Nostalgia has its limits

What is nostalgia? It is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. Wikipedia says that it refers to a general interest in the past, their personalities and events, especially the "good old days" from one's earlier life. One can feel nostalgic, while visiting places or even cities where one has spent some time in the past and has happy memories about it.

I have a group of school friends, with whom I meet occasionally over a cup of tea. We really do not have much in common except the fact that all of us belonged to middle class and were brought up in a very ordinary life style. Because of this, the discussions tend to be more on nostalgic side; such as about our school, teachers and general life style of people, when we were kids. But just nostalgic talk can not really be a talking point for long, because it has its limits.

With the new social media like WhatsApp, a new trend has developed, wherein people are forming groups such as school friends, college friends and even kindergarten friends. I do not think, I can ever participate in such groups, because really speaking, all the group members are nothing but strangers unless they have maintained contact with each other all along and can find common interests to talk with each other.

This brings us to the real crucial requirement for feeling nostalgic about a period or a place. As I have mentioned above, one has to have happy personal associations with that period or place to feel nostalgic. If these are missing, a person is unlikely to have “good old days” feeling about that place or period. Let me give you an example. I did my graduation in Engineering from the south Indian city of Bengaluru. I stayed in a hostel and have to-date, extremely happy memories of the period and the friends. These memories include the great time spent in cafes on weekend evenings located on Bengaluru Cantonment streets such as M.G.Road and Brigade road. The superb crispy “Masala Dosas” we ate in “Koushy's” along with cups of fabulous filter coffee and even Saturday night late shows of latest Hollywood films.

The memory of those days always makes me feel sad, more so these days, because I lost one of my good friends a month back, with whom I had fabulous time. Recently I tried to analyze, why I feel so nostalgic and nice about my Bengaluru days. The hard realisation was that I always feel nice about that period because academically I was doing exceedingly well in those days, an achievement which I always remember with pride. This really is the base of my euphoric feeling for that period and all other pleasant memories simply get added to that feeling.

As against Bengaluru days, my memories about my stay in Mumbai, where I was working in a company belonging to one of the top industrial houses of India, are not exactly that nostalgic. I was a research and development engineer then. However, things did not go that well right from start, though I never had a failure of any sorts. I was confirmed in my job on schedule and was given a raise when due. Yet the fact remains that I was doing only about average in my job. At a personal level, I had lots of fun no doubt. But today, in hindsight, I can say that I do not have that kind of Nostalgic memories about my Mumbai days, as I have about my Bengaluru days.

Perhaps by now the readers might have guessed, what I am trying to say. For any one, to feel nostalgic about a place or period, he must have done rather well there or then; may be, its the studies or the job or some other work. Having pleasant memories of just having spent some time in cafes or theaters usually is not enough.

These days, few of us, in the same age group, get together for a chat almost every evening. Leaving one or two persons, I have been acquainted with most members of this group very recently. Even then, the discussions tend to be quite interesting on most evenings for one simple reason. We have common interests but no common baggage of any nostalgia, because we have no common past at all. We therefore find it easy to talk on any subject under the sun.

Wikipedia says that although nostalgia is often triggered by negative feelings, it results in increasing one's mood and heightening positive emotions, which can stem from feelings of warmth or coping resulting from nostalgic reflections. Nostalgia also may help increase one's self-esteem and meaning in life by buffering threats to well-being. I do not think this is the whole truth. Some memories may actually exactly do the opposite and may pressurize a person towards a depressing mood.

Nostalgia has its limits! You can not go very far with it. What do you say?

4^th May 2015

The idiot factory

Ever since electronic media like TV have been opened up for private participation, the statements and speeches made by political figures and officials have become subjects of detailed inspection and ridicule for any absurdity and ignorance shown by them. In earlier days of print media, it used to be very simple to blabber and chatter anything that the politicians wished to say. Next day, when it appeared in press and if it was criticized, the politicians could flatly and simply deny any such thing having said at all. Since there was no proof of their having said that, they could simply disown the statement and get rid of any embarrassment that came out of it.

This old protective umbrella for politicians,  born out of limitations of press media, simply no longer exists. This can be seen clearly from the example of one of the important leader of a party, who during recently concluded general elections in India, became the butt of many a jokes because of series of statements made by him, which people found strange and incoherent. During those days, twitter and facebook pages used to be full of howlers from him and did provide much enjoyment for the people.

There are other politicians too, who bring out instead of enjoyment, ire and anger from the audiences. These people usually make casual remarks about some grievous or serious matters which concerns the people to a great extent. Such comments usually bring out strong resentment and much criticism from the audiences. These politicians perhaps do not realise how transparent the new media have become and expose themselves instantly. There are also officials, who are just so ignorant that they appear almost stupid, come out with statements that could be considered perhaps as the crowning accomplishment of all such blabber.

In the central Chinese province of Hunan, lead metal traces, as high as three times the national standards, were found in the blood of children in a village called Dapu. This can not be considered as a rare incident as widespread environmental damage due to rapid industrialisation over the past 30 years has taken a heavy toll on public health in China and similar incidents have been reported before. In 2011, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, 74 people were detained and work at hundreds of factories was suspended after 172 people - including 53 children – were found to have fallen ill due to lead poisoning. In the year 2012, in the city of Shanghai, after 49 children were diagnosed with lead poisoning, US battery maker Johnson Controls was blamed for lead pollution.

Investigations carried out in Dapu, also led the police similarly to the contamination caused by pollution from nearby Meilun Chemical Materials plant, as the principal reason for the incident. As the investigation continued , the factory was closed for investigation.

Mr Su Genlin is the chief official of this Dapu township. He however did not agree with police investigations and was unhappy with the closure of the factory. He had his own theory about the cause for lead poisoning. He came out with his fantastic theory when he told state broadcaster CCTV that "kids use pencils in school, and chewing pencils could also cause the excessive (lead) levels". Can you believe this?

When press broke out the strange theory, Mr Su Genlin himself was chewed by the social media. Author Cui Chenghao posted on Sina Weibo, China's own Twitter: "How can such low IQ cadres appear in public?" The Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily, blasted the official in an op-ed. "It is scientific knowledge that pencils are made from graphite," wrote commentator Zhang Yusheng. "Does this official's statement show ignorance, or just disregard for the people's welfare?"

A Sichuan-based commenter, Zhou Minghua, asked on Tencent Weibo: The responsibility of the pollution lies in the mouths of children? The core of pencils is mostly graphite and clay. This mayor has broken through the lowest level of humanity, pulled the logic of power down to the freezing point and displayed the cold-blooded nature of his authority.

Incidentlly, just the way word 'lead' is used in English to indicate the heavy metal as well as the pencil core, a same character is used in Manadrine for the heavy metal as well as for pencil.

I do not think, anyone appearing on Indian TV has as yet surpassed Mr. Su Galin. Isn't it? Wait and have patience. I am sure we would have someone come out of the Idiot factory soon and enthrall us with his brainwork.

18^th June 2014

Misusing the social media

A curious case of a young lady was reported on TV recently. This young lady had the misfortune of loosing her car as it was stolen. This lady promptly reported the matter to the police and launched a complaint about it. She perhaps thought that Police had some kind of magic wand and her lost car would be found in no time. However, police were not able to do much and the car was not found for next few days. Extremely peeved and agitated, she vented out her anger on Facebook and said few un-parliamentary things about the Police. Now she is in trouble because of her imprudent action. Not only her complaint about the loss of the car is on the sidelines but she is also facing trouble from the police, for her remarks on Facebook.

The Internet social media have given to the net users a tremendous new power, to express ourselves freely and fearlessly about anything that bothers us. Yet the same media, which are such a boon for propagation of free thought, can also spread hatred and malice, as has been proved by number of recent instances. Governments of the world including that of India have been making angry noises about this misuse for quite some time now, but miscreants and idiosyncratic characters have been increasingly misusing the social media to their advantage to spread words of hatred. Few weeks ago, such hate messages against people of Northeast India had gone viral, creating unprecedented panic and confusion amongst ordinary people from the northeast, who have moved to other parts of India to earn a living. Many of them were scared so much that they preferred to travel to their home towns seeking safety. However, whole thing was found to be a canard and they ended up spending lot of their hard earned cash on travelling back and forth.

Even before the dust could settle on the hate messages against northeast Indians, some character in US made a film, which appears to be highly offensive to many followers of a religion. If this guy had made this film and shown it to his friends in US, no one probably would have bothered much as all over the world many cranky people with even more weirder ideas , keep talking about the issues dear to their hearts. But this character from US had the propensity of releasing excerpts of this film on the social media. Actually US Government is no way connected with this film at all and US laws prohibit US government from taking action against this film producer. Yet, the US Government had to bear the brunt of the ire and wrath of people from middle east to southeast Asia.

How to tackle this menace of hate messages is probably a paradox for the creators of the social media and the Governments. We, the ordinary netizens, may not be able to do much here. But there are lot of things we could do regarding someone else using our social media accounts to spread misinformation or finding out information about people we know through us. There are many entities on internet, whose main job is to create a data base of people. They are trying to get Photographs, names, telephone numbers and addresses of people. Such data bases are in great demand by advertising firms as well as internet thieves. Facebook happens to be the main culprit, where such unsolicited information can be collected from unsuspecting friends. It is absolutely important that you set up the security settings on Facebook or Google plus properly. Otherwise some friend of your friend can easily spread information about you unknowingly or publish your photos by tagging them.

Many people think that when they pass comments using a synonym, they are absolutely safe and can write anything they want. Today, it is very easy to find out the source computer from which a synonym is sending messages. Besides using a synonym itself makes your intentions suspicious because the writer does not want to reveal his real name. I think an internet user must use his real name and write. In such cases he shows that he accepts the responsibility of what he has written and stands by it. Internet is not a private one to one conversation or a chat over a cup of coffee in a coffee house on a Sunday morning. It may be worthwhile to remember that what you write on internet is read by many people and it can be always misused!

19 September 2012

Internet, Rumours and the Government

Recent exodus of India's citizens from the northeast, settled in other parts of the country, back  to their home towns, has now definitely proved one thing; the tremendous mobilizing power of the new social media of the internet like Twitter, U-Tube and Face-book have on the minds of the people around the world. It is just beyond reach of my imagination, that somewhere, some criminally minded individuals, wanting to foment trouble, pick up some old pictures of people affected by natural disasters, morph them into some imaginary racial incidences and along with hate messages, release them on social media and ignorant ordinary people start believing them to be true and start running around. Unfortunately this is true and what happened exactly. Normally such messages should have been discarded by the netizens as crap and rejected. Instead of that happening, many netizens actually believed these incidences to be true and spread them around by using short message facility on their mobile phones. Subsequently, other people, who in the first place might never would have seen this hate stuff because they never had any access to internet, also became aware of the phony hate messages and a real panic began. The entire law and order machinery of the administration and the Government had no clue as they watched the exodus helplessly.

In a typical bureaucratic reaction, Government has now started banning some URL's or internet addresses, which they have found out to be the culprits. In the first place the usefulness of such measures, after the damage is already done, is very doubtful and secondly anyone familiar with internet can tell you that trying to ban sites in such a piecemeal way is like trying to harness wind and the efforts would be completely futile. The Government is now faced with a real dilemma about taking effective measures to prevent a repeat of this kind of mass frenzy.

It may be worth while to note, what happened in China in 2009. Xinjiang is the westernmost province of China. It has a majority of Uighur people, who are Muslims. Over the decades, Beijing Government has been supporting, settling of Han Chinese people in Xinjiang: a fact that is very much resented by the Uighurs, who are essentially of central Asian origin. This has led to much dormant unrest in the minds of local Uighur population of this province. In July 2009 some websites started circulating news that two Uighurs working in a factory in southern China had raped a Han Chinese co-worker. Because of this news, a brawl developed between Uighur and Han workers of the factory , which resulted in death of two Uighur workers. Images of the corpses of Uighurs, who died in the brawl began circulating widely in Urumqi (capital of Xinjiang) through websites and SMS like wildfire. Soon armed mobs of local Uighurs went on the rampage, attacking Han Chinese, who naturally responded with further violence. The ethnic riots in Urumqi, capital of the Muslim-majority Xinjiang region, finally left 197 people dead and more than a thousand injured.

Chinese Government shut down internet in Xinjiang after the incident for more than an year and tried to control social media with its own rules. When it was found out that this is unlikely to happen, the authorities blocked access to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the popular first-ever Chinese Twitter equivalent, Fanfou. After much thinking and putting in place an array of stringent regulations, Chinese Government showed green light to other Twitter equivalents, or weibos. Sina Weibo is the most popular service today with more than 300 Million Chinese registered with it. Despite censorship restrictions, messages on these Weibos are getting increasingly critical of the government’s stronghold on information.

I have mentioned this Chinese experience to highlight the fact that in spite of completely banning the popular social media from that country, Chinese are finding it difficult to control the information that is virally circulated on the social media, even with so many restrictions. Chinese Government is a communist controlled autocracy, where freedom of speech and thought is not guaranteed. In India our constitution guarantees this. If Chinese, with all of their totalitarian laws are finding it hard to control the internet social media, can Indian Government , with its feeble and patchy, half halfhearted attempts, can ever hope to eliminate, efforts of criminally minded individuals, wanting to foment trouble, from the social media. According to me they do not have even a slender chance of success. 

 

What is to be done then? Does the Indian Government allow things to just go on and hope for the best ? Or should it ban the social media altogether like China? I am afraid that both these measures are not practical in Indian context and also may not be acceptable to Indian people. It is clear that, we need to do some out of the box thinking. The simplest solution to the problem according to me, is that the Government and law enforcing agencies should join the rumour mongers. They should start using social media in a big way to show and tell the people the truth. In my home city of Pune, the local police department sometimes sends greetings and such other SMS on mobile. Why no SMS were circulated by police on continuing basis during this crisis that the rumours are false and Northeastern people are safe here in Pune and Police would offer full protection to any one who desires it. Similar messages should have gone on Face-book, Twitter and You Tube, on continuing basis. Police could also take help of forums and Blogs, which have good circulation and ask the administrators of such forums of blogs to put Police messages on their web sites at a prominent spot.

The matter, according to me, is serious and requires an all out but innovative effort to Blitzkrieg the social media to counter these criminals. It might be a good idea to set up voluntary and live watch dog bodies of netizens on the social media in all big cities and state capitals. If any such message with a malafide intention appears to be in circulation, instead of making futile efforts to ban it, it should be effectively countered with bombardment of messages telling the truth. Off course such countering messages must tell the truth and only the truth, otherwise they would loose credibility in no time and the whole purpose itself would be lost.

In short, I would not waste efforts in trying to harness wind, I would rather start blowing a far more strong and powerful wind in the other direction.

25 August 2012