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October 14, 2011

Statements, Backlashes and Damage Control

Brood. Brag. Brash. In national interest...

Indians love to talk. And they love to have an opinion on anything and everything. Now since everybody has an opinion and everyone likes to be right, the talk is not always taken in well by all. It need not be. Just a minute... there are opinions on this too, because everyone also has a right to react! Kuch log baaton se react karte hain... kuch log laathon se... (I sense you are getting my hint ;))

Day in and day out people make public statements, often at the cost of another, with a menial aim to malign or attempt to sabotage efforts by another, whatever they may be. We know of people who have been the ‘statement givers’ lately and from all sides of the coin (yes the coin does not have only two sides... we should go back to the stone age where pebbles were used for coins... they make a better metaphor giving endless dimensions to everything, which as a matter of fact, is true).


Any observer would notice that these statement givers are part of a larger ‘team’ or ‘group’ whose ideals and core are symbols of something else altogether. They have known to cause more damage and severe dents to what the group stands for. Here we need to keep in mind that the ‘group’ refers to ‘any’ group – political, non-political, anti-political, socialist, anti-socialist, pessimist... so on and so forth. We can leave aside religious groups since they are naturally marred by controversy and give rise to other groups who call themselves ‘above’ religion but still have strong religious undertones.

Religiosity (or the non- of it) is congruent with the very existence of the homo sapiens species of creation. Ya, ya, there can be many arguments over the opinions that exist on this. But I don’t see the logic how one can deny religion not being the basis for one’s choice of religion, atheism and even spiritualism. Ok, enough of digression. We’ll discuss that in a later post.

Coming back to statements, we love them dramatised and in true Bollywood ishtyle. And then there are the reactions... of all imaginable kinds – from soft and harsh words to gaalis in the ascending order up to even murder. And that is not the end of it. ‘Reaction’ is not singular. It is a series of actions and reactions and further statements and further reactions till we reach a tipping point. This is the ‘damage control’ mode.

This is the most destructive mode of all. What the statements and backlashes don’t do, the damage control does... or recently has shown to be doing. It further dents the image and dilutes the issue redeeming it irrelevant and dissipated. The focus shifts on something else. Maybe that was the purpose in the first place. And then, maybe not. But this mode is by far the most time consuming and energy consuming... much more than the other two put together and doubled. Also in the futile attempts to clarify that follow, more things are given a place and a ladder – more statements, controversies, team-breaks, speculations and mass judgements. Has the damage been done yet?

Utterly spicy and entertaining, these things however, raise sharp questions on convictions, the conflict of individual perceptions and what the others would like to hear, the fight for singular supremacy  and above all the sheer degradation of respect for values and the inability to distinguish between what is appropriate and what is not. No doubt it is a Herculean task (or maybe more) to keep a group consistently motivated, enthusiastic and on the same platform. Higher the stakes, higher the level of difficulty.

But we Indians love to talk. Talk out our mind ‘as it is’. Welcome to the circus... we are always in town!

3 comments:

Sayali said...

Hey great observations about the way our so called leaders are portraying..would like to hear more..from the circus..

Sonali said...

Hahaha .. very witty ... I liked the metaphor :)
Since we Indians love to "talk" it out I'm sure that our news channels must have the highest number of breaking news too and the person in news need not be a famous personality to become news anymore ... Talk the Talk has a new meaning in India ... :)
Beautifully expressed Trupti .. Waiting for your next post :)

Biprashish said...

Hmmmmm, keep talking Trupti...& unleash your thoughts without any reservations...at least that's what I do....The journey called Life is a Circus after all....
Looking forward to many more like this....