For three days now I have tried to not watch the horror that has unfolded in Mumbai. I am un-sure what my motivations are. In the rooms around me, three televisons harmonize incessantly – talking heads on one channel blending into the sound of gunshots on another; the advertisements on the third seguewaying into the robotic chatter that emerges from the laptops scattered on couches. On my laptop’s tiny speakers, the voices appear shriller, the grenades are accompanied by static, the television guests appear more agitated.
On the flatscreen in my aunt’s room, the colours do appear richer, fuller, more life like. On her flatscreen, what appears as grey pixelated blotches on my laptop screen are revealed as fine dust settling on the stretched faces of television reporters as they mount their long vigil.
We try switching off gadgets one after another – first thte large TV in the bedrrom, the small 14 inch one in the kitchen – “X, switch off that laptop”. I try putting on some music – but even as I push the last off/standby button, my cousin’s blackberry is beeping – it is from his business school:
” We were scheduled to have Anil Ambani of Reliance ADA Group here on Monday but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has asked him to remain in Mumbai and to serve as a visible beacon of national stability. Thus, Mr Ambani sends his deepest apologies and promises to reschedule when possible.”
“Anil Ambani has cancelled his trip?”
“I wonder what’s happening on the news?”
And so we begin – each guiltily reaching out for the nearest remote.
I call up friends in Delhi, “What’s happening in Delhi? And in Mumbai?” I ask anxiously “Somehow I feel so disconnected.”
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
Of course, with all those tvs, laptops, blackberrys lying about in your house like ordinary objects of consumption, you have turned into a technological robot in your own house to be motivated to watch real horror. You should be as disconnected from these gadgets but you aren’t – because they claim you more than the horror in your street does. And what saves you? Your high-critical perspective on this and any other event. The real robotic chatter INCLUDES the very robots you have installed in your house. The members in your house including you are the real robots. It’s a double-robotic situation. And you have the lousy sense of humour to call up friends and ask what’s going on in Mumbai. As if they are victims of the robotic chatter you can depend on. Give me a break Mister Aman Sethi. Or rather, take one.
LikeLike
It appears that you assume that I am in either Delhi or Mumbai- which isnt the case. Hence the strange dislocation that comes from the knowledge that your street is burning – and not only are you powerless to stop it -which you are anyway – but you are also too far away to sense it.
I can understand your frustrations with flighty creative writing, but at present I find myself intrigued by the idea of the distance from the “scene of the crime.” So indulge me.
The first attempt I admit, was rather clumsy, but your comment gives me an opportunity to try and re-think this.
One of the central premises of the news media is that it broadens our sensory horizon. Sitting in Delhi, Mumbai, London or Tokyo, we process the robotic chatter (both within and without) of news and feel elation, grief, horror, sorrow.
So TV and the web shorten our notions of “long distance.” But do they simultaneously lengthen our notion of proximity?
Since I get the same news everywhere in the world, is the Mumbai now equidistant from both Delhi and New York?
Is the distance between Gurgaon and Greater Kailash the same as the distance between Gurgaon and Goregaon?
In which case, how far does the whiff of disaster travel?
This confusion of proximity struck me when I called friends in Delhi to check if everyone in Bombay was okay(i didnt have the numbers) – and then cribbed about how I was cut off from everything – and my friends in Delhi pointed out that they had the same news as I did.
But some how i expected them to have a better “sense” of what was going on -simply because they were in an Indian city and I was nt; an expectation that is admittedly naive – yet unshakeable.
In the three months I have been away, I have watched bombs go off in both Delhi and Mumbai – and each time have felt this weird feeling of disconnectedness – which is different from Delhi’s diwali blasts in 2006 or the samjauta attacks or the commuter train explosions (also in bombay). In these cases as well, I spent the day stuck to my television, making calls to check if everyone was okay. But it was different.
To sum up this rather rambling comment – I’m glad you wrote in and called a spade a spade. Not that my follow-up is any more coherent. I suppose it represents another stage in an attempt to think unpack the “bad” feeling that we get at times like this.
LikeLike
Dear Aman,
I used the word ‘street’ more symbolically than literally. I did get a good hang of the fact from your writing that you aren’t in India. I am glad (and relieved) you took my comments for what they are and didn’t insinuate anything nor took it personally.
I don’t think TV gives us any sort of enlightenment (rather feeds us all kinds of badly churned cliches). But I made it important in your context and you know why. I understood your human predicaments in the situation, but I had to get into the larger issue. It is easy for us to feel disconnected but precisely why we have to “rage, rage against the dying of the light” as Dylan Thomas had put it.
LikeLike