Santosh Kr Singh

The man is looking tired and bored. The bus, in which he is travelling, like any other day, stops at Munirka Junction and his gaze falls on a buffalo. An advertisement then paints the “outside” as routine, quotidian, unexciting and monotonous. It then goes on to suggest that instead he should look “inside” his smartphone where life is colourful, exciting and adventurous with unending stimulation and sensory pleasure. This one is no ordinary advertisement (SHOPCLUES “Bhains ki Aaankh”), currently being run on various TV channels. Rather, it is a commentary on our life which is increasingly becoming “inward-looking” and machine-mediated.

This techno-addiction is lethal as it delinks human beings from their species character by uprooting them from their natural moorings. Humans as species then come across as perpetually in search and need of stimulation and amusement. Life then becomes an unending series of “events”; the lack of it is pathological, boring, unimaginative and meaningless. Imagination, creativity, artistic impulses, musical moments – all of these now entirely emanate and end with the virtual world. No wonder we hear more of remakes and remixes and hardly anything original, thereby heralding an era of imitation in the name of innovation.

The real, tangible world of emotions, empathy and touch is giving way to a soulless, dehumanised and disembodied world. The social world with flesh and blood, in which we live, is constantly being presented and reiterated as full of conceit, mistrust and entrapment. Human worlds are being discounted on the altar of the virtual world. Young men and women in the metro just do not have time to look around. Instead they play games, completely oblivious of that limping, emaciated woman, standing in front of them, holding on to her baby in one hand and a muddied polythene bag containing medical reports in another, in one of the metro coaches moving towards AIIMS. That these young people are not occupying “women only” seats is reassuring and tragic at the same time. Reassuring, for it shows they have been trained well to think and act in a legally correct manner in their schools and colleges but tragic as they seemed to have been completely left raw and unattended on the lessons of empathy and humanness.

German sociologist Georg Simmel (1858- 1918), in his seminal essay “The Metropolis and Mental Life”, talks of a particular blasé attitude of the city dwellers as a defence mechanism to adjust or protect themselves from overwhelming human interactions. As a result, there is constant reiteration and hype about the virtues of privacy and individuality. More urban you are, more private you tend to become. Interestingly, at many of its stations, Delhi Metro, in fact, makes public announcements and cautions the citizens to not interact with strangers. This is clearly intriguing and at the same time, very disturbing. Since a stranger has been conceptualised as someone essentially dangerous or minimally as someone with great nuisance value, what we do not realise is that this announcement actually carries a potential of killing a range of human possibilities – such as making a new friend, having an interesting conversation with fellow travellers, engaging with new and other experiences. What it essentially tells the citizens is to “mind the gap” between individual/self and the collective/other.

In other words, it trains the citizens to a new code of conduct which, in effect, has no place for “others”. Life is just about “me and my world”. Gradually behaviours, such as trying to initiate a conversation with a distinctly disinterested co-traveller in a long train journey, for instance, becomes part of a charter of civic impoliteness. To experience this, one has to endure the intertwined smugness and perfume of affluence that hang in the air of Delhi-Chandigarh/Kalka Shatabdi chair cars. This less than four-hours-long journey of the Kalka Shatabdi exposes you to a bizarre numbness and that cruel sense of being utterly singular, once you are through with The Tribune and the routine “chai paani”. The rest of the journey is about dead silence constantly interrupted only by the sound of the tapping of laptop keyboards. Is it not strange that two people are sitting together in adjacent seats, separated by the mere arm of a chair, in a roughly four-hour-long journey and yet not even exchanging glances, let alone pleasantries?

In the Hrishikesh Mukherjee-directed and Rajesh Khanna starrer film Anand (1971), the main character, Anand, is going to die of cancer in a few months’ time and he is aware of it. In this film there is a particular moment where Anand wants to meet and hug everyone, even strangers, before the curtain falls as he says, “Babu moshai, ham sabhi rangmanch ki kathputliyan hain”. In one scene, he says he wants to meet everybody because everyone is unique and each interaction enriches life and he would like to have as many such experiences as possible before the end comes. Hindi cinema then perhaps was still not called Bollywood and even the mainstream commercial films used to carry these moments, immersed deep in the philosophy of life. From then to now, things have clearly changed. There is acute pervasiveness of atomisation of our social life. The painful part is this is being accepted as a norm and encouraged through all means, both official and otherwise. What makes the scenario really worrisome is the role of communication technology such as mobile phones in facilitating such individuation.

The Delhi Metro was, as always, packed to its capacity as I was returning home from my university one evening. Standing in a corner, I was privileged to watch the beautiful setting sun as the metro passed by Netaji Subhash Place, the splendour of its colour on the blue, clean sky was simply breathtaking. That melodious song of Mukesh from Anand, “Kahi door jab din dhal jaaye sham ki dulhan…”, echoed in my ears. In Delhi, such occasions are rare. Sadly, the young lot around me in the coach sat like “ducks” working on their cellphones. Soon the sun eclipsed and darkness enveloped the outside. A rare moment of visual spectacle was lost which, I am afraid, could never ever be retrieved; for the sun set at 5.45pm on November 2, 2015 and that moment can never be downloaded, howsoever one may try. Nature’s marvels are to be observed, felt and soaked in; they can never be experienced on our cellphones. Explore and engage with the outside world – good, bad, pleasant, dull, bovine – as they nourish our inside world. Technologies have a specific purpose – use them, don’t get used by them.

Disclaimer:The views expressed above are the author’s own