Alive and After

Alive and After

Jacintha saldhana has left the world. A prank of the Australian Radio Jockeys left the Indian nurse with few other options. Are we richer in terms of experience after that? Has the event been cathartic enough to clean us off , purge the media off,  the stinking trail of money and success?  What has made me thinking in this direction is an interesting picture I came across in connection with the upcoming burial of the nurse’s body  in India. The newspaper carried report of the tragic death and aftermath of the nurse and traced the track of the remains of the poor woman. It gave details of the funeral on another page. 

 

The ‘news/ad’ item that triggered these thoughts carried a headline which said, “ Watch the emotional memorial service of Jacintha with Alive on your phone”. It is hard to make the category out: was it an ad? It doesn’t look like that. Then was it a news item. That seems (un)likely. What was it then? The ‘news’ which appeared on 16 December  2012 in a leading English daily item kept me thinking. What is the motive behind this item? 

It need not be asserted that the demise of the Indian nurse was quite unfortunate and the kind of media prank which is a crude combination of Paparazzi and key hole journalism should be severely reprimanded. Sometimes even the pranks of the harmless kind one comes across in a ‘Just for Laughs’ brand of comedy show makes one wonder whether this will adversely affect the rather vanishing tribe of do gooders. When a woman who ran into help an accident victim realizes that she was being duped, will she, wont she, hesitate a while when she confronts a similar situation in the future? This is clearly a case of the royalty- obsessed media snooping off more than it can show/ tell. 

An app may be free of cost. Internet has lots of such apps which can be downloaded for no cost whatever. The same seems to be the case of Alive too. The object of my thoughts is the need and logic for this ‘alive-ness’. A mind which is open to share and empathize with the rest of the community, a willingness to be a participant in the worries of the larger humanity around is no foreign value for us. But the today’s common sight of mobile flashing crowd which leaves nothing unshot is sickening. Whether it is an accident or the remains of a body, a wrecked vehicle or an animal caught. This is not to mention the repulsive sight of funerals too being shot by upheld mobile gadgets. 

What’s immoral in recording an emotional event and keeping it alive?, the question is possible.  Nothing,  for sure.  The heaviness of the tragedy has long back sunken in. The moral rage it has unleashed too is justified. In England, against the backdrop of the Leveson Report, this should be another body blow to the media which is often caught with its cameras turned to where its back should be. But, was the soft urge by the newspaper to input better humanism into its readers’ mobiles and tab/ lap screens innocent? Was it just playing by the rules of engagement of the contemporary comedy of mobilers?

In the age of the visual, are we overshooting, over-watching ourselves? Are we leaving the bigger questions behind in the rush for the run for the picture?  If a picture can equal a thousand words, what does the contemporary picture of picture seekers reveal? Jacintha fell by the mock call of the Australian Radio Jockeys. Now we can fall for the visuals. The innocent newspaper has in all magnanimity offered us the opportunity to carry our compassionate curiosity to its logical conclusion.