There is a lot of clever writing in the world. It does not say much. It preens on a page, dressed in clever alliterations and metaphors. It does not change much either. It's purpose is to fill space, fly off bookshelves and magazine racks. I do not want to be a clever writer.

Inshallah, Kashmir

Inshallah Kashmir : Living terror - please read disclaimer from ashvin Kumar on Vimeo.

Don't live in denial.



You can also read about Ashvin Kumar, the documentary filmmaker who made Inshallah, Kashmir here.

2012

Somewhere on top of the long list of things I'm trying to sort out in life, is, ' STOP WASTING SO MUCH TIME ONLINE'. Given the octopus-like effect the internet has come to have on our lives, it is harder than you can imagine. At the very least, I can turn some of the time wasted online (on Facebook and while watching random, mostly awful television shows) into mental-yoga and utilize trash to write interesting things. At it's best, the internet is my library, museum, amusement park and directory.


Another resolution, sternly-made but barely-kept, is to write at least 1000 words every day. I won't subject you to all of it, but the hope is that for every 10,000 words of utter nonsense, I will write a few sentences that I can be proud of, and that you might carry with you in your head for a while. The hope is also that this public declaration will gnaw at me enough to keep me writing.


Here is something I wrote for Tehelka a while ago, about what happens to Facebook profiles when you die. (Morbid, but what is worse is the thought of dying while actually ON Facebook. Can you imagine doing something so utterly devoid of joy at the moment life is snatched away from you? ) The edited version of the story is available here






To Mourn, Click Like


2011 has been the year of electronic grief. An icon passed away, a Tiger burnt brightly and faded, the voice of love and a thousand ghazals was silenced, the Junglee broke our hearts, and last week, an evergreen hero decided it was finally time to leave. As each legend passed on, we became sub-editors and video-jockeys — anguished, aptly worded status messages and YouTube videos were our eulogies at the largest funeral in the world — on Facebook.
The new age equivalent to ‘is a noise in the woods a noise, if no one hears it’ seems to be — did it happen if it didn’t appear on your newsfeed?

It is hardly surprising in a universe of blue boxes that ‘Death’ also has a page on Facebook . The latest of the morbid yet kindly updates on the page reflects, ‘When the rich and famous die, the world seems to stop to pay tribute. From substance abusing musicians, philandering tycoons to scheming politician to deserving humanitarian. But doesn't the impoverished mother who struggles to raise a child deserve to have her life remembered too? But hey, I'm just Death...what do I know.’

The sentiment finds some resonance in Facebook’s prism of faux-celebrity-hood. News — global and personal — is shared, photos uploaded and tagged with feverish speed. As our communication and memories become increasingly virtual, so do our imprints on the lives of others. We may not pick up the phone to call old classmates anymore, but we are aware of each phase of their lives as it unfolds — vacations, promotions, marriages and births, much like we would read about and ogle at film magazines in the past. Given this careful documentation of one’s life online, the question arises unbidden — what happens to your facebook profile when you die?
With the many painful logistics that the death of a loved one forces upon us (of the body, of possessions, of wealth), deactivating a social networking account should be the least traumatizing. But a quick glance at Facebook’s ex-Chief Security Officer Matt Keller’s blog in 2009, announcing the company’s decision to ‘memorialize’ profiles of deceased people, will shatter such insulated assumptions. ‘Memorializing’ is essentially freezing an account, once Facebook is informed of someone’s death, so that no future attempts can be made to log in to the account, or access prior conversations the user might have had with his/her friends. What well-wishers can do, is visit the profile as a place of remembrance, write on the ex-user’s wall, leave tributes like songs, poems and photographs.

Hundreds of Facebook-users have commented on Keller’s blog begging Zuckerburg and Co to revoke the memorialization — as one comment by a heartbroken mother states — ‘it may sound crazy but the amount of work and life energy that goes into some people's accounts is priceless. It is a shame to lose this information forever.’

Then there are the profiles that escape mummification. Pia Mukherjee (23) lost her best friend Karan to a car-crash when the two were eighteen, and Facebook had just begun connecting the world. Karan’s profile continues to be ‘managed’ by his friend — ‘Ocassionally, he gets new friend requests from people who want to reach out to his family. But every year, friends write on his wall for his birthday and death anniversary, sometimes just to share some good news,” says Pia. In her review, ‘Generation Why’, an analysis of Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network and Jaron Lanier’s book ‘You are Not a Gadget’ ; Zadie Smith expresses her misgivings about people who will write ‘missing you babes’ on a murdered teenager’s wall. She asks, befuddled, ‘Do they genuinely believe, because the girl’s wall is still up, that she is still, in some sense, alive? What’s the difference, after all, if all your contact was virtual?’

Fiza Jha (17), who lost her best friend Aarushi Talwar in the country’s most hotly debated double murder barely had a few hours to grieve before images of Aarushi and her friends at birthday parties began flashing on news channels. “There were pictures of us in group huddles, or in sleeveless shirts being shown on the news with captions about her sexual orientation. Aarushi was relatively inactive on Facebook, and we immediately realized they were being taken off our profiles. We had to delete every one of our photographs with her at once to stop the rumours. I barely time to look at those photos and think about her or what I had lost.”

The caution was not misplaced. In one of its many blundering shots in the dark, the NOIDA police chanced upon a message from one of Aarushi’s thirteen-year-old friends that said “Argh! I’m going to kill you!’ and insisted upon interrogating the child to see if she had motive. Another email, from Aarushi to her parents, apologizing for something she’d done which she’d never repeat again (going for a movie alone with her friends and lying about the fact that an adult was present — not the gravest of sins a fourteen-year-old can commit) was used to insinuate that she’d had sexual relations with someone, which her parents had found out about.

The fact that Aarushi’s facebook profile still lies buried in cyberspace (her last status update, three days before she was murdered — ‘Yippee! School’s closing!’) is testament to the fact that as her friends grow up, they like the idea of having a space, even a virtual one — where they can revisit the memory of the young girl they once knew and the conversations they shared. “I wouldn’t want that last bit of her to go away. I have know that she isn’t around anymore, but I don’t want to feel like she never existed,” says Fiza.

If the idea of Facebook-driven existentialism sounds fantastic, consider the death of 21 year old Gudiya at St Xavier’s college in Patna. Gudiya had been seeing her boyfriend … for a few years when her grandmother betrothed her to someone else. Enraged, he waited outside Gudiya’s examination room for an hour armed with a khukri, seized her by the hair when she stepped out of the hall and beheaded her. Dropping the khukri on the spot, he began to flee the campus. Eyewitness accounts claim that outraged friends and faculty rushed after him, thrashed him and handed him to the police. The remaining students filing out of the classroom, gathered around the body, held up their smartphones and began uploading pictures of the body on Facebook. News viralled and condolences began pouring in as friends of friends began to be tagged on the image of Gudiya’s decapitated body. ‘Love Aaj Kal’, the image was captioned.

It’s easy to dismiss digital tears. They don’t smudge your make-up and you can always change the tab if the death-updates get too depressing. One can only thank the universe that Camus wrote The Stranger before Facebook and Zuckerburg could memorialize mother’s death.