Tag: jatin sharma

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‘Hoarding’ the city to ransom

Nobody wants to know which politician’s birthday is today, or if politicians remembered us during festivals. So why the hoardings?
by Jatin Sharma

Today I saw a very strange thing.

A developed city like ours is forever marred by thousands of advertising messages around it. And the endless in-your-face promotions are just one reason. The actual reason is that people have a lot of purchasing power in Mumbai, and hence, thousands of hoardings adorn the cityscape to draw buyers in.

But does the city really need thousands of useless messages? Most of us are already aware of where we need to go to buy stuff, instead of looking at five foolish hoardings telling us the same. But my grouse is not even with the hoardings that are ads for products or places – I am really annoyed by the people who claim that they want to make this city beautiful and better to stay in, but who are the first ones to deface it with hoardings and banners: our politicians.

The politicians of this city, who argue that migrants are making Mumbai ugly. These same politicians try to portray that they are true Mumbaikars, who have always ‘cared for’ and who have been ‘sensitive’ to the needs of the city.

Thanks to Photoshop and thousands of chamchas, every nook and corner of the city has been plastered with mindless political agendas. And it’s not just the ‘Happy Birthday’ messages on these hoardings that I take issue with. As I said at the start of this column, today I saw a very strange thing – a hoarding that carried a Happy Birthday message for a politician’s dog in downtown Mumbai! Funnily enough, the dog went through a photo shoot too, as the pooch was wearing sunglasses in the picture.

How does wishing a politician’s dog on his birthday align me, a citizen, with that political party? Like, really? What is so special about this dog? Does it go out and do public service with its master? Does it do election campaigning? Does it attend civic meetings and vote in favour of important measures?

And this is not the only example. What about the rash of hoardings wishing people during Ganesh Chaturthi, Ramazan, Ambedkar Jayanti? Don’t you think these hoardings instigate communities against each other with divisive ideas?

Every hoarding seems like a burn mark on the skin of the city. A city that is progressive in spirit still houses these political factions that promote yesteryear political agendas only to remind people of issues that should be last on their list. Half of the times, these hoardings feature youth leaders that no one knows and no one cares about. Some of them even have all the photos of family members. I continue to be puzzled by hoardings that have a giant hand in the centre and the words, ‘THANK YOU MADAM’ emblazoned on it, or a lotus that supposedly stands for ‘HINDUTVA KI PEHCHAAN’ or even ‘EK TA TIGER’ for other big cats.

Seriously, who are these guys kidding? Are their photoshopped mugshots going to make any difference to those forced to look at them? If the hoardings broadcast some sound issues – like recent public works done in an area – would they make any sense to people, and even then, a small banner displayed for a day or two will suffice.

And to add the woes of the public, the rate to put up hoardings is an amount that literally anybody can afford, so putting up hoardings is possible for every aspiring politician.

And what is the Government and BMC doing? The media focusses on this issue sporadically, after which the BMC pretends to take some action against illegal hoardings, but things go back to the way they were in a few days. The Government needs to impose a code of conduct for political parties, where pushing private agendas in a public place – like wishing somebody on their birthday via a public hoarding – becomes a cognisable crime.

If we say nothing, even a politician’s dog’s birthday will become an important civic issue. Let’s not allow somebody’s birthday to feature on our cityscape. And let’s not fall prey to their fake Ganpati, Ramazan and Ambedkar Jayanti wishes, either.

Dear politicians, how about listing what work you’ve recently done? Or what work you are currently engaged in? How about telling us how much of our money you’ve utilised for us? How many of our grievances you’ve solved? And how about not putting your ugly faces on huge hoardings to make these announcements? If you’re working for the people, your work will automatically be your biggest advertisement. Think about it. And don’t announce what you’re thinking about via a hoarding.

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

(Pictures courtesy Kunal Bhatia, www.whiteindianhousewife.com, www.indianexpress.com)

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Back to cool

Jatin Sharma yearns for a simpler time when our society was seriously cool, in every way that the word implied.

‘Cool’. This word has managed to grab the youth. Everyone wants to be ‘cool’. If someone commits a mistake; he is ‘cool’ about it. If something bad has happened to someone; he has to be ‘cool’ about it.

Premarital sex? It’s ‘cool’ to believe in it.

Live in relationship? It’s ‘cool’ to experiment.

Abuse an elder? ‘Cool’ if it was his fault.

But this ‘coolness’ makes me think. Are we ‘cooler’ than we should be?

Being cool is often described as being modern, something that a rebel does. But it may become problematic if we equate being cool with being desensitised, dead inside.

It is probably a reflection of the times we live in that we are cool with everything – an earthquake that shakes the neighbouring State to its foundations, a person on the street who met with an accident while we watched the car that struck him zoom away, a person who announces on a social media site that he is about to kill himself, a long relationship breaking up; with everything that should normally cause us to be really disturbed, but which doesn’t affect us for more than a minute.

Earlier, the incident of a bomb blast anywhere in the country would shake us up, but now we sit in front of our TV sets with our dinner and watch the visuals of carnage play on loop. We are also ‘cool’ with journalists jeopardising sensitive operations, and we don’t directly protest their actions, choosing instead to make fun of that journalist on social media.

I wonder – has our quest for ‘cool’ killed off every last human emotion in us? Recently, a ‘cool’ person that I know had to say this of the second big Delhi gangrape after Nirbhaya, that has had the country talking about the safety of little girls – “Rapes just keep happening, and the people are now bored. Woh Nirbhaya ke time pe ho gaya, now it’s boring to do that activism again.”

Because of this ‘coolness’, we are a generation without a spine or feeling. All we do is talk a lot about what others should do. Heck, we speak about stopping corruption but it is so ‘cool’ to be able to arrange liquor on a dry day. Even as we become smarter and acquire the latest gadgets the moment they hit the market, our sensitivity to others is dulled by our total indifference and lack of awareness.

I loved the fact that the earlier generation of parents were so ‘uncool’, their children would tremble if they did something wrong and automatically toed the line. But parents nowadays, probably in a futile attempt to reach out to an increasingly remote generation of ‘cool’ kids, are also trying to be cool, even doling out money to their children to buy exam papers.

I miss the time when our society was seriously cool – people stood up against wrongs and told it like it is. Our country had some absolutely cool freedom fighters and revolutionaries who would devote everything for a cause. We have now forgotten that helping others is cool, studying sincerely is cool, getting a job on merit is cool, respecting all elders is cool, and being able to tell the difference between right and wrong, whatever the compulsion, is very cool – everything, in fact, that constitutes humanity.

For now, I’m trying to make my peace with a distorted definition of ‘cool’ – where getting away with a crime is cool, where doing drugs is cool (but getting caught is not), hitting a person because he/she didn’t agree with us is cool, where being a total pig is cool as long as you have a sense of humour about it.

(Picture courtesy xn--80aqafcrtq.cc)

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A grim police story

We’re currently seeing a weird kind of policing, where those trying to help are harassed, and criminals are allowed to get away.
by Jatin Sharma

The Indian definition of a ‘Government job’ is a ‘job in which a person retires and cannot be fired from.’ I could extend this definition by saying that in our country, a Government job is one in which a person is not expected to work much and is allowed to behave the way he/she deems fit.

The problem in our country is that nobody ‘dismisses’ a Government employee. At the most, they are only suspended.

We fear those people that belong to a policeman’s family, or a politician’s, or a Government babu’s. However, recent events have shown that if we must fear policemen, it is not because they can instill fear in us simply by being policemen. The rape and torture of a five-year-old in the country’s capital was followed by the terrifying news that the policemen who the girl’s parents approached for filing an FIR tried to dissuade the parents against filing a complaint. Instead, they asked them to accept Rs 2,000 as a bribe for keeping quiet about the incident, and to go home and thank the lord that their daughter was still alive.

No wonder nobody fears the police in our country. The cops don’t want to file an FIR, choosing to let the biggest of crimes be swept under the carpet so that they are spared the trouble of having to investigate them. They can stoop so low as to offer bribes to victims’ families. And if that isn’t enough, they also push and slap protestors.

And for all this ‘ethical’ policing and ‘sensitivity’, what does an errant ACP get? At the most a transfer, after a suspension.

I am writing this piece from Delhi. A car picked me up from the airport, and I soon started chatting with the driver of the car. This driver was of the opinion that the Delhi Police was in a much better shape 10 years ago, because the Force knew how to control people without resorting to outright assault. “But now they are no better than criminals,” he said. “After the Delhi rape (of December 2012, when a medical student was gangraped in a moving bus and left to die on the street), the police started checking vehicles at night. They said it was to increase security. But the checking was done to make money – you had to pay Rs 200 if you wanted to leave without any harm, whether you had done anything wrong or not.”

I asked if Delhi wasn’t insensitive as well, as people didn’t stop to help the rape victim and her male friend. The driver said, “People didn’t help because the police are lazy.” I asked him what this meant. He said, “If anybody had helped, the police would have caught hold of those people who brought them to the police station and harassed them, as they would have to start an investigation.”

What an idea, to think that people are unwilling to help victims of a crime because the police will make them suffer for helping! Of course, this is true of most States in India – how often have we heard cases where people did not report crimes because they feared the police harassing them unduly?

What kind of reverse policing are we living with?

It is an understatement to say that the image of our police needs a drastic makeover. But there also have to be shifts in other duties the police carry out routinely – first and foremost, they should be taken off security duty for VIPs and politicians, because their first duty is to protect the common man. And who says that to implement the law, the policeman has to be a rude, unnecessarily tough person? Our cops need to be friendly, approachable and willing to help in any situation.

Our Government and our policemen have forgotten that the first step in a democracy begins with a strong police force that can effectively ensure that the country’s laws are being followed. Most importantly, there should be the harshest punishments for those cops who are found guilty of dereliction of duty – a mere transfer for a cop offering a bribe to a victim or attacking a civilian, is a laughable ‘punishment’.

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 theatlantic.com)

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The reality of dreams

Our dreams are more real than our life’s starkest realities. If you fear failure, then you have no business dreaming at all.
by Jatin Sharma

Recently I have been part of the most interesting chats in my social circuit.

Everyone has been using this line extensively, “Mujhe na kuchh bada karna hai.”

When I dug deeper, I found a mine of dreams. Where someone who was in sales was a closet artist, where a person in programming person wanted to be a cricketer, a writer who wanted to be a director, and an architect who just wanted to be a potter.

At first, I was mighty impressed by their dreams. Their dreams had huge potential and a faith that was unshakeable. But when I asked them about making those dreams a reality, all of them postponed the dream. They postponed a dream because they had a reason today to not follow it. Or may I say, they had an excuse not to!

For me, a dream is a reality that is yet to be fulfilled. But procrastinating on following your dreams is just like letting a missed train go further away by not attempting to reach the next station, and watching it recede in the distance.

Of those who have gone ahead and chased a dream, one thing is certain: they would never have achieved their dreams if they hadn’t given those dreams first priority.

A dream is not a showpiece, it is a part of you.

A dream is a desire that is deep inside you.

A dream is an enslaved bird that wants to flap its wings and fly.

A dream is the real you. What you dream is what you wish to become, and if fear of failure stops you from being the real you, then it is really pointless that you dream at all.

The power of a dream is optimum when the word ‘failure’ goes out of your dictionary.

We all forget that the road between dreams to reality is covered just by making an effort. Dreams should always get the first priority in everyone’s life. If you are dreaming of something, just go ahead and do it. Don’t fear failure – just feel happy that you gave your dream a chance. That you tried and it didn’t work out. But at least you will be proud of yourself because for the first time, you respected yourself enough to face the unknown for the sake of a dream.

Don’t live a life that is not yours. Let dreams be your reality. A reality that you like and love. A reality that you always dreamt of. Don’t sell your dreams for a salary that you don’t really value. Don’t procrastinate on your dreams by making excuses. Don’t budget your dreams for no money that is spent on your dreams can be measured in terms of less or more.

Give yourself a chance.

Happiness is not the thousand achievements in the reality that you never wished for, it is the one failure that you go through while pursuing your dreams.

And don’t question your dream – will it work, will it not work, what happens if I fail, do I really want to do this? Question your reality. Your dreams are more real than your reality.

Follow and do what you wish to do. Do it right now.

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 helpingchurchleaders.com)

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In gaanon ki toh law lag gayi

Songs that go ‘Po po po’ and ‘Taaki taaki’ are the scourge of Bollywood. How can we ban these songs? Maybe we should have a writers’ collective that bans bad writing.
by Jatin Sharma

Let me start this piece with a PJ I just invented:
Q. What did one car say to the other car during peak hour traffic?
A. Po Po Po Po Po Po Po.

If you just went “Chheee!” with this PJ, then I would like to draw your attention to the song lyrics that are hidden in the answer, and which inspired this PJ in the first place.

Song lyrics these days are completely devoid of meaning. Absurdity seems to be the new mantra in Bollywood. The rule of the game is ‘Writers/lyricists ki kya zaroorat hai (Who needs writers/lyricists?)’, ‘Koi bhi toh likh sakta hai (Anybody can write)’. Sure, but let’s get one thing straight.

There is a difference between being literate and being a writer.

A writer weaves new words with new perspectives and gives a new definition to a mundane thing. A person who says ‘Po Po Po’ in a song, by contrast, should join circus and be fed to hungry lions. Similarly, when you say ‘Taaki oh taaki, tere baap ko main nana banaunga‘ and ‘Mere toh L lag gaye‘, you are not writing something clever, but merely trying to be clever (and failing). Just because you can buy a pen for Rs 2 doesn’t mean that you should create content that is worth the same amount too.

Yes, I know the people who want to defend these songs will say, “But that is what people want.” Well, it’s time you dusted the dust off your brains. People read and listen to what the media and writers give them. If you are not going to give them meaningful lyrics, they will listen to your absurdity and laugh for a little while, but your creation is only going to be momentary. Hard to digest? Let’s prove it with a fact. The yesteryear film songs and poems that have had beautiful meanings and are little gems of poetry cut across generations and are a hit today, too. But look at your new age Po Po Pos and Lo Lo Los: they come and go and nobody cares to find out where they disappeared. These supposed songs are a mere reflection of an attitude where business has taken over art.

 

Creative agencies like radio stations have gone the lewd way in their speech, movies based on SMS forwards and cheap jokes, and TV channels and movies churning out one product after another based on the last hit that made millions, show that India has little place for its intellectuals. Most of the good writers and people who are serious thinkers hate to associate themselves with our mass media because they are beginning to think that mediocrity rules the roost there.

Look at American TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy or Friends; you may or may not be fans of these shows, but you can’t deny that research, a well-defined plot and depth of
characterisation back these shows. And all credit goes to their writers. Now consider TV shows in India, where the basic plot revolves around love, death of the lover/married partner, followed by reincarnation after outrageous time leaps, interspersed with constant scheming and bitching, plus constant repetition of about three shots to complete an episode. Writers are looked upon as fools, called on to write incredible twists to pull up shows with sagging TRPs, put in astounding situations just to shock the audience. Because nobody respects writers, it seems that writers, too, are not respecting themselves.

Writers of an era long gone were people who would write in order to feed their passion; today they write to feed their greed. Someone has correctly said that, “Writers with empty stomachs are full of sensible words.” May be today’s writers don’t have stomachs empty enough for passion and ambition. May be they are richly fed on what works commercially. Or how to compromise on what they hold dear, so that they can create something that sells.

Naturally, writers are succumbing to the rat race and the people who demean the very art of writing, because those people hold the big bucks.

Writing meaningful things needs to rise above deadlines and restrictions. Thoughts cannot be tied up in the ropes of business. They are free and priceless. It is up to the ‘patrons’ of art to understand just how to bring the best out of such a fantastic creative process.

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

(Pictures courtesy in.movies.yahoo, community.sparknotes.com) 

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Feel the like

Jatin Sharma writes about how social networking has helped us endlessly ‘connect’ to virtual worlds while ignoring the real one.

We are the Internet generation. We are the generation of gadgets, of tablets and social networking sites. We are the Facebookers and the Twitterati. We are the people who are lost in the virtual world.

The world is closing in and our emotions are shutting down. Thanks to the virtual world, we have changed the basic definition of emotion. Earlier, an emotion used to be a feeling, now it has become a message on the wall. Earlier, birthdays used to be a celebration, now they have become a reminder of an event in our phones. Earlier, the world and being social in it was a real activity, now it has turned into one big facade.

Look at photographs; how they were all about memories and capturing a particular time. Now, photographs are judged on the basis of whether they are FB-worthy or whether they will get minimum 50 likes. The human mind is now full of unnecessary information as we have started demeaning our lives. We are becoming slaves to technology and our emotions, or the showing of them, have become a formality.

It seems quite funny to me when people prefer to Skype or chat on FB for about 10 years, and tell each other that they have been in constant ‘touch’ for so long. Ipso facto they may have met just once. Even when it comes to relationships and love affairs, people like to announce them as their relationship status. One fight and the status becomes complicated; and if the matter gets more serious, the boyfriend or the girlfriend gets to know of it on Facebook where the girl’s/boy’s friends have like the update of ‘XYZ changed their relationship status from ‘It’s complicated’ to ‘Single’.

Our emotions have become so frail in today’s times. People form an opinion, then mentally compose a clever line in order to be able to tweet about a trending topic and get as many retweets as possible. Our speech is no more about putting our thoughts into words, it’s all about getting ‘likes’ and retweets and being ‘favourited’.

We are so engrossed in this virtual world that even when we are out with our friends, we are glued to our smart phones. We are becoming ‘virtual Mayors’ of markets and restaurants, and are Whatsapping and putting out our current activities as our status messages. The whole joy of socialising is not about meeting people anymore. In fact, social networking sites should also get a Nobel Peace Prize, for the outcome of most of our fights is now decided by ‘unfriending’ or ‘blocking’ or ‘unfollowing’ a person. These are now considered to be a very fierce punishments in social networking.

Our minds are completely lost in this virtual jungle. And we are not realising that this is slowly and steadily going to ruin our basic human interactions. We all need to feel, touch and hear words in order to survive. Depression is on the rise in the world and I strongly feel that the Internet is responsible for it. The little joys of life are the ones where you can actually feel them. Don’t dedicate yourself to social networking sites. Life is much more than that which exists inside your phone or computer. For once, try to liberate yourself and be a human being. Meet people, don’t ‘poke’ them. Spend some quality time, don’t get hynotised by your phone screen. Feel like a human being. Speak, don’t just type. Feel the like, don’t just click on LIKE.

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

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