Too much tosh on sale…by Pritish Nandy

We live in solipsistic, self indulgent times. Even if you don’t endorse the desperate need for self promotion, as indeed many of us don’t, there is too much of parental and peer pressure to simply ignore it. Look at some of the reality shows on TV and you will know what I mean. Grown ups are making a spectacular fool of themselves in front of millions. So are kids, some of them barely struggling to enter puberty but with no qualms about shaking their booty in front of crowds of hired strangers paid to clap at the end of every performance, however stupid or talentless it may be. There is an even bigger audience of idiots out there so desperate to express their opinion on which talent deserves to be protected or sacked that they will shell out Rs 15 per sms. If the channels are to be believed, more votes are polled during these reality shows than during elections, earning the channels a neat profit marketing pure drivel.

I have nothing against drivel as long as we know and recognise it as such. But the problem is that an entire generation is now growing up on tosh masquerading as genius. Just as an entire generation is growing up on tabloid gossip believing it is news. Perhaps I was lucky I grew up in times when some of the India’s finest talent in music, art, theatre, movies, poetry flourished. So I can still make out the difference. But a whole new generation is now out there, with blinkers on. They buy anything that’s packaged with hype and sold to them as success. They see it as sizzling talent. If you have never heard the music of RD Burman I’m not surprised you think Sajid Wajid is next to God. If you haven’t seen Shombhu Mitra on stage, can I blame you if you think Balika Vadhu is the ultimate in staged entertainment?

That is why we need history, knowledge. They context our experience. That is why classics are revered. If you haven’t heard Nusrat Fateh Ali sing, how can I blame you for believing that Himesh is the greatest singer of all time? That’s the problem with our times. We are too self obsessed, too busy with ourselves to realise that there’s much more to our art, music, culture than what we see happening on TV today. How can a critic who has never watched Manmohan Desai or Hrishikesh Mukherjee movies ever figure where our cinema is coming from? Unless you have heard Kishore Kumar or Mukesh sing, how will you ever know where the roots of our popular music lie? No, I am not trying to sell you nostalgia. I am only trying to expand your imagination by assuring you that there’s much more to enjoy if only you were to enlarge your scope of sampling beyond Munni’s charming exertions.

If you haven’t seen Sunil Janah’s photographs of the great Bengal famine, how can you ever understand the power and passion of visual journalism? Pablo Bartholomew’s one iconic picture of the aftermath of the Bhopal gas leak has survived millions of words to remain the strongest reminder of that human tragedy that still aches our conscience. I see so much abstract art around but nothing compares with the work of my friend Gaitonde who died a lonely, broken man in a Delhi barsaati, years after he stopped painting because he thought he had nothing left to say. His works still come up in auctions and sell for a million dollars whereas he died penniless and I know few people today who are even aware of his work. There’s no access to it either, apart from a few private collections which remain in godowns collecting dust and appreciating in value to be eventually sold off.

Yes, we have reduced art to auctions, music to reality shows, journalism to staged hysterics on TV, dance to item numbers, religion to unbearably noisy public festivals and the intemperate politics of hate. We have reduced our living literature to boring text books that have to be mugged before exams where your memory and cheating skills are tested more than your knowledge. We have reduced love to V Day cards and bouquets of cut flowers. We have reduced our pride and honour to the crude symbolism of murdering our own kids who want to make a marital choice different from ours. We have reduced all enterprise to the making of profit and bred a nation of carpetbaggers. Raj Kapoor teetered on the edge of bankruptcy all his life even as he made his most memorable films. Guru Dutt killed himself because he felt unfulfilled. Today’s film makers only boast their box office takes.

Are we losing out something somewhere or is this a new culture we want to build where the past does not exist and the future can go to hell?