Institutionalization of finer elements of life

Institutionalization of finer elements of life

If the word ‘institutionalization’ is synonymous with a movie it’s ‘Shawshank Redemption’ . The pitiful Tim Burton plotting methods to escape the gradual death, sentenced by the society standing on a higher moral ground.

We have a family tradition of meeting up for lunch during festival seasons. This Onam we had our luncheon get together at our uncle’s. They invited in their parish Vicar to grace the occasion. He was young, smart and witty. After the sumptuous lunch he sat down with a deep sigh and out of nowhere started a religious discourse. To me this sounded as a fee for the free lunch. He started with every Vicar’s favourite topic. The moral degradation of youth, lack of piety in the family, lowering attendance in churches. 

My dad being a fervent anti church  guy seized the occasion and blamed the entire evil on the bishops. He pointed out at the bishops being invited to inaugurate rich man’s textile shops, boutiques, jewellery. Is it a bishop’s duty? The Vicar being the soldier of the church had to defend his bosses. The vicar came up with an interesting observation. The bishop after the inauguration asks the owner to donate some money for the charitable organisation. The big hearted owner willingly does so. At the end of the day the rich man is happy, bishop is happy and some unfortunate being is also happy. What other example is needed for the ideal Christian harmony: The peaceful redistribution of wealth. 

Even with a highly literate population, Kerala is well known for the number of demi gods it creates. At the blink of an eye, they amass huge wealth and at the same time ‘untouchable’ status in media and power circles. Ofcourse, the favourite topic to thrive on is love and ‘the same God theory’. One such ‘Godess’ is Amrithananda Mai. Her orgins were very ordinary. Predictable she had some vision, got a few spirituality-starved Americans around and the rest was history. The prime time ritual is hugging and kissing everyone around. Then came Engineering colleges, Medical colleges and Nursing colleges along with vast acreage of land in European countries

She went on preaching and hugging for world peace and love, while a bunch of poor nurses were forced to do bonded labour without pay at her hospitals. When this was questioned goons were sent in to tame the rogue nurses. A few broken bones & a little prime time bad publicity  were the inevitable bitter wine. Soon she filled the hoarding. Apparently the country was getting ready to celebrate the 60^th birth anniversary of love incarnate. Everything seemed to be forgiven mutually and she was back to loving and hugging ritual.

The very institutions that are supposed to protect and preserve the precious traits of life like love, justice is getting itself busy in manipulating and exploiting them. Is it some form of religious corruption?

Right from 

our childhood we have been taught and programmed to believe that ‘A’, ‘B’ , ‘C’ are good qualities of life and life enhancing. While the ones like ‘D’, ‘E’ ,’F’ are abominable. Whoever exhibits d,e or f ought to be punished or castrated from daily walk of life. The real problem is we fail to see that the so called good qualities are defined so as to sustain the institutions. Hence the traits that ought to sustain human life simply becomes traits that sustains the privileged few.

I am not trying to single out any individual. But its a collection of individuals themselves who set up an institution and manipulate mindset of masses. And institutions are devoid of any race, religion or colour. So here are a few so called ‘good’ qualities that are subjected to subtle manipulation.

You are taught to ‘work hard’ for your success. So you slog your ass off believing that some day you will be able to earn just enough to overcome the hardships of life and save some money left over from the legal looting. As you are so meek and peace loving, you can never question the gross injustice you suffer. Besides you are taught that the almighty would take it upon himself to punish the wicked and justice is none of your business,  The good news is since corruption is being renamed as charity and donation, it will soon climb into good qualities of life category. The only corrupt left in the country would be auto-wallahs who charge you more.

So here’s a handful of institutions monopolising people’s ability to choose between right and wrong. Justice is served only to a few and in the way they choose. Even when a few swindle money, kill, loot and rape, they are untouchable as they stand on the other side of line. 

But i have hope on the swarming millions who stand on the wrong side. I hope they will stand up to question.

The prime time

Nowadays the word that raises anxiety the most is ‘Financial reforms’. The reason is simple. If an Indian FM is speaking of reforms he simply means to sell off the public property to a private hotshot. He will use some much used sentences to fool the people. They will sound like attracting more investments, to bail out the company running at loss, more opportunities. There is this famous saying of the then disinvestment minister, Arun Shourie, while he sold off the Modern Bread ‘It is not the job of the government to make bread for the people’. Only the famous Mary Antoinette could parallel this in its notoriety.

I lean a bit to the left and I am of the firm view that if there are more than one player in the field vying for a bite for the same pie, it is not necessary that competition resulting will lead to an improved efficiency. As humans we will be thinking of bringing the other guy down rather than to improve our performance.

Last day I was watching a debate on television on something regarding the serials being aired on TVs. The anchor asked a sweet, small child about his opinion on the sops in TV. He said ‘Aunties in TV wear heavy makeup and designer dresses even when they are in their home and even go to bed in their makeup’. I remembered a verse from the bible which is somewhat like this ‘You have poured wisdom into the mouth of babes’.

Some years back Dooradarshan re-telecasted the serials from the good old times like ‘Buniyaad’. It is then I realized how much we have missed out. When our homes opened up to private channels, they churned out tear laden serials one after another. In order to stay at top of the TRPs script writer is asked to fill each and every episode with some of the most despicable twists and turns. In order to keep us glued the character wears designer clothes, travel in luxury cars, and lives in big houses and conducts lavish marriage ceremonies. The good thing about corporate investment is that the industry becomes more professional and accountable. The bad thing is that industry will be in constant pressure to perform. So you will lose the finer things in life.

People make almost all their decision based on what they see in visual media. The influence can be direct or indirect one. Whatever you see in the TV lies impinged in your mind, ultimately influencing your decisions whether you want it or not. Knowing this very well the powerful have invested in the media sector for their vested interests

It is just not about the tear jerker sops, all the programmes in our channels have lost the connectivity with the common masses. If you say the common people forms the biggest chunk of audience, yes they do. The characters in TV has become what the common man looks upto rather than what he can relate with. The viewers are filled in with half cooked news, false sense of values, in the end we lose our power to discern. So the sad part is when a programme with value comes up it will not be able to hold on to the competition with the crappy ones and is pushed to god forsaken hours. Why? Because we cannot decide for ourselves what is good for us.
The recent Indian general elections was a demonstration of this. A weekly dubbed this election as Election of non-issues. If the visual media had dedicated some more of their quality time towards the real issues the election results would have been a bit different and better.

I hear channels like Colors are taking up more people relevant issues and doing programmes on them. That is a bit of good news. Hope this trend continues……