I like facebook not because I could update my profile
pictures like an impressionist, according to the change of light, and get a few
‘likes’ but because this platform helps me put my ideas into a public
domain. If you look at the growth of facebook, one could see it too had its own
infancy, its growing up years and its own maturity. As facebook changes its
styles and tabs once in a while, I cannot say for sure that it has achieved its
maturity completely. But the facebook team has got its own needs to keep it
fresh and new to be there as the market leader. I know, like many of you know
it already, that the data posted out there is used as samples of market
analysis and product proliferation. It is a soft surveillance system; but so
long as it is not intruding with vehemence in my personal life I am ready to
live with it. There are dangerous indications also there: in a
semi-conservative society like India the facebook is now a part of the personal
history. Your character is assessed based on what you have done in facebook
during the last few years. Character integrity of a marriageable young girl is
determined by her previous facebook activities. Those boys and girls who seek
corporate jobs frantically clean up their facebook accounts and request their
friends not to post any objectionable comments or stuff there. The big brother
is watching you. The corporate houses want to know, before they employ you
whether you are in good company or not. If you have expressed any
anti-capitalist sentiments anytime in facebook, it may curtail your chances of getting
a corporate job by 90 per cent.
However, facebook management is like a doting parent. It
has given a lot of privacy options to keep your activities limited to your
close friends or to let it go to a larger audience comprised of ‘unknown’
friends. You could hide your identity, pretend to be someone else, yet your
facebook behaviour could, in the long run, give a true picture about your
affinities and affiliations, your political views, your social engagements and
even your sexual preferences. But the catch is not that. If you are a real
person and you want to be in facebook and you accept friends out of the ‘need’
to be known or to be ‘heard’, or out of clear cut choices, then you are risking
your life in public. If your wall is open and you post something there, if your ‘friends’
post some comments below it, you cannot climb on the roof top and scream that
you are ‘littering’ my wall. When you submit an opinion, facebook automatically
presumes that it is open to the public unless it is protected otherwise and
limited to only a few people in the closed network. Facebook is no longer in its
infancy. The members of facebook also have gone through their infancies; you may
remember how we all used to boast that ‘having a coffee’, ‘In London it is
raining’, ‘I am in Goa’ and so on. Today, most of the facebook members do not
behave like children on a beach. They too have learnt how to use it.
But unfortunately, some of our so called intellectuals, who
do not have any idea about how facebook works want their views to be seen and
heard by the rest of the world but they do not expect any comments on that;
they expect the whole world (read, the facebook friends) to say only good
things about their comments. They do not want to debate anything at all there.
They will be sharing anti-Narendra Modi slogans day in day out, but if someone
questions them regarding the same issue, they will immediately jump up on the
roof top and cry that someone is attacking their facebook wall. It is the ultimate
form of cowardice. I have been seeing our so called artists and intellectuals
posting something and the moment a debate starts running away from it, or
literally abusing the person who comments. I had a very bad experience from an
old woman artist yesterday. I need to recount it here.
This old woman in question posted a short video of a few
activists water cannoning those people who urinate on waysides. As this old
woman is a proclaimed ‘feminist’ and a gender bender for convenience ‘shares’
too many politically correct posts in her page and as she is in my ‘friends’
list (I keep her there for old times’ sake) they appear in my homepage. Just to keep a watch on her pseudo art and pseudo activities I spend my precious three
minutes to look at those posts. Yesterday she posted this short video which I
found extremely offensive. Some masked activists were assaulting unsuspecting people on the wayside. True, they were urinating in public. But
the assault was inhuman. I was furious and I thought those people, in the name
of activism were taking law in their hands. So I posted the following comments
just below the link that she shared. I am putting the unedited version of my
comments here for your perusal:
“Here is another aspect of it; the gender one.
Most of the people who urinate in public are men. It is as if they are given
license to do that. Women do suffer not only holding their bladders but also
seeing these male obscenity in public places. But what do you do, when your
bladders are full and you do not find any public toilet? If you want to ease
desperately when you are at Saket can you travel a kilometer to urinate at Lado
Sarai? It is not a male right but it is the outcome of an insensitive governance.
“Consider this, most of the metro stations do
not have public comfort systems. Both men and women suffer out of it. As in our
society men are naturally licensed to do public obscenity, they dont mind
pissing in public. But as I said before, women are the real victims of it. Now
they have set up a few toilets in Delhi with glossy ads on it. But do they have
attendants there to help women? How could women go into these dark toilets?
Men's toilets are unclean and most of them think that it is better to urinate
outside than going inside.
“ We have found Indian solutions to this menace: One, writing graffiti like
'Son of a Donkey don't pee here'. But you are willing to neglect the warning
when you are pissy. Then you fix god's pictures on the wall. It is the only
potent way of keeping both pissing and spitting. But this religious solution
cannot be a permanent solution.
“Remember, nobody pisses for fun. People
urinate on the wayside because they do not have any other option. Hence
infrastructure development and spreading awareness are two important things. In
the age of performance art, like the people in the video, it is a good occasion
to laugh. But the agency that has adopted this method of 'spreading the
message' should be arrested and put behind bar with immediate effect.
“Will these people water cannon those people
who use 'sister fucker and mother fucker' words in every sentence in their
public conversations? Will these people do the same to those who spit on the
walls? Come on false intellectuals, sit up and think. Performance art is not a
solution to social ills.”
You may read for yourself and assess whether my
comments were hurting or abusive. But you will be surprised to see this good
old lady’s answer to my comments. I am pasting it here:
“thanks Johny
Mulluvilakom Lakshmanan, but this is a form of pissing on my wall....”
I was shocked to see this answer from this good old lady, who is a
self proclaimed feminist. I always hold that she does sub-standard art. But
that is a critical point of view. However, as a person I have never kept any grudge
against her though she hopelessly thinks that she is still a radical thinker
and could mesmerize people with her ‘thoughts’.
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