Remember a time, when you said, "Ah! I am bored of this book." or "This game is so boring" and you will just sit in your chair and look at the wall not knowing what to do for hours. Even your parent's constant nagging to move your butt or go outside and play would not seem to matter. Because you are just so bored of everything. Again it is not a nostalgia post, i.e., ah the 90's were so much better.
To come to think about it, today the whole system is designed around us to entertain us constantly. We all are addicts, addicts to entertainment, addicts to keep our minds busy with new information all the time. Think about it, at the slightest inkling of getting bored, we switch to do something about it, call someone, go to youtube rewatch clips from the old movies, watch the top ten lists of everything on this earth, keep scrolling on facebook, buzzfeed, buy things on Amazon and ebay, buy things we may never need (or may just write blogs :))
If you tell people that you are bored. Everyone around you will come up with an instant solution. Oh here look at this cat video, or watch this movie, play this game, why don't you go out ? Why don't you meet new people who can effectively suggest you more things to do. The point I am trying to make is that the society thinks that getting bored is a bad thing. As if it is something unnatural and a sign that you are going to be moping and sad in some time if you are not entertained immediately and put out of your misery that is boredom. This is also reflected in a day to day conversation with most people. It has become more of a competition to constantly be saying interesting or funny things. However, as a human being you can practically come up with so many interesting things at regular intervals of time.
An addiction:
Being entertained is addictive. I think it is almost as bad an addiction as any other drug. Maybe the idea of being entertained constantly is a precursor to drug usage. We are heavily surrounded by the next most super awesome amazing thing in the world which you can enjoy right now on your finger tips and not a minute later. We feed our reward center of the brain by entertaining ourselves constantly to such a point that it becomes numb. At this point we need more and newer forms of entertainment, which is not bad, but again there is something called indulgence. It seems like we can never satiate our quest to be fully entertained.
Being bored can be a wonderful thing. It is a time, when one can think about new ideas or maybe not think, just being in the moment of time. Being bored is the cradle of creativity. It is the time when we can reflect and create something out of thin air, come up with interesting ideas and learn to appreciate the little things around us and feel truly entertained. Being bored also gives the time to take a step back and look at ourselves from a different plane, feel empathy towards others. Its a beautiful thing.
There was a time not too long ago, when if you want to watch a play you really need to travel to that distant village where it was being performed, if you heard the most beautiful song in your life at some place being played by some musician, you actually need to travel to a place where he/she was playing. There was a huge price tag attached with the idea of being entertained. Today we have the luxury of listening to the same song again and again if our heart so desires. Entertainment is cheap, but it comes at a heavy price of indulgence.
So, next time you feel bored, do not pick up the phone and dial your friend just yet or go to youtube to re-watch the same thing you watched a million times before in attempt to chase the first high. Just let it sync, be bored more often to enjoy the things that really matter.
Recetly, the British director Leslee Udwin's documentarty India's daughter is looming under shadows of controversy and the Indian government and the Supreme court is "trying" top ban the above mentioned documentary. Well to the people sitting in the parliament and the old judges in the court, I have one small advice for you, in case you already didn't know: YOU CANNOT BAN ANYTHING ON INTERNET. THE MORE YOU TRY TO CENSOR IT, THE MORE IT WILL BE WATCHED.
You have to understand how the internet works, the more you try to hide something, the more it will be exposed. Honestly speaking, if the documentary was not surrounded in so much of controversy, I would have not know anything about it and its coming from a person who actively follows news atleast 1 hour day (I know its a waste of time, because nothing interesting happens most of the time except one political party blaming other party about things that they both did). One of the recent examples was the movie "The Interview". It was a below average comedy flick (I say this even when I love the other movies done by James Franco, Seth Rogen and others). It was on my watch list because I like those guys and I was going to watch it anyways sometime. But, since there was so much controversies surrounding it and the movie theatres denying to screen the movie. I was curious and I watched it on streaming from one of those corners of internet where you can watch almost anything on streaming and I watched it a day before it was supposed to be released. So, you get my point "Mr. I want to ban the movie."
Well coming back to the point, I watched only 20 mins of the documentary (because I was really busy and then I couldn't handle it, it was too painful to hear these people talk). And now you, who is reading this blog want to watch this documentary right ? Because I said, "it was too painful to hear". It is because "We all as human beings morbidly curious". There is a VSauce video about it. If you do not have time to watch. I would like to quote Michael that "we find uncertainity more unpleasant than pleasant certainity." So, that kind of explains why things which are supposed to be not seen/banned go viral.
Coming back to the hippocracy of the government, if you didn't want the director to make the documentary, you should not have allowed the interview to happen. What were you thinking when Leslee asked for the permission to interview the rapist ? Was she going to have tea with him ? Ofcourse, she was taking an interview to make a documentary. It must have been written in the consent form, though I do not have any first hand knowledge about it.
So, question is why the government and relgious fanatics wants to ban the documentary? No matter what they say, the truth is that it shames them and mark them as a faliure to ensure security of women and people in general on the streets of Delhi and surrounding areas.
My thoughts on the documentary: I think the Leslee, though protesting against the ban might be actually happy about the whole controversy for reasons mentioned above. I mean accept it, we live in a world where people are put in place to make stuff controversial and we also live in a world where everything is about "like/comment, share and subscribe". So, she as a filmmaker and her documentary is going to be watched more and more thanks to the foolish decisions of the government. I am not against watching the documentary, just thinking how stupid people can be incharge of the authority and politicise anything and everything. Also, I will be surprised, if people would have even heard about this particular filmmaker before this controversy. So, she is getting her due fame, and for people in media any kind of fame by any means is good and is their ultimate currency. Sorry for digressing. So, the documentary. Even if it is getting critical review, I don't think there is any filmmaking genius that exists in how much ever long the documentary. Its just a series of interviews of people and family surrounding the incident. Literally any one with a video camera could have made this film. There is no after thought, there is no before thought. She could have followed what happened after, what steps did the people in power did to ensure women safety? Why there are so many pending cases in the court ? There is no pscyho analysis of these people by experts, (atleast not in 30 mins which I watched, I think I will try to complete it sometime), I was just horrified that how much wrong some people are, how crude the mentality of some people can be? The only few explanations produced by the filmmaker is that these people grew up in poor neighborhoods, they have seen domestic violence, they have seen women being treated in certain way? So what god dammit ! It is no explanation. Probably there is none! But please do not try to explain something when there is no explanation. I know a lot of people who grew up under similar situations and though I cannot guarantee, I know that not 100% of them are rapists or think the same way as you are trying to explain. What I am trying to say, is that as a filmmaker there is no genius of Leslee in making this documentary. Watch it if you want to get familiar with the whole incident and do remember every documentary and every history book is biased by the filmmakers and the historians. At the end, I am not too sad that I watched it, though I am horrified by this incident and I wish I could do something If nothing, it gave me an idea of the horrible mindset some people have. And seriously, these rapists particulary the guy who was interviewed (I am not writing his name because I do not want to make my hands dirty) is worse than the most horrible devil. Even if he goes to hell soon after he is hanged, the overlords wont accept him in hell. Maybe hell has a special place for you. If you think that he is a bad person. He says and I quote, "If she would have not fought back, they would have let her live".. Oh my dear god!!! You are truely the worst type of person I have heard about.
Source: Spiegel.de
WHAT IS RAPE ?
Any unconsented sexual activity is rape. No matter who you are and what your relationshis is with the girl. Even if you are married, if you force your wife to have sex with you, you are commiting a rape. Though many imbecile religous leaders disagree because they think that it is the duty of the wife to keep the man happy and do things he so desires. Please get through your tiny head which I am sure is of the size of a pin head, that it is not true and should not be. Also, it makes me sad that the courts all over the world take this matter and sometimes find it funny that "How can your husband rape you ? It is a stupid case. Go home!!" No! No! he can. Infact, there are cases of domestic rapes which are either dismissed as cases of domestic violence. I hope people will be better informed in the future and our courts will not take these cases so lightly and do the needful.
Before I close, I would like to say few things about rape. I know this is not going to make anyone happy, I am too sad to even admit it. No matter what the goverments of the whole world combined try, the rapes won't stop until we as people are take responsibility as a society and better educate the future generations to treat women also as people like themselves, teach them to show compassion and feel for the weak and unprotected. If a women is walking in the middle of night, if she is wearing jeans, if she is alone or if she is with any other man. No matter what happens, "SHE IS NOT ASKING TO GET RAPED". And no not all boys are rapists. Many are good people.
Last but not the least, I think films are a mirror of society . So, which makes me think back, when I was a kid and there were the Bollywood movies of the 70's that used to be aired on television every Sunday evening. As far as I remember, the villians like Goga Kapoor, Ranjit and Shakti Kapoor will try to rape the leading lady atleat once in the whole movie for 5-7 minutes. Infact, today in reality shows Shakti kapoor is synonmous with the person who used to rape the women and people laugh about it as thing of the past. Thankfully it has reduced and Bollywood has taken a different diretion to item numbers. But you see Mr. Directors of Bollywood films, accept it or not you have passively contributed in nurturing the rapist mindsets. I am not claiming it to be the case, but these are just my thoughts. You can get away by saying "Films are not something which happens in real lifes, it is art... Blah blah blah (french word) blah blah!!" and I will not argue with you, because you can have your thoughts, they are not mine. What I am trying to say maybe these people who think that raping someone is ok, might have idealised and identified themselves with the man who plays the villan. As someone who can take anything by force and do whatever he wants and the way it used to end in the movie is the woman threatening the villan that she will kill herself, or burn her own face or something to that effect or will kill herself in shame after she has been raped. Wow!! Seriously, why couldn't you made movies, where the woman takes the initiative and fights back and get her due justice against such perils of the society. Well there are some movies who show that, but they also portray her as turning evil in due course of her revenge. Thanks Patriarchy! Why couldn't it be just be about a woman who got her justice and went back to her normal life. It won't be that fun, would it? But atleast, it will give the women some role-models to look up to. I hope you do change your attitude towards making movies. I do not know what was going through your head when you though showing a 7 sec of kiss was a NO NO but showing 7 mins of "attempted" rape was OK.
To the people in our society, please do understand that it is not ok to alienate a girl who was raped., it is not ok to make her an outcast, it is not acceptable to think that she was raped because she had a bad character, it is not right to think that she was raped becasue of the clothes she was wearing. Do not, please do not make her feel that way. Because if you do, do not act surprised when she commits suicide. Because she was not responsible for her suicide, YOU were!!
Anyways, I wanted to write only about the documentary, but it is impossible to talk only about the documentary and not look at everything else.
So! My dear Government. Please get your heads out of your asses. Its really easy, just try! and stop trying to ban things which you cannot in this age of internet. And please act faster in such rape cases. Maybe we won't be the perfect society, but we will definitely be better, if you stop politicising everything and take action in the interest of your people...
Thank You!! I believe you are good individuals, just not good when you all are put together in politics.
