RIP Sridevi, RIP Sensitivity!

Another death, another spectacle, hollow emotions, primetime melodrama – this has become a repetitive template. With 800+ TV channels competing for idiot time loyalty, weekly challenges thrown by movie stars to promote their respective contribution to box office mediocrity and an entire universe of Yotube influencers joining in the plague race, the entertainment seeking man is forever starved for more entertainment.

Drug addiction? Nothing compared to addiction to be consistently entertained. News channels with bath-tub reporting create stories, but for whom? Rakhi Sawant has not one but 2 selfie video tributes laced with tears but again, for whom? Maybe the audience was not there, maybe the audience that sampled the content was disgusted with its poor taste, or maybe not.

Seriously, if husbands ordering bathtubs and lifeguards managing bathrooms in 5-star hotels is the level of humour that we have stooped down to, blaming journalists, blaming media or blaming Rakhi Sawant can merely be categorized as self-shit-swag.

My one definite contribution to society is to be part of various Whatsapp groups, society ones, friends, old friends, school friends, don’t remember their faces friends, did we know each other friends and some adjectiveless family ones. & many of them have been abuzz with news centered around Sridevi. The customary RIPs gave way to doctors prescribing how to shower to the usual conspiracies that you did not know about. That the tribute gave way too soon to Sherlockism is pardonable considering people move on with need for entertainment. Perhaps the tributes when they did flow were genuine.

But then came in the jokes followed by LOLs, RoFLs & emoticons that simply did not fit into the context of paying tribute to someone you loved. & we expect non-frivolous journalism & we expect Rakhi Sawant to act responsibly.

On none of these Whatsapp groups, did anyone counter such jokes with the same fervor that we sometime do while defending our politicians and their bullshit. Never once did the men (& women) who share such forwards reflect on their pitiful state of becoming such a slave to their desires to smiles, however tragic it is. We are just too used to live it by the joke.