Some trends are more noticeable now than before. Yet, these often go unnoticed. For some these matter whereas for others it is business-as-usual. The trend nonetheless influences the way we live and the manner in which we conduct ourselves. Perhaps, emergence of a new cultural strand! Is it the price of ‘change’ that we pay for or get it without paying anything? Take your pick!
Come to think of it, the paradox is that when life was simpler, more laid-back and nobler, there were zillions of bad guys setting the screen ablaze with their evil charm, but today our cinema doesn’t have too many. Simply put, they are not on the screen because there are villains all around us in real life. And, we have accepted them without any disdain.As a consequence the choice between good and bad has thinned, be it an electoral candidate or a consumer product. The choice often rests on ‘better of the lesser evil’. It may not seem deliberate but there is something that makes it sound inconveniently convenient. Individual objectivity is influenced by collective insensitivity, as the world gets transformed into an aberration of itself. The evil is seemingly the ‘new good’! Scan your surroundings and you will find any number of them, and such numbers seems to be growing.
Not long ago, few thousand guests were being entertained at a gala reception. The best of food and drinks were on offer; there was one for every taste. However, the dominant articulation of hushed discussions in small groups were centered around the meteoric rise of the host. Jailed for economic offences in the recent past, the host’s cupboard had every trophy from the world of ‘new good’. Yet, the city’s weak and the vulnerable (the bold and the beautiful are screen images only) were in attendance to cheer the occasion.
Such scenarios are not uncommon, several variants on public display every so often. Come to think of it, these are the ‘dark spaces’ that are increasingly being legitimized by our collective insensitivity. It warrants courage to stay at a tangent from such spaces, the cost one is unwilling to pay for the fear of getting marginalized. I leave the event with a bad taste, asking myself if I could drift from such congregations of collective deceit. Expectedly, the advice remains on the contrary!
The emerging social convenience asks us to accept without questioning the equality of good and evil. Inequality, in all forms, has grown but it is a rarity that it is shrinking between good and the evil. So much so that it needs hard evidence to prove that it doesn’t. The stakes for being part of the ‘new good’ are seemingly high! The taste of the pudding may lie in tasting it but in such cases we often know the ‘taste’ before ‘eating’ it. Should then we taste the pudding?
(Dr. Sudhirendar Sharma is author (development journalist), academic (offers lectures), advisor (provides consultancy) and activist (providing knowledge backup) rolled into one, based in New Delhi.)
