Let's talk about empathy, maybe?

Over the past four to five years, which coincide with a dramatic explosion of social media, one finds it rather odd that the politically apathetic have overnight turned into political activists

My first encounter with what I assumed to be a strange creature of the third kind--the proudly indifferent, as against the 'political', and the 'apolitical'--was when I'd just moved to Mumbai, chatting with my young, spunky hajaam/hairdresser at Bandra's Nalini-Yasmin, when I casually learnt that she didn't know who India's Prime Minister was (Vajpayee at the time), although she knew of Sachin Tendulkar, only because he used to visit that salon quite often!

Citing this in a rather shrill piece later on political apathy being the curse of upper-crust India, I made some nonsensical joke proposing humans, like certain species, be allowed to eat their young (borrowing a line from Outlook magazine).

Which is something a 22-year-old would do (and I was). For, from that vantage point, with a long distance of life and its infinite possibilities ahead, everyone who isn't like you seems like an idiot. And, I was from Delhi where, as with all national capitals, one feels surrounded by knowledgeable folk with a permanent stake in the political system.

Also, ancestrally from Bihar, which like most poor regions with high unemployment rates, turns politics into popular entertainment of the chowk/square/street. Desi news media, likewise, follows the same public cues to deliver he-said-she-said, like/hate kinda journalism/debates, chiefly centred on gossip; not very different from filmy tabloid/fanzines, leaving many severely bored/disinterested.

Except, in all of this, one forgets to adequately define politics outside the text-book term. Is it an individual's response to injustices of any kind? Somewhat; for sure. Or is politics basically the sum total of a person? Wherein there is inescapably inherent politics, in absolutely every decision/move we make--whether to do with family, gender, environment, money, name it--right down to whether we take bus/rick/BMW home? I suspect so.

Only that when people call themselves 'apolitical', or non-shiyasi/arajnaitik, they mean they aren't into satta/power/partisan politics. And that is also a political statement! Okay. So why am I delving into what might appear to many as a rather obvious point? Because this debate seems to have flooded my Twitter timeline this past week.

Quick back-story: In an interview (to me) many moons ago, actor Ranbir Kapoor confessed he doesn't make "political statements" because he's too privileged for his personal problems to gain larger traction/dimension: "I'm not at the brunt of anything. I live a luxurious life. I don't have water, or housing problems. I don't have any issues, so who am I to comment on politics?"

It's a limited, but legit point. The way I saw it, he was taking a position quite the opposite of, say, Lata Mangeshkar cribbing about a flyover coming up right by her fancy apartment, spoiling her view, and therefore the state must do something about it. That was her personal politics. And again--fair enough, totally.

Actor Kangana Ranaut saw Kapoor's thoughts however as an affront to millions of starving Indians, which public figures ought to take a political position on, since they owe it to the masses who follow their works, and place them on a pedestal. Now this is her politics, which is equally justified.

The trolling was over how I tried to pin her down in an interview (and so badly failed), which is how the thoroughly unemployed passing time on social media operate--unable to tell a conversation from an attack, reducing everything into binaries of right and wrong, with a few abusive words, exhibiting the kind of impassioned confidence usually bestowed upon the willfully ignorant. Never in human history have so many strangers made that many enemies over stuff that personally matters to neither!

And frankly, that is is the larger point about politics worth addressing here--not Kapoor, Ranaut--given that over the past four to five years, which coincide with a dramatic explosion of social media, one finds it rather odd that the politically apathetic have overnight turned into political activists, and while everyone's talking, genuinely, no one's listening! Anything missing? Empathy.

And what used to happen with sport/entertainment at the bar/drawing-room has effectively become true for politics: Everybody is an unshakeable expert. On everything--from NASA's worries on space debris, to woes of impoverished farmers on land. Neither of which the individual concerned has any respect for, nor has any practical experience in, and therefore every larger issue is effectively lowered to the level of political parties, gossip, and their favourite or hated politicians.

This sort of supposedly political discourse would of course be okay if the loudest voices weren't from the evidently affluent. For how else can they afford so much time for such leisure? My hairdresser eventually moved out of Nalini-Yasmin, set up her own salon, employed half a dozen skilled workers, contributed generously to the economy through taxes, and to her clients, through her art, eventually following a new passion in another country, with business back home running just as well. All of them involved political choices. Did it really matter if she did/didn't know who the prime minister was? Hardly as much as I thought it should have.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

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