Images! So important for all of us. Images that help us to understand a situation, a person, an idea...Be it a time of celebration- the crumbling down of the wall of Berlin or a time of crisis- the Twin Towers crumbling down...Always helped us to arrange events in the shelf of the memory, neatly stacked, often to pop up at the right time sometimes at the wrong moment, just like when you are clumsy enough to stack too many books on top of each other and then pull at the one at the bottom.

Apart from all those famous photographs and videos, there is our own personal collection, of our ancestors, long gone but their images still remained, mouldy, black and white-turning-grey and yellow, faded but still stuck to the heavy photo album, the ones with black card sheets as the pages and huge metal (usually gold plated) spirals to hold and turn them...and others, old reminders of life's milestones, first birthday, college farewell, first car, wedding, first trip abroad and all the trips that followed the first...

Still remember an old photograph of my grandparents (paternal), Thatha (grandpa) with a turban and long sherwani, garlanded, looking very thin and too young (he was just seventeen) and Ajji (grandma), hair decked in jasmine flowers, a large nose ring, head bowed, garlanded and in a light coloured sari, she was twelve...Fast forward a little to the future, my father in pants and shirt tucked in garlanding my mother, smiling at her and my mother(God! she had such long, thick hair and a beautiful face) looking down...

Once upon a time, photographs were taken artistically, a skill was needed to get hold of that one moment in life, to be framed or showcased or to be awarded. The lighting, the shutter speed, the exposure time, the lens, the angle...technical stuff. Today anybody takes a picture, even my two year old can click away with no worry.

Result, an overload of images...

Images can be so deceptive at times. The well-circulated picture of the white-clad politician garlanding the statue of the Mahatma and later heard mixed up in homicide or the well-known police chief who would let sparks fly as he spoke against drug dealings in schools and colleges only to be later caught red-handed with a fresh supply of marijuana and brown sugar at his home.

Images can be so delusive. The beautiful couple married off in all pomp and splendour, send back snaps of their honeymoon trip to their waiting friends and relatives. Images of them both holding hands, hugging, smiling from ear to ear, all are happy. And then drops the bomb shell of divorce, exploding in their faces as a firework doing its work at the wrong time. Behind those smiling faces, was there hatred, bitterness and cussing?

Images can be so misleading. The wrong person with you at the wrong time and circulated to the wrong people and hell is broke lose. The influential can deny, claim it to be doctored, blame the media. The not-so-influential is expected to endure the shame, the blame and the maim...

Once I was asked by a girl in a social networking site to add her as a friend. Her profile picture was that of a thin, innocent girl, probably in her late teens with a sweet smile. i checked her profile to get to know her better and I regret it even today!! She turned out to be a lesbian and her page was filled with filthy stuff of porn that made me retch. Who would have thought that under that innocuous smile and angelic face lay such dirty thoughts??


Go to any social networking site and you see snaps of friends, families, kids on a vacation, couples hugging, friends at a party...You go for a party/get together, snap, snap, snap as you pose deliberately (most often), say cheese and then freeze. The moment captured forever. You carefully put them up, one by one, for others in the list to see, others who are far away, wondering occasionally about you and your life (do they? how stupid!!). The most amusing thing I have discovered is that it doest matter that all cannot be in your good books but you can always add them in facebook!!!
Often you feel compelled to project your satisfied life to your friends, to convince them about...what??
An acquaintance once asked me after getting in touch after a long gap, through such a site, "I heard that you are married, to a Muslim...is that true?" and when i said "Yes", responded back, "But you look happy!!" Excuse me!! Then another one said, "Oh! you look happy". Thank you for your observation and the revelation!!
This nudged me to post a host of snaps, a happy me, happy kids, happy me and Manoj...happy, happy, happy!!!

So life was not all that boring for me all those years, chum. See, me, 'enjoying'? And if those glossy pictures (sometimes photoshoped) are absent, then does it mean that he/she is not really happy in life??

How much do we take care of our image that sometimes has taken years for us to build around us. An image often unlike the real us. Some hide fear in their bold life or statements. Others laugh off their sorrows. Others cover up their disappointment in their endless cynicism.

I am told and often pleaded to believe by the media is that the world is coming closer with technology, through the internet. Everything is laid bare before us or rather it seems. There is transparency everywhere whether you need it or not. All seem to be too honest about their faults and failures. Everyone seems to be so lovely and loving. And yet people are so stone cold. There is no real passion in us anymore for any cause.
We live life and now capture those precious moments in our lives not as just keepsakes but as a spectacle for others to watch. Some sites for socialising aid you in this direction. You sneeze(I wanted to say 'fart' but don't you think it too crude?) and the whole world will know. It is so convenient to create an image that is pleasing to others now. Hold that stray puppy and say cheese and you become an animal lover. Nobody will care even if you kick the puppy on its a**. You can let the whole world know that you love God and so pray day in and out and then go party, sleep, indulge, who knows and who cares? You can say sweet things about your wonderful husband/wife or hint subtly or obviously being such a devoted spouse and then be as passive as possible in real life. Nobody would know!!

The one image that wormed into my memory recently and keeps coming up above others is the picture of all those fans of the movie actor Chiranjeevi. They had all appeared wearing masks of their favourite actor. A sea of chiranjeevi faces facing the chiranjeevi!!!

What is happening to us? Is self-promotion the only motivating factor for all our deeds and talks? It is sickening to hear endless talk sans action from people far and near.

Take for instance the women at war; the not so gentle Nirmala and the over-reacting Renuka (but to be honest, I like her) . I thought they were appointed to voice out the problems faced by Indian women and ease them out of it.

Ofcourse the Pub incident is long forgotten except for those repeated visuals on TV channels, which is aired now and then to stir our rusting memories. Yeah we do have short term memory loss but mostly it is selective memory loss...

Maybe not always in a pub but girls do get attacked on their way back home by cab drivers, at home by alcoholic husbands, in a park while with her boy friend or while in a car with him...and yet these ladies on a pedestal choose to ignore such incidents and remain silent until the cynosure or the eyesore, whichever you might want to name a pub as, of a very posh locality is burst upon by slogan shouting, 'tilaked' and saffroned men crying war on girls who frequent it.

And what about all those children who are attacked, maimed, killed everyday around us? I am sure you must already forgotten the little girl who was tortured by the UP policemen or the boy killed after torture in a policestation or even the street children who were bold enough to say to a set of media crew that they are being sodomised by the night patrol in a well-known city. And soon the incident of rape of innocent deaf and dumb inmates in a girls' home that is doing the rounds now in the channels will be moved to oblivion... Did you say, "Disgusting"? Well, FYI, there are much worse stuff happening around us than we can imagine and that too often borne by children and women.

But what do our women and child care commissions or such similar outfits do? They take up issues that has flesh in it (not literally) and then Ooh! here there is ample chance to fan off a communal conflict of ideologies and get enough political mileage to ensure the safety of their seats in the parliament. As for the seemingly naive Nirmala, lady luck was smiling as her quite dissatisfied irate face was shown on every TV channel, fighting for the sake of the erstwhile Indian culture. What more do you ask for if the BJP itself comes at your doorstep to parade you as their darling candidate? Mission accomplished. Renuka became the voice of all the upper-class women whose ego was hurt by the monkey army while Nirmala rose as the Joan of Arc of Hinduism. Now what is left is the poor under-privileged, illiterate women who sadly form the majority of the female populace.

These women at the top are so busy fighting it out against each other that they even fail to see how women are portrayed these days on TV, like sniffer dogs after a beef cut, women fall all over men who put on a certain perfume. Wonder why the women's activists never could put an axe to it? Well that doesn't mind me much because all I can say is that an overuse of this perfume could bust any girl's olfactory system!! Maybe women should sue the perfume company concerning this health hazard. Just look at the images flashing through the screen (I know, I don't even have to urge you to look because its eye candy for most men) girls, women skimpily clad, wooing men with fragrance or attitude or long legs or cleavage (front or rear)!! Now would you say disgusting looking at the news makers these days? Rapists who are barely 12 years old to 80 years old, victims as young as 1 year old to as old as 60 years old. Who would you blame? The media or the passive audience who lap up anything served in their platter?

Talking of promotions, the extent to which the distributors go to get their movies reach the public is quite shocking for me, well, I am still a very primitive-minded person, very old-fashioned and hence boring for many... well that's my problem and never mind... For the movie DevD, the crew started a web-site and invited surfers of all age to leave lewd comments to one of the characters (supposedly a school girl whose story highlights the forgettable MMS incident in Delhi) and even do some dirty talk with her. Some promotion I should say!

And to top it all, there are the grand and the incredible alliances and number games among the political parties. Their Math defying seat sharings and unethical coalitions are irksome and pukesome. And every scam and scandal is adopted by them to shower allegations against their counterparts. Be it a new comers like Varun Gandhi, Raj Thackerey or veterans like Narendra Modi, their only aim is to project themselves be it by inciting violence or actually preparing a path for violence!!

Where are we going? Is it just "Shut up and vote"? or Is it "Vote and be upright"? It is obviously up to us to decide...