BENGALURU: Sarahah - the anonymous messaging app - took India by storm in the last few weeks. Hidden outpourings of love, revelations of decade-old crushes, and spiteful messages were passed through the app.
However, I remained oblivious to it all. I know that behind every ‘Hey, you’re cute’, there are a hundred ‘Babzz ur a sexxy’. I recognised Sarahah for what it is - a fad. One that would create a storm for a while and then move on like a gentle cloud.
But something else about fads struck me. Over the years, the lifespan of fads has gotten shorter and shorter. Our fads lasted for years. Trump cards, friendship bands, and Add Gel pens consumed a good part of a decade. For me personally, fads had their own superlative degree - fad, fadder, father’s slap.
Which makes me think. Our parents probably had to endure fads for whole decades. Imagine playing marbles for 20 years of your life! No wonder my father turned into Bhasmasura every time I asked him money for marbles. It also explains why Shatrughan Sinha wore a leather jacket for 20 years. Why Jeetendra wore white shoes, inadvertently playing a tennis player in every movie.
Which is not to say that Yours Truly has been immune to fads. No, sir.
My entire life is a dark memory lane of fads. I wore the Salman Khan - Tere Naam hairstyle to school. The opposite gender, including our school cow, ignored my existence. I wore bell-bottomed jeans and embroidered woollen T-shirts that Sohail Khan wore in the movie I: Proud to be Indian.
But the icing on the cake was when I decided to get myself coloured streaks. Three of us best friends bought ONE pack of hair colour (burgundy - because why not?), and applied it on our hair. We forgot that the three of us always hung out together, went to the same college, on the same bike. We ended up looking like the Mirinda Men on methamphetamine. Which is why I have become immune to fads.
For eight years, my Facebook DP was a pair of worn out chappals. I only changed it when I realised I hadn’t been getting any Tinder matches for three years straight. I didn’t fall for Pokemon Go either. I had the app, and it showed a creature sitting right in my balcony. But my 2G connection didn’t let my Pokemon go anywhere.
Which is why I didn’t participate in the brouhaha over Sararah. I lay down on my bed of arrows like Bheeshma, and watched my Kaurava friends fall for the hype one after the other. I don’t need Sararah. If I need honest opinion, I merely need to ping one of my exes. The honesty in their opinions could force me to take 13 years exile, including one year in disguise!
(The writer is also a stand-up comedian. His first book will be out when Saudi Arabia is a
secular democracy.)