The Difficult Life of an Armchair Revolutionary
Grey skies without the hint of a drop of rain. A black cat curled up on the sofa staring into nothing. Morose. The clock ticking by each second passing like a year, like a block of iron. She keeps staring at her laptop screen. Waiting. Five minutes pass. Then another five. Her heart reaches her parched throat. Is life passing her by? Is she stranded in a zone where she is losing access to the world? But how? What went wrong? This wasn’t the case even an hour back. Where did she go wrong?
All she had written was, “In solidarity with the millions of students out on the streets, I have decided to bake a thousand cupcakes with red velvet frosting, signifying your zeal! I and some of my fellow friends will be with you soon with the oven fresh warm goodies. #revolution #justice #we’llrockit” With the status update, she had also posted an Instagrammed photo of a cupcake, complete with vintage texture. It had been ten minutes since then. But not a single like on her timeline. A like is not just a like it is an affirmation of your selfhood, it is a collective acknowledgement of why you should exist on this planet. And yet this silence. Why…say why? Her eyes started welling up. Yet an hour back, when she had posted about how her hard disk, containing footage of last day’s students protests, had suddenly crashed and that she suspected that the state had employed hackers to infect her hardware, there were four hundred and twenty likes in three minutes and forty two shares. So now why this?
She called up a few friends who were master Facebookers and asked whether it was possible that the government had alerted Zuckerberg and that’s why her statuses were being deliberately blocked. The friends did not have concrete answers. She panicked some more. It had been fifteen minutes now. One of her friends suggested that they put up an online petition on her behalf, protesting against this brute attack on the freedom of expression. She seemed animated by the idea but then suddenly there was a clicking sound. One like! But the momentary euphoria quickly wore off. One like in twenty minutes? Her friend reminded her about the petition thingy. However, now the problem was if the state was throttling her voice, how could even one person like her post? “Well,” she said, her voice, all steel, “They have to maintain the façade of liberalism. So that one like is just a cover. What lurks beneath is a diabolical game plan. If they can remove me from this movement, its backbone will break and that’s what they want.” So she quickly rose from the chair, picked up Sherrie, her black cat and fished out her i-phone from her pyajama pocket and took a selfie, her face looking sufficiently angry and distressed and Sherrie as clueless as ever. Before her friend could say anything, she said, “Now quickly write the petition and use this image I just took to accompany the text.” Another like. And a third. Half an hour since the post. 3 likes in 30 minutes furthered her resolve to go ahead with the petition. The state must be exposed.
Suddenly a sweat drenched, middle aged lady surfaced from nowhere, “Madam, the cakes are ready.” But by now the news was inconsequential. The cakes could rot, Sherry could roll over them or whatever. The petition had to be up soon. Meanwhile, some more likes. 10 of them in 45 minutes. Her friend felt hesitant. “Are you still sure?” Suddenly she went ballistic. How dare he insult her? What did he mean? Did he doubt her credentials as a popular activist? Or did he mean that 10 likes in almost an hour was her worth? How dare he be sexist in her presence? A loud slap. Out he was sent from her working pad. She started breathing hard. She needed a drink. She quickly called her friend, the news reporter with the country’s highest circulated daily and told her whatever had happened. The friend told her that she could extend her lunch hour by another three hours and they could go to the new Vietnamese joint in town where drinks were on the house for all reporters and their friends. Later she could rustle up a three hundred word review of the eatery with a byte from a well known activist spotted there. No prizes for guessing who that activist would be. Perfect world. The petition could wait for a few hours. She needed to cool her nerves first.
The lunch date was perfect. Every single dish was Instagrammed, complete with selfies, pouts and all. However, the photos would have to wait publication for a couple of hours. There was other pressing work at hand. She came back to her laptop, switched it on. And lo!
600 hundred likes on the cupcake photo and 60 messages in her inbox. “Where are you?”, “How long do we wait?”, “Should we start the rally without those cupcakes?”, “Are you trying to fool us?” And on they went. She couldn’t believe her eyes. She rushed to the kitchen to have a look at the cup cakes. Sherry was happily rolling on them, black and red, how pretty she looked. At other times she would have immediately clicked her and shared the image with her 4000 plus friends on Facebook but this was a different time. Now what?
She walked back to her computer. She decided that she would deactivate her account for a while. But then, how could she? There were so many issues at hand. Her bytes on the Vietnamese joint would be out tomorrow and that would have to be shared, plus there were those gorgeous images at the eatery, her cover picture had not been changed for two days now (she could not choose between Mary Kom winning gold at the Asian Games v/s Tabu as the face of battered Kashmir) and well, she was yet to find out why the students were actually protesting, what were their key demands. If suddenly a cheeky journo called her up for a bite, how would she respond? The newspapers were too much of a pain to read while on TV, she only did Breaking Bad. Facebook was far more of a better source of news. Yet, she was answerable to the hungry thousands waiting for her cup cakes.
Why was life so complicated? So bloody complicated?
Sayan writes for a living but wonders why should anyone pay him to write and also, why should they not pay him more than what they already do. If you want to abuse him, please reach him atsayanb360@gmail.com and find more of him at kindlemag.in