Mozzarella

I was on the train back to Ahmedabad from Surat. It was running nearly an hour late, but for once I didn’t care about that or even my favourite hobby on trains (people-watching). For I was busy – immersed in this mesmerizing book called Future Shock (which unlike most other mesmerizing books is not fiction). And then this guy beside me tries to initiate a conversation.

“Itne der kitaab padke, ankhen thak nahi gayee?” (Haven’t you tired out your eyes after reading for so long). Ya, right. I had been reading only for a little over 2 hours.

“Nahi. Bahut achchee kitaab hai na.” (No. It’s a very good book, that’s why)

“Abhi thodi der use bandh karke, is collection of messages ko pado. Friendship ke bare me hai… Bahut achche hai” (Now close the book and read my collection of messages about friendship. They’re very nice)

I was somewhat pained, but being the nice guy I was (or the nice guy I try to be), I shut the book and took the cellphone he offered, at the same time trying to think of some way out of it. I couldn’t.

Hmm, first message. “A lover wipes away your tears when they fall. But a good friend never lets them fall in the first place.” Gulp! Really powerful stuff. A classic silverscreen award winning dialogue if there ever was one. I was nearly choking with emotion there.

After going through nearly 30 such messages, each one cheesier than the other, I handed back the cellphone not sure of what to say.

“Achcha collection hai na?” (A good collection, isn’t it?) Yeah, I’m about to go and hug all my lovely friends right now (since my ‘cell’ cannot send SMS).

“Haan. Lekin maine aise bahut pade hain. Email me aate hi rahte hain.” (Yes, but I’ve ready many like these. They appear all the time in my mail) I hoped that was a neutral enough answer – enough to make him stop, but not appear too brusque at the same time.

Thankfully, he stopped. He set me thinking however. How do people actually like this senti (no better word for it) crap? All this overly mushy stuff about friendship and love and all that? Though I was pretty sure that if I stood up and asked all those in the compartment, who believe in such fluff to raise their hands, most hands would fly up. Well they wouldn’t do it openly, but then again what’s e-mail and SMS for? To release the inner ‘romantic’ in ourselves…

If we look all around us, we see that this issue is more fundamental than any of us thought. Nearly any Hindi movie or serial banks on this sentimental eye-wash (no pun intended) to sell themselves. Directors and actors make big bucks banking on the audience to lap up their carefully crafted films – which are engineered to romanticize every aspect of everyday life. To show reality as running around trees, living in huge mansions, singing the national anthem in foreign lands and giving up one’s love for friendship (only to get it back from the ever loyal friend) etc. Maybe, I wasn’t a little clear in the last line, but I’m sure all of us have been exposed to that phony Karan Johar saga of life before. Not that he’s the only one.

These people have spawned what I call the ‘tissue-culture’ – clans of people who revel in such corny creations and believe in spending their hard-earned money (and loads of tissue paper to wipe their tears) on these goofy and ridiculous movies. I for one fail to see the point of these movies at all.

Sure. Been there. Done that. So what’s new?

For once, I decided to think differently – to try to see myself as one of the ‘tissue-culture’. Why not put myself in their shoes and try to see both sides of the argument?

So, maybe they enjoy these movies without putting any thought into them. Maybe, they really don’t care about reality (or are probably fed up with it?) and need these movies to make them forget it. Maybe they fantasize about such a life sometimes and can hence relate to it when it’s churned out on the widescreen. Come to think of it, they don’t really need a reason to like a movie, right? Or maybe, they see some rationale behind all these so called ‘populist’ movies. Probably, such senti messages, be they in movies or in SMS, actually help them get closer to their loved ones.

I realise that I have been a little narrow minded in my derision of all this. Maybe I dislike such movies but it’s not really my business or prerogative to go around telling people not to watch it etc. So Mr Patel (my fellow passenger was most probably one, seeing as there are 160,000 Patels in the Ahmedabad Telephone listing) seriously loves reading such messages and they make him feel wanted. Who was I to mock that?

Of course, there is another end of the spectrum as well – the very antithesis of the ‘populeteriat’, which I have dubbed the ‘pseudocracy’. This is another class of people, whom I have failed to understand as much as the earlier set. They read only the ‘pseudest’ (again, IITM lingo has certain words that have no clear English equivalent) books, watch only the movies of the ‘highest concept’ (read Kubrick and co.). They talk of only Kakfa, Nietzsche (hope I got the spelling right) and some other high-funda (IITM lingo rules!) writers whom I cannot really recall right now. They seem to dismiss anything even slightly populist. And it becomes an obssession sometimes. Even with people whose minds aren’t actually built that way – but those who have this interminable desire to worship the pseudocratic canon, to gain acceptance into such cliques probably. Once again, I may have gone a little overboard in my description, but I’m human after all.

So what am I? Pseudocractic or populeterian? Sure, I don’t like these crassly commercial movies like K3G, KNPH and all those other K’s (detest them in fact), but nor can I really get what’s so hot about Tarantino and Kubrick. I hate TV soaps, but can’t really get past a few pages of Rand. There are exceptions of course. I love Munnabhai MBBS (commercial, but a real laugh riot) and also The Catcher In The Rye (termed by many as ‘high-level’). So what am I? Forgive the excess fantasy imagery but I have to say this:

“The Pseudocracy stood high upon their vantage points on the gleaming ivory towers – watching and secretly scorning the seemingly inane Populateriat running about on the roads and enjoying themselves over their hollow and vacuous creations. Me – I was in the first storey. Tempted to run down and forget everything and yet, strangely drawn towards the Pseudocrats up on the top. I did neither…”


(Lack of coherent thought in this blog can be attributed to 5 hours of incessant sitting in a chair coach. Actually, that’s a very lame excuse. Forget it.)