Why being famous sucks

This post was due for long time because I just could not jot down all ideas. But an article in Gurgaon times about ‘People who could not handle success’ featuring troubled actors such as Lindsay lohan, Britney spears and the likes filled the dot and it all made sense.

  I always thought why is that, that after getting everything normal person dreams of, celebrities do outrageous things. Some one drove his Audi over people sleeping; some got drunk and abused the guard at a stadium, someone took her life because of a failed relationship. They have everything, what do they long for? Can it be that being rich and famous isn’t that fun?

-  No private life: the biggest price one has to pay for being recognizable is that your private life is brutally taken away from you. Everyone wants to know everything about celebrities and paparazzi’s make sure they are never away from a flash. Publicity, which once begins as a fascination, later turns out to the biggest price you pay for being loved and admired by many.

-   Every action is up for public scrutiny: being in the news makes your actions bare in front of the whole world and it attracts unwanted and often unrequired criticism from people, who normally have nothing to do anything with your daily life. People who you don’t know commenting about your choices in life and expressing their discontent about personal decision can not be comforting no matter how easy going person you are.

-    Having an opinion is a curse: every one wants to know about your opinion on something or the other so it can make news when a celebrity has publically adored/criticized a govt action/public figure or something similar. And since every other person can not agree with you, press and news channel make it their duty to cover every singlt one of them and how you feel about it.

-   Ogling people: Eyes keep following you, no matter where you go, what you do. A simple task like going to market and having your favorite gol gappas or attending a concert of your favorite rock band turns a distant dream because you cannot risk causing a stampede. The ogling eyes never stop, they keep following you everywhere.

-   Random people expect you to be nice to them: Random people keep bumping into you to tell you the same thing, how big a fan they are and how their distant relatives would love to see them in a picture with you. Of course you are a celebrity so you are in a good mood all the time and would love to smile in a pic with them. It doesn’t matter that you have been sitting there for 5 hours waiting for your flight and doing the same thing over and over again. If you say no, you are rude.

-       You will be mocked regardless of your actions: there will be comedians/cartoonists who will make jokes about you, your actions/ your family matters because mocking famous people is easier and you don’t have to explain the joke. One wrong decision and you are the butt of all jokes in the entire country, debates are being organized on news channels and self-made public figures/’close’ friends to suggest you how bad a decision you have taken on national television.

-   Internet is a monster: you realize how big a nuisance a person with a smartphone can be. You suddenly realize how scandalous a single picture with you caught with a weird expression, scratching your back, trying to do anything out of the ordinary can turn out to be once it goes on to internet. And you are helpless trying to explain your stance while everyone is having time of his or her life at your expense. The biggest boon about the Internet turns out to be your biggest nightmare.

-   Number of friends and relatives increase exponentially: number of people who suddenly realize how close you and maternal uncle of their 3^rd cousin’s father were and so you should help them get their work done which normally involves giving a phone call to someone in a decision making position because he mentioned how big a fan he is. The number of people who you should avoid at a family function or a party keeps getting longer day be day until you absolutely can not meet anyone and are labeled rude.

Maybe people who went to the other side of stardom are normal people like us who want the same thing from life. it’s just that they managed to make it big in life. And like everyone, they make mistakes. I am not passing judgments here but the sudden realization about this kind of makes me think that being famous isn’t all that fun. agree/disagree? do comment \m/oO\m/

#freeandopen: why you should care

‘if you want to test a man’s character, give him power’ – Abraham Lincoln

Being a blogger, you are expected to be politically correct and subtle with your humor because here’s the thing about power, it doesn’t encourage mocking. Sarcasm gets away because not many people are able to see the underlining pun and even fewer find it funny. So in a country where subject such as how many cartoons should kids be exposed to, makes it to national newspaper’s headline after being debated furiously in parliament, I found it odd that arresting people over posts on social networking sites/blogs came as a surprise. Furthermore, when a search engine is forced to tell you that govt’s are planning to gag internet to suit them, it brings up a huge dilemma.

  Internet is and always has been free barring some pseudo democracies and countries feeling too good about themselves.  World Wide Web, in its earlier phases, was supposed to be paid according to rumors but the guy who invented it decided to give it up for free. Millions of data transfer and invention of iPod’s later, apple fans please pay attention; people realized what a boon that turned out to be. Egyptians can elaborate here. People across the globe could make their voices heard. Every opinion mattered. If you have an internet connection, you could make your voice heard. Similar minded people joined hands to make something as basic as peer-to-peer exchange, a big industry. Newspapers began to break news on their online portal in real time because of large readership. Comment threads were opened for discussion and turned out people who seemed pretty content earlier had an opinion too. Secret wires between diplomacies were put up for the world to see the dialogues between closed doors.

  But like every good thing, some people took the power of anonymity along with the ability to express themselves independently and used it to voice their extreme opinions. When I say extreme, I mean the inability and refusal to hear and/or acknowledge a counter view. like in real life, people began hijacking discussions forums and comments section were strictly moderated because there can be no limit to what you can say when you don’t have to say it face to face. Govt’s understood the need to monitor and make laws, which governed Internet. But there lies the problem.

How much policing is too much?

Google's initiative

 Which brings me to my post, is government right is trying to enforce laws that prevents us from looking at certain pages because they think its not right?  Isn’t government, by suggesting that we can be tried for something that so much as even causes ‘Discomfort and annoyance’, taking away the right to speech in some way? More importantly, how and why do you plan to filter communications between citizens of free country? Is a post on some social networking site worthy enough to get you detained? 10 years before today, this might not have created such uproar but now, when every second marks a new breaking news and the 24-hour news channel thing has actually started to make sense (talking in terms of quantity, quality on the other hand leaves much to be desired).

  Talking about the illusive democracy we live in, Mr. Sibal has been defending government’s action continuously by saying they don’t want to curtail free speech and are in favor of citizens having opinions. Well I trust Mr. Sibal because he is in a position of power and for the well being of my extended family, I cannot afford to afford to disagree with him. But if Google is anything to go by, and I don’t see why they would want to lie about it, there seems to be some misunderstanding somewhere. Because we are number 2 in asking for details about citizen’s browsing details and asking for shutting down sites. Plus, those two Mumbai females did not have a very good experience for having an opinion online, and her doctor uncle will vouch for that because his office got ransacked by some guys who disagreed with said lady’s comments and were not able to find a dislike button on the networking site in question, nor did that unknown guy from Pondicherry for causing displeasure to a certain MP. Let me specify explicitly, for obvious reasons, that I don’t necessarily agree with either of these school of thoughts but these cases could have been handled better. And I am not even going into the way the north-eastern fiasco was handled in recent times.

  And shutting down every channel/medium, which disagrees with government, is certainly not the way to go forward. Agreed, people need to watch their words and verify sources before making claims but going all ballistic on netizens because they don’t make too much difference in polling number game is not a very smart move. What makes government’s claims even more absurd is the way Internet is treated when used in general discussions. Considering how it has turned every user into an activist of sorts, we, as citizens who voted them to power, need to ask governments, what exactly is that they are afraid of? Why would they want to shut down a page?  Because I still believe that something, which connects people and makes them audible can only help in growing democracies if dealt with wisely.

 Buckle up leaders, the world is watching

Agree/disagree, have something to say? do share \m/oO\m/

The great indian Face-Off and after-effects

*What you are about to read is written in all seriousness and contains no joke whatsoever. If you find it funny, please leave your IP address and twitter handle in comments section (cc: Govt Of India)*

During past weeks, the whole incidents related to people leaving states to go back to their own (north-east in this case) have captured nation unlike any other in recent times. Ironically, this came barely weeks after Mary kom and Devendro (please Google them/their place of origin and consider shooting yourself) took the whole nation by surprise by displaying the unseen fighting spirit, literally and metaphorically on the biggest sporting arena in this world. Every north eastern guy was beaming with joy, because frankly speaking, how many of us can actually locate imphal, dispur or agartalla on Indian map, and more importantly, do you smell what I smell?

  But the whole phase was short lived and before any of them knew what happened, SMS started circulating in south Indian states, including Maharashtra blaming them (yes yes, all north eastern states same thing) for something related to Bangladeshi immigrants and some violence in Assam and asking them to leave the city/state and go back to their home state, whichever or wherever it may be. Some of these guys also beat up policemen and media persons because THAT totally makes sense. Wait this gets (I am going to hell for saying this), better. Our govt, as efficient as they are, did what most citizen friendly govts would do. They provided as many trains as were required for north eastern guys to flee while also trying to co-ax them to stay promising to ‘protect’ them because our national need to be secular beats the shit out of common sense any day. The ‘National No Shit Sherlock’ dept, also known as police dept in some parts of country according to unconfirmed reports expressed complete cluelessness at the turn of events and promised to take action against Pakistan by providing them with ample proof. Pakistan responded by banning ‘Ek Tha Tiger’ and was condemned all and sundry for the hideous action.

  Meanwhile, SMS’s and photo tagging was in full swing at the public wedding hall also known as face-book. It was when a tibetian guy (long story, they blurred it in rockstar) was stabbed with a knife and was warned to leave before the date that panic spread. But the problem with our PM is, he exhausted his entire madam approved speaking quota for the month on Independence Day itself and strongly condemning an action can very easily be done by secretaries as well. So, he ordered*(citation needed) that twitter shut down all his parody accounts as well (some word limit thing). Our govt swung into action again and, in between all the ‘they made money in auctioning coal’ ‘oh my god why is PM selling coal?’ ‘When will Poonam pandey take bath again?’ ‘Look, unicorn!’ ‘PM MUST RESIGN’, our all knowing, aryabhatta devotee, Mr. Kapil Sibal did what any rational thinking person in power would have done. He ordered to block twitter handles of random people because apparently you can’t shutdown internet, because lets be honest. People hell bent on killing each other, do keep tab on what people are writing on twitter and…. WHAT DID YOU JUST WRITE THERE? I AM GOING TO KILL MY NEIGHBOUR! Twitter started with blocking account of IT minister, to which most of government employee’s reaction was ‘don’t believe in rumors, we have no such ministry?’.

  At the time of writing, Apple is yet to announce its new phone and Suhel Seth & kargil ‘you-know-who’ journalist have whole-heartedly supported the decision. Mahesh Bhatt could not be reached. Arindam choudhry was quick to jump to bandwagon and wasted a lot of ink in the process of; you wont believe it, writing. Last heard, Rahul Gandhi was having lunch with a BPL family, the exact co-ordinates of which has not been revealed due to security reasons. If you are wondering how this helps distraught people in Assam or any of northeastern people, raise your hand. Now take that hand and try to make a 5 finger imprint on your cheeks.

  I would have commented on the turn of events and made an intellectual joke but sadly, I am yet to be a verified secular ideologist/fundamentalist/ left-right- east- west wing. 

I love my government. RAHUL GANDHI FOR PRESIDENT, oh wait.