BENGALURU: Last week, a group of youngsters sat in a tony restaurant in upmarket Bengaluru, ordered some designer dishes and set about clicking them on high-end mobiles. With some preens and some pouts. The plates of victuals were barely delectable and didn’t contribute much by way of a wholesome, fulfilling meal, but by the end of the evening, the youngsters had enough digital fodder for their videos and reels for the next few days.
They didn’t mind that the dishes had burnt substantial holes in their pockets, their saving grace was their Insta-worthiness; they would announce on social media that the group had been there (a Bollywood diva’s venture), done that. That’s life in a metro these days.
Food, clothes, travel, births, weddings, even death... everyday events to milestones hinge on what can be shot and uploaded, and how insta-genic your life can look – with or without filters. It would seem that the young lead dual lives today – one in humdrum reality, and another in unrealistic dreamlike frames infused with an abundance of beauty and joy. One masks the other. That’s life on an app, it’s not easy but it’s addictive.
And it’s an addiction which is claiming lives, going by a spate of suicides over the past many months – teenagers denied mobiles, or deprived of them, or reprimanded for addiction to the gadget, have preferred to die. Just like that. Not a thought for the parents who couldn’t afford to buy expensive phones, or who were only trying to discipline them, or even for the myriad possibilities that life held for them.
Deprivation never did kill anyone. Flashback to the days when owning your own small Kodak 35mm roll film camera was a dream for which one was expected to scrimp and save. When you would push in the roll, snap the camera shut and were ready to shoot.
Each exposure of 24 or 36 was used sparingly, and a retake was a luxury. There was no insta-gratification, and certainly no pouts. Developing the film roll was an overnight process, and the precious prints had to be collected from the studio before one could gaze at the fine points and faults.
Even today, these are cherished frames which captured forever memories and expressions and are carefully preserved in albums brought out from time to time to relive another age. More precious than the millions of ephemeral daily clicks which vanish onto the cloud, or slip away, forgotten, in the digital recesses of the mobile.
(The writer’s views are personal)