I want to be Homai Vyarawalla

She started her career in 1930s and thereafter received noticed at the national level when she moved to Mumbai in 1942 with her family, before moving to Delhi where in the next thirty years she shot many political and national leaders, including Gandhi, Nehru, Indira Gandhi and the Nehru-Gandhi family working as a press photographer. At the onset of the World War II, she started working on assignments of the Bombay based The Illustrated Weekly of India magazine which over the years till 1970, published many of her black and white images, which later became iconic. (wikipedia)

I want to be Homai Vyarawalla - I want to have seen the last 80 years standing at the threshold of monumental events. Always seeing the world through the eyes of a metal and glass apparatus, recording and preserving history as if it belonged to just her. I want to have seen the lament on the face of Mountbatten, the sorrow in the eyes of Nehru and the passage of time. Of having recorded the same streets every year and knowing how her country changed.

Its like being a rock - a lighthouse - at the mouth of a busy harbour - watching ships go by.

Its an amazing life. Wonder if someone would be interested in making a movie out of her story. Keep those pictures in a chronological order and fade into them and recreate those events on celluloid. Go deeper into her thoughts at that time. It would make wonderful viewing.


I wish i could be her.

The tethered thought bubble

Am sure most of us have grown up reading some form of comic book. It must have been a curious mix of Indrajal, DC, War, Asterix, Archies, TinTin, Chacha Chowdhary, Amar Chitra Katha and so on. Every character in these comics spoke to us readers in little bubbles with a pointy end aimed at the character. THAT is how we figured who was saying what and with what emotion. In comics like Asterix and TinTin it also helped us define our image of the personality of the characters, their voices and their behaviour. You had to read them again and again to discover things in their personalities that changed as we grew up

In real life to know a person is to interact with him or her over long hours, over conversations, over politics, interpersonal relationships and so on. One can never 'know' a person unless you have spent time with him or her and even after that we can never know how the person is in his personal space. Years can change and wax and wane the depth of knowing. New people / characters join in and out of our personal life and professional arenas.

We have now become those comic book characters! The things that we do on our social life while we are tethered to the internet through multiple devices define what we are and what our 'friends' think we are like. The thoughts communicated via the likes, comments, status messages, shares, tweets, blogs and so on hang above our heads in a virtual bubble. If one were to follow these thought bubbles of individuals, we would be able to get a fair approximation of what the individual would be like. We can judge a person's likes and dislikes, political leanings, preferences and personal life by mapping what he does via his social activities. I can visualise this as an invisible thought bubble hanging above the head with every changing updates of everything that ones does.

And worst still is that all of it is visible for all and sundry to see and analyse. And judge. So be careful what trails you leave behind everyday, someone might be keeping an excel of what you have in your thought bubble and create a character sketch based on it.

Social Networks and the art of being a sycopant

Lets define the terms mentioned in the title of this blog post first before we go ahead - Social Networks - Facebook, Linkedin, Orkut
syc·o·phant  /ˈsɪkəfənt, -ˌfænt, ˈsaɪkə-/ Show Sp[sik-uh-fuhnt, -fant, sahy-kuh-]

a self-seeking, servile flatterer; fawning parasite.

 

Social Networks are hugely successful because they satisfy a basic Human need - they allow us to advertise ourselves to our friends, co-workers and acquaintances in order to gain their attention, affection and acceptance. The social networks allow us to portray ourselves in colours that are flattering so that people who know us and people who hear of us are attracted to who we are. Its like a UGC advertising. A sort of frame work which has existed for eons where people duelled in the open with their opponents and displayed their spoils of war in the open. Why am I complaining? I too use FB for the same purpose. The constant cool quotes, the links and the comments are all designed to provide a profile that screams - He is THE man you want for the job or He is THE man for you. Somewhere in between all this attention seeking are honest messages to people who are real friends - most of these messages are hidden in the private sections where the 'audience' cannot see them and figure out the real me.

 

And then there are the sycopants, those men and women who will seek out and follow movie stars, VCs, CEOs, Writers, Social Media Experts, Angel Investors and so on. These souls hang on to every comments and every link from the people they follow. Most of their comments are loud claps on everything that is said, or encouragements that are supposed to have that sweet sound of sucking up accompanying them.

Its sad really! I am not even sure if the men and women they fawn over in the open even know about their existence or do they revel in the cacophony of people who are like groupies of rock stars and rock bands. 

Or do these sycopants use these comments to show that they are close to the people they follow? Sort of that old Delhi malice where everyone knows the chacha of the minister in power.