The latest obsession of mankind is HIM. Well some might say this is not new, mankind was always obsessed with them. Some of those self-obsessed men have also altered the course of history. I wrote a couple of years back that prefixing a series of gadgets with the letter ‘I’ was in a sense a symbolic representation of the transformation our society was going through. Every man unto himself was the order of the day and the mushrooming of social networks just increased it. Social fellowship with the help of your smart devices was enabled from the confines of your living room were you renewed your emotional connect with your high school chums. Well this is not certainly my idea of a healthy social behaviour until you smell the coffee, bite the cookie and pinch your friend.
Around 600 odd years back the acclaimed artists of the Renaissance period started to paint themselves, thus was born the art of self-portrait. With the advent of mirrors in the 15th century the artist had a new tool to express themselves. It is said that in some of the works the artist depicted themselves without a hand, the hand that was actually painting. Mirror technology was still at its nascent stage, larger mirrors were hard to find and transport and hence the images were only as big and as good as the mirrors. Rembrandt, Da Vinci, Van Gogh you name them, they did it, their Self-portraits.
You might wonder at the reason I am hoping from modern day social network behaviour in one paragraph to 15th century self-portraits in the next. Well the link is the obsession of the modern day man to selfies. Yes SELFIES is the newly coined word for a picture of you taken by yourself using your own smart phone and posted on the virtual world and then waiting for comments, likes and shares to happen.
Just as mirror technology was making its way in the 15th century the camera resolution technology and it’s positioning on a telecommunication device like a phone was becoming more and more relevant so much so that phones are being designed with higher resolution on its front facing cameras to facilitate the projection of a better self-image. (Irrespective what your actual self-image in the social realm was)
This selfie bug has caught on like a virus so much so that politicians, artists and people from all walks of life don’t miss out on an opportunity to take a selfie of them. Be it at the Oscars, award functions or even at polling booths or an illegitimate union, the last two of which recently got a couple of high profile politicians in trouble.
We are suddenly seeing multiple offshoots of a selfie, the most famous of them being the recent pictures of inked fingers as testimony to exercising one’s franchise. This I named impulsively as fingfie when I first saw it but the media were quick to rename it the fingie getting rid of one redundant alphabet, redundant for me, but valuable for the twiteratti where an alphabet saved is an alphabet expressed. So going by this, you can take a picture of any part of your anatomy and suffix it with an ‘ie’ and viola you have selfie of ‘IT’. My dirty mind does think of a few but they sound so unprintable and hence I refrain.
Today we call it a selfie, even when more than one are present, shouldn’t it be called wefie or an usfie. Yours truly would like to patent it along with ‘selfiegram’ for a website on which you could post only selfies but digitally modified to look better, slimmer or fairer.
There is a beeline among celebrities to get longer arms, the six packs are passé. The longer arms at least will prevent us from getting a sneak peek into sweaty or hairy armpits of the selfie taker. So all you smart phone makers listen to the end users, along with better resolutions we need wide angle capability too to keep our arm pits out of the frame.
I intend to take a selfie of myself facing a mirror cutting off the arm with the phone from the frame to symbolically represent the coming together of the art of 15th century and the technology of the 21st century.
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Disgusting Democratic Discourse!
With the month long Indian elections meandering its way to an end, one thing that stood out this time was the political lingua that played out during the entire campaigning phase. It was a joy to hear political debates of the yesteryears when the focus of the debate revolved mostly around the agenda and promises of the rival parties. The fact that these promises or agendas never saw light at the end of the day is another story for another day; at least the language and the dignity with which these electoral speeches were scripted and delivered were exemplary.
The words and phrases that have been used in these elections have marked a new low in the discourse of parliamentary democracy. The political parties have vied with each other to raise the bar or rather raise the belt so that they get sufficient terrain below the belt to play with. In fact they were competing with their rivals to earn black points from the Election Commission that they considered electoral brownies.
The would be parliamentarians have indulged themselves in a verbal free for all which made it appear like a curtain raiser of their presence and performance in the next five years inside the august house. The only solace was that the un-parliamentary behaviour / language was outside the sanctum sanctorum during the curtain raiser, but would soon move in, come the 16th of May.
Some of the points / words / phrases around which the debates revolved were, the importance of a 56 inch chest to rule the country, abbreviated family names, scurrying rodents, a soft drink slogan, one called the other a butcher, while, someone said the other was honeymooning and furthermore some came up with very harsh communal overtones. However the clincher was, when one senior parliamentarian claimed he was better at hiding his girlfriend than the aspirant to the big power seat was, at hiding his wife. Can it get any better? It sounded more like a street fight among 5th graders after losing a game of cricket. Comparison to 5th graders is actually a compliment to these guys, because they discussed toffees too which normally figures in 2nd grader conversations. Each and every one of those above phrases was picked up and deliberated on prime time by the TRP hungry media.
Well it is understandable that when the stakes are high, tempers are bound to fly but unfortunately what I found was most of the modern day politicians have been too naïve and played their way into the hands of the media who have had a professionally fulfilling last 45 odd days.
My only prayer and wish is that, good sense prevails amongst these would-be parliamentarians and they realise how fortunate they are to lead a country so diverse yet united given all the shortcomings. Somewhere amongst the discourse of toffees, butchers, rats and 56 inch chests, the fact that we nudged Japan to become the 3rd largest economy speaks volumes of the efforts and resilience of WE THE PEOPLE. Democracy they say is of the people, by the people, and for the people. Fortunately or unfortunately the ones who were found squabbling over trivial issues in their political discourses are one among us. I’m not sure if they will be FOR THE PEOPLE when they enter the gates of the parliament later this month.
I was certainly disgusted with the democratic debates of this elections and hence the title, and as rightly pointed out by my daughter who made a passing remark asking me if I was writing about the 3rd Dimension of Democracy since it had 3D’s.
That’s when I realised this was certainly the 3rd, but the ugliest dimension to the democratic process I have been witness to in the last 4 decades.
The words and phrases that have been used in these elections have marked a new low in the discourse of parliamentary democracy. The political parties have vied with each other to raise the bar or rather raise the belt so that they get sufficient terrain below the belt to play with. In fact they were competing with their rivals to earn black points from the Election Commission that they considered electoral brownies.
The would be parliamentarians have indulged themselves in a verbal free for all which made it appear like a curtain raiser of their presence and performance in the next five years inside the august house. The only solace was that the un-parliamentary behaviour / language was outside the sanctum sanctorum during the curtain raiser, but would soon move in, come the 16th of May.
Some of the points / words / phrases around which the debates revolved were, the importance of a 56 inch chest to rule the country, abbreviated family names, scurrying rodents, a soft drink slogan, one called the other a butcher, while, someone said the other was honeymooning and furthermore some came up with very harsh communal overtones. However the clincher was, when one senior parliamentarian claimed he was better at hiding his girlfriend than the aspirant to the big power seat was, at hiding his wife. Can it get any better? It sounded more like a street fight among 5th graders after losing a game of cricket. Comparison to 5th graders is actually a compliment to these guys, because they discussed toffees too which normally figures in 2nd grader conversations. Each and every one of those above phrases was picked up and deliberated on prime time by the TRP hungry media.
Well it is understandable that when the stakes are high, tempers are bound to fly but unfortunately what I found was most of the modern day politicians have been too naïve and played their way into the hands of the media who have had a professionally fulfilling last 45 odd days.
My only prayer and wish is that, good sense prevails amongst these would-be parliamentarians and they realise how fortunate they are to lead a country so diverse yet united given all the shortcomings. Somewhere amongst the discourse of toffees, butchers, rats and 56 inch chests, the fact that we nudged Japan to become the 3rd largest economy speaks volumes of the efforts and resilience of WE THE PEOPLE. Democracy they say is of the people, by the people, and for the people. Fortunately or unfortunately the ones who were found squabbling over trivial issues in their political discourses are one among us. I’m not sure if they will be FOR THE PEOPLE when they enter the gates of the parliament later this month.
I was certainly disgusted with the democratic debates of this elections and hence the title, and as rightly pointed out by my daughter who made a passing remark asking me if I was writing about the 3rd Dimension of Democracy since it had 3D’s.
That’s when I realised this was certainly the 3rd, but the ugliest dimension to the democratic process I have been witness to in the last 4 decades.
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