Last night in Bangalore, the cast of the play Nirbhaya got a standing ovation, each one of us standing for our own private reason. I for one stood because I thought it was admirable, how the cast made public perhaps the most painful truths of their lives. The tears were real, this was no acting. This was the equivalent of a reality show and I have enjoyed some. Only it wasn’t TV, so one felt good about being part of real art. That sounds about right.
**
So after confessing to a few tears, I type, “sadly, nothing will come of it.” And I feel guilty immediately for this show of pessimism, of which too much already exists we know, and I feel admonished when the reply is “if we are watchful, something will come if it.”
(Type and tell and said and say are quite interchangeable these days but they look funny interchanged on paper)
Maybe I think nothing will come of it because it took me all of 10 minutes to wipe out two hours of Nirbhaya and god knows how many more of related television, video and newspaper, streaming into my life since December 2012.
**
Ironic it had to be Black Mirror that did this wiping for me. Simply put, Black Mirror is a television series about how technology can make things go horribly wrong. Less simply put, it’s about reality shows, where everything is unreal, including escapes and returns, about wearable technology in the form of memory storage devices flickering under skin, wrecking havoc on personal relationships, about how one man’s terrible manipulation of an entire nation turned out to be his art, his final masterpiece, and if you wanted to ascribe honourable intentions to his artistic depravity, a commentary on what human society has come to. Art. Very believable. Isn’t there a term already for this sort of artistic expression or “moving installation” or whatever?
**
Anyway, two seasons and six episodes of this sort of viewing material is what I have to show for two days. I hit the pause button several times, to try and boil six hours ballpark down to a single thought – how things can go terribly wrong in the future. As if things aren’t horrible enough here and now. As if the key to everything lies in this ability – to boil it down, to distill it out, to get to the root of the problem, hit the nail on the head, hammer it into a coffin.
**
And so I type, “The only message that will make any difference is the one that goes out to parents, nurturers, role models etc” or some such thing. I meant if I don’t see myself playing any of these roles, nothing you say to me will change anything. And just like that, I appear to have embarked on some ridiculous, convoluted mental game, only a shade different from Flappy Bird, with the single goal of boiling it down so..so I can make a windfall in points at level 20? Much like Black Mirror’s second episode – a world where cycling in the gym earns you points, and you buy things with those points, and now while that sounds like just the simple charming life I’d love, things can go horribly wrong even with that we discover.
**
I am thinking if parents raised boys and girls better, perhaps when they grew up, things like Nirbhaya wouldn’t happen. But I am no shirker of responsibility and since I am no parent, I insert “role models” into that thought – perhaps that’s something I could aspire to be for someone someday. So what I am saying here is I am not passing the buck, I have some skin in the game too, mind you. Then I bolster the thought with some (smiling in self admiration already) deft referencing to the play – I am thinking how the most touching story going by the crescendo of sniffles was that of the dowry victim whose pain of losing her child was stark. We cry. And perhaps some of us want to send a text message to a child somewhere, saying we love them.
**
But the grim theatre voice over, asking for phones to be off, plays in the head again. Briefly, my thoughts wander to how I’d checked my own phone thrice just to be sure before the play began, of asking my mom to switch hers off, of a friend taking out the battery from hers altogether, to ensure we weren’t swooped down upon by navy seal types and singled out for public shaming if the phone rang somehow. Being humiliated on a live show of Comedy Nights with Kapil would be tolerable, indeed public shame is often what makes for the comedy in those nights. This was different though the public here is ashamed too and some of us are here for that extra sock in the jaw, a shot of rage once more, much like those rumble strips on roads to keep drivers from dozing off at the wheel. We are here because we want to be part of something meaningful, keep the emotions alive, and towards this, the least we can do is to walk the talk, on silent mode.
**
I meander more, thinking now of a horror clip from somewhere, where the phone’s broken but rings all the same. It suddenly felt like I was here for an exam. I pin it on my parents – they should have found some way of helping me embrace exams with the zeal I embraced play. And yes, theatre owners could surely find a of getting us to switch off our phones without making it appear like we were being marched to the guillotine, where you wouldn’t have use for a phone anyway, once your head was off. I think…nothing will change if you carry on this way with the wrong message and wrong target group and there’s prompt evidence – a phone rings. Not mine, luckily.
**
So again, yes, you HAVE to talk to parents, I think conclusively. Or nurturers, or teachers. Else tomorrow things will go horribly wrong. Stripped of hope in our own kind, hardened by decades of nihilistic thinking, we may just have to opt for an expletive-spewing cartoon character as an instrument of change (Black Mirror, final episode). No, no, that’s unacceptable so it’s final – kids need to be brought up better. Diversity and Inclusion articles I’ve been reading lately thanks to a few projects at work, also seem to point to the need for parents to raise their sons better so someday boardrooms, not just cubicle farms, could have equal numbers of men and women.
**
I have just boiled down about 25 articles from Forbes, Harvard business review, etc, and about 25 interviews with leaders from different organisations, to get to that single thought.
**
I feel euphoric at having come to the crux of the matter. Yes, I also realize it’s no revelation but cakes have been baked for ages and one still feels thrill when one gets one’s own little cake right. But this is too much work already for a lazy person who wants to just lie down and watch TV forever. So I am tempted to type this with a ring of finality: “Actually, nothing will change. The only redemption for this race is for mankind to walk hand in hand into extinction” and then I don’t. The “chalo talk later’ has already happened, and well I’d be plagiarizing True Detective, down to an exact phrase. True Detective. A television series on nailing it down. To one killer. Of course, there is one killer, or a few when you tally off the homicides, but there’s also the ugly nexus of religious heads and politicians, the whole system at work.
**
So I think, maybe, this whole...country of the system is juxtapositioned by the haemoglobin in the atmosphere because you are a sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity!
**
Tonight, things remain as garbled as ever, and I relish the clarity of that thought, before I hit “play” again.
**
Dedicated to the memory of Madhuri Velegar, leader, teacher, the editor of my features, and a wonderful soul.
**
Seetal Iyer is the co-founder and content head at Timbre Media and one of the most well-loved radio voices for over 15 years and counting.