DailyPost 2078
CELLULOID AND TALL CLAIMS!
Has life finally moved on the celluloid or so we all believe. We will bring down our understanding of our celluloid to video as understood today, omnipresent and all pervasive, in the multimedia enabled social media world. It is instantaneously shared as well. Sharing can go to viral levels, and it is said, anything can be shared globally in less than two hours. Till Covid-19 hit us in the manner it did, we understood viral and virus in the social media and computer terminology parlance. Indians are prone to tall claims and validation and verification is not our forte. We recently found a civil services candidate celebrating her success, having read her name wrongly in the merit list.
Celluloid has always fascinated us way beyond anything else, and therein lies the success of Bollywood and others and the actors becoming larger than life figures, with the capability to swing people. Some came out of the screen and got into public life with differential levels of success, for a variety of reasons, some pertaining to their abilities and others dependent on the level of hypnotism, masses responded with. With video becoming an important element of our existence and interaction, the celluloid mania, if one may call it so, has people from all walks of life. From writers, teachers, bureaucrats to a student, everybody is bitten by the celebrity thought process. Social media has put society on fire. The video should precede you; the videos should define you.
Professions which are supposed to keep away from the celluloid glare, have landed deep into it. There is a video for everything and unfortunately, more often than not, it is created by the person who is madly in love with himself, and a large part of people are. The video is the delivery itself. And unlike the celebrities, the dissemination has to be done by the person himself. They also have to follow the video’s success. So, from creating to the follow through, it is an enterprise which has no meaning to the vocation and results you are asked to deliver. This is your private enterprise. The pros of the celluloid / video / social media world, we all know, the cons are kept under wraps. The time and energy is taken out from the time dedicated to some productive tasks and then you are in the mode of looking good, beautiful, successful and hospitable all the time. This is a tall order, and non-life like.
Speeches and press conferences now have all the jazz, it is recorded and is available for eternity. Celebrity has a reason for public domain presence, for the vocation he or she is in. If you are a make-believe celebrity or an influencer you have to keep making tall claims. Initiation of anything is success and the end result as we all know, will never come by. Your success and milestones are not celebrated by others, you yourself create it out of nowhere, it is the challenge the country is facing. If everybody is into making tall claims, then the competition between them brings the country to a standstill, that is where we are today. If you decide to add up everything, you would get a feeling that everything has already been achieved. Boasting, pride, camouflage, fake claims and anything that helps you steal the thunder, you make it your own with gay abandon.
CELLULOID MINDSET AND TALL CLAIMS WITHOUT EVEN UNDERSTANDING IT, IS A SUICIDAL COCKTAIL.
Sanjay Sahay