Why I Am Angry, Why I Am Protesting

I am angry because a woman got raped in a bus in the national capital.

I am angry because I am not a member of the privileged classes.

I am angry because I don’t matter.

I have no security cover.
I have no access to mining or transportation contracts from the government.
I don’t make enough money to buy a farm-house.

And you know what, I can live with all of the above.

I can’t live with police who think they are above the law.
I can’t live with a class of badly-behaved goons who think they are above the law because of political patronage.
I can’t live in a city where a large group of people think they can get away with murder or rape because they are related to politicians, bureaucrats or industrialists.

I’m fed up with a political class who don’t care about me because I’m not an important voter.

I’m fed up with politicians who hide in large bungalows, hob-nob with industrialists and insist on policemen following them around with guns to protect them from the people who elected them.

I’m fed up with news media and columnists who ask me for a coherent alternative, for a list of demands, for constructive dialogue. They expect me to trust politicians, to trust the police to do what’s right, to trust them.

I can’t think of a single instance where politicians have lived up to my trust, or the police have done what’s right and treated me with dignity. And why would I trust the media — their business model doesn’t allow them to take on powerful corporate or political interests easily.

What recourse do I have?

Elections don’t work because across vast swathes of the country votes are bought. Fat, corrupt politicians return to power because they use jeeps, goons and money to take voters to polling booths. I know, I’ve seen it happen.

I am angry because I know I don’t matter in this country — that it’s run by the privileged few for the privileged few.

And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it.

I don’t matter.

I don’t matter because I’m not a vote bank — I live in a city. I don’t matter because I’m not rich. I can’t even pretend that I matter because I’m not a journalist any more — just another corporate drone.

I don’t matter because NOBODY represents me.

The cops aren’t there for my security, they are there to protect the powerful. The laws work when those in power have something to gain. When they lose, the law loses steam.

But, I want simple things:

To be allowed to live my life without restriction if I am not breaking the law.
To feel secure in the city I live in.
To see that my vote counts, that the taxes I pay count.
To know that the government I elect is there to serve me, and not themselves.

Is that too much to ask for?

#DelhiGangRape — A List of Demands

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The following demands were first tweeted by @saikatd — I have edited them for grammar and clarity and reworked the order in which the demands have been listed.

The Delhi police must report to the state govt & not a bunch of unaccountable officials like Lieutenant Governor
A Delhi Police Act is passed immediately, without delay, on lines of the SC judgment.
Increase funding of training for police immediately.
Ensure that the cops who didn’t register a case, or delay registration, are charged with abetment of the crime
Ensure that the suspension of cops is not just a paid holiday without any long term consequences
Commission a white paper on what happens to rape cases from prevention to investigation to conviction
Professionalise & empower the National Commission for Women & retire the current politicians manning it

Why We Need To Protest

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Kavita Krishnan’s fiery speech that encapsulates the idiocy of the government’s response to the #DelhiGangRape

As usual, the police are suggesting that the safety of people in Delhi is our responsibility. Women need to dress in particular way, only be out at certain times, rush home once it gets dark etc. And of course, we need to check what kind of auto/bus we are getting into to get home.

It’s like we live in a jungle where there are wild animals roaming around. And the police are forest wardens, keeping those wild animals away. But can only do so if we co-operate with them and behave in a manner that they believe is correct. And safe.

Shame on the government. Shame on the police.

Interview with Stanley Kubrick 1966

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Rajesh Khanna RIP

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I am a fan. I loved his movies. And I hated watching them because they made me cry. In Jaipur, in the 1980s and early 90s, boys weren’t allowed to get “senti” about a movie — any movie. Find me a person who could sit through Anand without shedding a tear and I’ll show you a psychopath.

Amongst the sea of obituaries written over the past few days, two stand out. The first by a fan, the second by someone who is not a fan. Both are brilliantly written and worth a read.

You Are The Reason I Am An Actor by Tom Alter

That film was Aradhana and I cycled five times that week from Jagadhri to Yamunanagar to see the film once more with David, four times alone. I wanted to be able to angle my head like David and say “Koi Rajesh Khanna karke hai”. I wanted to sing ‘Mere Sapnon ki Rani’ at the top of my voice as the wind through the fields ruffled my hair. I wanted to crinkle my eyes at beautiful women. I wanted to serenade Sharmila with snowclad mountains in the background I wanted to be able to charm the world with a smile and a style and walk and a tilt of neck and just the right emphasis never too much, never not enough on each word I spoke.

Zindagi Aur Maut by Suparna Sharma

For 24 hours, I had stayed away from the Rajesh Khanna deluge. I had not watched a single TV clip, had not listened to his songs, had not watched the TV coverage of his funeral. Yet, now, I was in full mourning. Why? Rajesh Khanna was never my hero; I was never his fan. His acting was funny — all ada and terribly corny lines.

“I hate tears, Pushpa.” Really?

I was mourning someone else’s death. A death I’ve mourned for years. When I was a teenager, I used to have a VHS tape of Anand. I hadn’t bought it. I just didn’t return it to the video parlour bhaiyya. On most days I would steer clear of it, averting my eyes. Seeing it, touching it meant I’d have to put it on, watch the whole film, howl, and then return to life knowing that all Anands will die. They always do. It’s a lie what Dr Bhaskar Banerjee says in the end: “Anand mara nahi. Anand marte nahi.” I had mourned Anand Sehgal’s death at least 70 times.

Love for Dickens

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Charles Dickens ... Google says hello

Today’s Google Doodle is awesome and features one of my favorite authors. In an old post, my brother Aditya has written beautifully about books:

They transport me away from my mundane existance to places of beauty and magic. Places of mystery, and suspense, and beautiful maidens. Where you never know what’s around the next corner, unless the book is an old friend, dog-eared and time worn, but which is always welcoming. I don’t understand reading a book only once. The only books I’ve read once are the ones that I don’t like. Books I like I read over and over, at suitable intervals. When I remember only the broad strokes of the book, and not the subtle brushwork, I like to take it off the shelf and go through it again, safe in the knowledge that I not going to meet any unpleasant memories.

And he uses a Dickens favorite immediately after this para. Go, read more here.

Measuring social media, or, how social is your media

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Social media is not advertising.

Digital marketing is easy to measure. Marketers have figured out how to measure advertising across mediums — TV, print etc. In some ways we’ve gone even further: we’ve also figured out how measure the content that makes people view/read/listen to the mediums in the first place.

We’ve tried to do the same with the Internet. So we had hits and eyeballs, and then later page-views and click-through rates and so on. The basic assumption that we carried over from traditional media is that the content sits in one place and the audience goes to that place.

But, on the internet, all media is social. It travels. It doesn’t stay put in one place. So we can’t measure it using page-views.

Now, here’s the thing about social media: It’s content, or media, that we co-create. All the platforms, Facebook, Youtube, etc. are channels that the content travels across.

So, the way to measure our social media efforts/campaigns is to measure how social our media is, or how our media is travelling. Here’s how I see the life-cycle of content on the web.

Come up with a content idea
Translate that idea into multiple forms (video, infographic, blog-post etc.)
Post it across multiple channels
Track likes, comments, upvotes etc.
See if it starts to get shared
See if it starts to get transformed, if people start to riff on it in someway
See if the idea we have shared starts to become part of people’s conversations — they may not refer back to us but may use the idea we have put out.

Most measurement efforts stop at stage 5 at the moment. But it’s stage 6 and 7 that are most important, and in many ways, really hard to measure.

What’s even harder is for brands to move from thinking about their own story in terms of a 30-second ad-spot to a longer epic where audiences get to participate in both the creation and the telling of the story.