Nothing doing...

As we walked out of our staff meeting today, one of my colleagues turned to me and said – 'Did you notice? Of the ten items on that agenda there wasn't a single new one. At some point, in the last five years, we have discussed it all till we went blue and here we are again. Just talk talk and talk. No concrete solutions. Its ridiculous, don't you think?'

I returned home weathering the late noon traffic as these words buzzed about me like late evening mosquitoes. It was just yesterday that I had seen 'Peepli LIVE' that was talking about pretty much the same thing. A whole lot of cow manure for absolutely nothing. A careless media that uses a hapless farmer's sad plight for its own profit as the country watches, mute with unbridled enthusiasm, at the drama that unfolds on a possible reality television suicide bid. Problems? A million. Solutions? None.

What's worse is while the movie might have gone on to please the audience with its rustic charms, the reality of it is there is not the slightest chance of a change at ground zero. No governing body will suddenly have a major bout of conscience injected into it and no sarkaari babu will immediately start pushing papers in a fierce resolve to help the down trodden. No. There will not be an atom of a change that will occur in any farmer's life anywhere in India – LIVE or recorded. The rich producers behind the feature will get richer(as I am sure they already have) and the audience at which it was aimed at will go on with their lives as ever before. Status, undeniably, quo. A grandly laid out theatrical production in the garb of 'reality' and 'social cause'.

My colleague's words made me connect the dots between what he was trying to say and what movies like Peepli LIVE are all about. There is so much activity about 'burning issues' on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and even blogs all around the web. Special 'hashtags' are created for important topics that are pushed to the 'trending' categories and online users share it like there is no tomorrow.

But I look around and all I can see is what my colleague was mentioning in exasperation earlier today – talk. People forwarding each other links to some horrifying story of tragic proportions while the rest of us click our tongues and post sad smileys as a sign of 'protest' as smart Alec netizens sit in comfortable spaces of privacy with their stomachs full and opine on human hunger and depravity. We, the content audience that clicks the 'Like' option on Facebook and feels it has done its bit in helping the cause get more awareness. Seriously – its time we stopped kidding ourselves. This meaningless act of self-validation has no effect on either the victims or the consequences that led them to it. They get nothing as respite because some well fed know-it-all egomaniac clicked a link on the Internet and felt good about keeping his/her 'conscience clean'. The grief in this scenario truly transcends words.

Being a perpetrator of such nonsensical atrocities myself, the one thing I have now resolved to do (or not do!) is stop pretending I am helping a society by passing around a reported tale like a golf ball across a neatly manicured piece of online real estate. No more re-tweeting or forwarding links to ghastly acts of human rights violation since I am not a part of the solution. I am not the one dodging naxal bullets while trying to save a child or a dying man's life. I am not the one teaching tribal kids their ABCs and feeding orphans their mid day meal. I am not the one fighting corrupt governing bodies to defend the rights of the weaponless while putting my life at extreme risk. No – I am, sires, no one. It seems true what I had heard in a Kannada proverb once – Doers don't talk, talkers don't do.

If that blessed day does arrive when I actually find a way to apply my efforts in some productive manner that matters the last thing I will probably do is talk about it. We have an offensive overflow of that as it is, don't you think?




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