Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Mary Kaun?
One road that leads to the Mount Mary's Basilica in
Mumbai is blocked for common citizens, at a time when people across faiths go
to pay respects, being the birthday of Mother Mary, on whose memory the
Basilica is built. Reason as it is a road that passes side of the abode of a
cine star, Shaharukh Khan. At the same time when one enters the Church
compound, there is a stall selling DVDs explaining the history of the Basilica,
and a poster in that stall shows Salman Khan sharing his experience with the
Basilica.
So we have one Khan that
restricts entry to the Basilica and another Khan promoting the Basilica. What
an irony? Do we need a cine star to promote a religious Institution? When the
star may not be practicing his own religion, why do we need his comments on his
experience with the Basilica? It was understandable if he has expressed his
experience in some public domain, but his comments or views are not required
for a DVD that is promoted by a Church institution.
Products may need stars to
promote their goodies. That is beside the point many of the stars would not even
be using those products. It is the products that need the stars and not the
other way around. Stars just need the money. Not that stars don’t do noble,
social and charitable work, but that does not qualify them to stand testimony
to a religious institution, at least definitely not a Salman Khan. If the aim
was to promote religious harmony, there are thousands of people from other
faiths, who visit the Mount Mary's
Basilica, any ‘ordinary citizen’ from another faith could have been
portrayed, to show their love for Mother Mary. Do we need a star power for
that? It would have been more appropriate if Salman Khan had to wear a
medallion of Our Lady on his bracelet and flaunted that in his movies, than
some stupid stone he sports.
When did religious institutions
need cine stars to show how well known or renowned their Institution is? Cine
stars can attempt to appease any Gods for their selfish interest. So we have
stars visiting Dargah of Moinuddin
Chishti in Ajmer, before a movie of theirs being released, or visiting Siddhi
Vinayak temple and this the media laps it, and beams it on their channels of
print or television, for TRP ratings. Doubt any of these religious institutions
use these stars to promote their religious places. On the contrary I am a great
fan of Salman Khan. That does not mean his views on a Church would ‘Kick’ me to
be more oriented towards a religious place. Maybe his movies would keep me
‘Ready’ awaiting his next.
Some of the good things (read
selfish things to make money) is at least movies are now made on ‘real life
heroes’. It makes one feel patriotic and proud when movies are made on soldiers
fighting wars for a country. That is beside the point nothing is remembered
about the soldiers or the ‘real heroes’ on whom these movies were made on; but
the stars get remembered for the movie in which they featured as a ‘real life
hero’. It is a great tribute in India when sporting heroes who are forgotten
are remembered through celluloid, on a movie was made on them. So we had a
great movie made on Milka Singh, also known as the flying Sikh. Similarly a recent
movie made on life of Mangte Chungneijang Mary Kom, better known as Mary Kom.
So these ‘real life heroes’ may
need an actor to portray their achievements. Religious Institution don’t. A
world famous monument as the Mount Mary's
Basilica for that matter does not need ‘anyone’ to depict its
importance. At least an actor’s testimony is not required, especially someone
who fakes to ‘Being Human’ and his actions has been contrary. Unless someone has a question ‘Mary Kaun’?
(meaning who is Mary?) 
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Are we connecting?
There’s a whole new world of networking and socializing, which is confusing, as the question is, are we really connecting? Yes we are……..virtually. It’s like connecting with God and we can’t see it but at least we believe it. So too in the social media we see it we would like to believe we are connected. How do we create this belief, we twitter our thoughts, Upload stuff on Face Book, or the other many virtual connectors in cyber space, get a couple of likes and some comments and feel good about it, that many saw it.
To the extent even where we can
and should feel connected, which is with family, we disconnect and connect
through these mediums. In reality we are so disconnected, that we want to just
feel connected and don’t ‘really’ connect. In the good old days of connecting
with far away loved ones had more of a feel, with letters which we termed as ‘snail
mail’. Maybe the feel was to the snail pace which brought the joy. What we
thought was ‘fast connect’ is not really connecting with any emotions. A joke
recently shared on Facebook, made sense, it read as follows: My Internet went
down so walked down to meet my folks, they really seem to be nice people.
Today with instant reach the feel
is not the same, and we would like to believe it is better. Memories like
birthdays or special occasions where we want or should be connecting it is now
a greeting over an email or through the virtual connectors. Even though there
are ‘free mediums’ to make a call, it is disconnecting and connecting with one
liners over social media. Some of the social mediums there is an option where
you can state your birthday, and it announces your birthday to your contacts.
So it is actually telling your contacts, “Hey it’s my birthday, please wish
me”.
Festive occasions which meant
buying cards, penning in the greetings, walking to a post office and mailing
them, is now a click; which in reality is a trick. We are tricking our minds
that we are sending greetings. So we end up tricking even emotions, where we
click our whole database of contacts and send a one liner or a copy paste of a
greeting, and feel we have wished everyone. Do we really feel we have wished
anything for anyone? The feel of excitement and joy of connecting with long
lost or distanced friends even if not spoken to each other for years is not
there anymore, despite all the techno-connectors.
Technology may have done great
for businesses and commerce. It remains only ‘business oriented’, and on the
individual level it has only distanced people, where the medium is used to feel
we are in touch. Touch is lacking is so bad, that people seek happiness in
displaying their daily lives over social media, with a hope someone would reach
out to them. They do get the reach with likes and comments, but is that what
they are really seeking? An old saying holds true, ‘A friend of everyone, is a
friend of no one’. So we have tons of friends in all the social media outlet,
and in reality no friend with whom there can be an outlet of expressing our
emotions.
We just have to limit, if not
disconnect many mediums we are using to connect and reconnect. As good as
unlearning to learn something you already know. Connect and reach out and
touch. Use all techno social mediums if need be to express and not just to
impress with pictures of your holidays and forwards of what you like. Some if
not many or all, may just like you, and want to know how you doing, and not
what you are doing. They may just want to know that you care and you mean it.
Take time out to connect with emotions, which may not happen with poetic or
motivational posts.
Sometimes two friends could
really meet and not say a word to each other, but yet feel so happy they were
with each other. Are we connecting or disconnecting or what is happening,
isolating.
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