our posts, number of comments on that Instagram photo and instead, start evaluating it by – how many times we smiled today, how many smiles we received today, how many close friends did we catch up with in last one week, how many people we helped today, how many new places we visited in last one year, did we move a step ahead in achieving our dreams, did we watch that amazing movie just released, how many new places we visited in last one year, did we enjoy what we did at work today, did we share any good experience with someone close today, did we feel happy about something good happening to someone else, did we had a good laugh at least for once today – will we be sensitive towards the things that really matter in life.

When My Car’s Tyre Punctured at Goregaon East WEH Indian Oil Petrol Pump…. Twice!

Incident 1:

On April 3rd, Saturday, early morning around 6:30AM, we were heading off for a weekend holiday and reached IOCL petrol pump on Western Express Highway, Goregaon East, to fill the petrol tank and get the tyre pressure checked. After filling up the tank, we got the tyre pressure checked where the person checking the tyre pressure reported that there is a puncture in the rear left tyre. He told that we can get it fixed at the tyre puncture shop right there. The person at the shop confirmed three punctures due to pieces of glass getting into the tyre. He fixed them and charged 300 rupees for the three punctures in that tyre. After getting it fixed, we left.

Incident 2:

On June 6th, Friday, early morning around 6AM, we were heading off for Ahmedabad and reached IOCL petrol pump on Western Express Highway, Goregaon East, to fill the petrol tank and get the tyre pressure checked. After filling up the tank, we got the tyre pressure checked where the person checking the tyre pressure reported that there is a puncture in the front left tyre. He told that we can get it fixed at the tyre puncture shop right there. The person at the shop confirmed two punctures due to pieces of glass getting into the tyre. He fixed them and charged 200 rupees for the two punctures in that tyre. After getting it fixed, we left.

The commonalities between the two instances are very much evident. However, in the second instance, we felt something fishy. My wife went to check the petrol pump entrance and to her expectations, found very small pieces of glass on the ground. Watching her take the pictures, the petrol pump folks also sensed something wrong. However, we avoided any conversation at that time in spite of continuous probing and left the place after noting down the contact details of the field officer – Mr. Vijay Gamare – of the petrol pump.

After coming back from Ahmedabad, I dropped a mail to him regarding the suspected malpractice. After two days of email conversations, I received a confirmation from him, saying that the puncture guy, Shamim Ansari, was terminated on the spot and a caution letter warning of strict action was given to the agency, in case such incident happens in future.

I am not sure if I would go to an IOCL petrol pump ever again. This is not the first time an IOCL petrol pump has been noticed for wrong reasons. One of the IOCL petrol pumps near my house in Ahmedabad (near Sachin Towers, Anandnagar) is also notorious for cheating customers with disproportionate petrol. However, I don’t think IOCL is the odd one out here. In general, public need to be more vigilant at petrol pumps as there are hundreds of ways they can cheat customers and we may not be even aware of it.

This case might have gone to consumer court but given that IOCL has acted upon it sufficiently, we chose to avoid it for now. However, this was definitely a wake up call for us to be more alert whenever visiting a petrol pump.

Movie Review: Dil Dhadakne Do

Source: YouTube

DDD peeps into the hollow life under the glittering lifestyle of a wealthy Mehra family. It is the depiction of the same, through the eyes of their pet dog, which is the charm of the movie. The story is beautifully written and well supported by the able direction and the editing. The hypocrisy, backbiting, jealousy, conspiracies and biases of the wealthy Indian business class has been all well captured under the blanket of humor that stays throughout the movie. The movie does well to depict the issue and ends with the message on the missing fundamental in the modern Indian family, at large, let alone billionaires.

Given that this is only the third full movie of Zoya Akhtar, discounting Bombay Talkies, she does a commendable job in elevating an average plot to a fun filled entertainer. The idea behind picturization of the song “Gallan Goodiyan” is novel and worked amazingly well. Special kudos to the cameraman and all the actors for the song. The music gels well with the movie and none of the songs appear to be a force fit.

Zoya has also been able to squeeze out the best of Ranveer Singh, so far, who stands out of the pack in spite of the stalwarts like Anil Kapoor and PC. His expressions and comic timing is something to watch for in the movie. Anil Kapoor, in a gray haired avatar which we never want to see, has been another gem of the movie in the role of a successful yet struggling businessman and a frustrated husband and father. Shefali Shah has complemented well with her acting talent. While it is quite difficult to digest Ranveer Singh and Priyanka Chopra playing siblings, both of them depicted the sibling chemistry quite well.

The dialogues have a great punch, coupled with impeccable timing. All the supporting actors have acted brilliantly to ensure there are no dark patches in the entire movie.

What I particularly liked was the to-the-point ending of the movie that drifts away from traditional bollywood modus operandi. Zoya and the editors, Anand Subaya and Manan Mehta, took enough care that there was no point wasting time on the obvious and instead, focused the climax on the heart of the movie – the central message – on family relationships. Full marks to the team on this.