Shameless voyeurs of revolution

Why are we excited about Tunisia and Egypt? Because unlike other distant fantasies like participating in group sex or owning an island in the Mediterranean, the Indian middle class can talk about somebody else's revolution legitimately, without embarrassment and with great moral force.

So, over endless pitchers of beer or mugs of latte at a Bandra pub or an Andheri caf ufffd, we tell ourselves stories of young Tunisian street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi who set himself on fire after being humiliated by a deaf, corrupt system and triggered the Jasmine revolution, or of protesters clicking photos of Cairo's street anger and posting it on Facebook or Twitter as people try to throw out their longtime autocrat.

Events like Egypt are lollipops the Indian middle-class loves to suck on. You don't have to do a thing, but the sweetness lingers. It allows us to sleep with moral outrage without touching its more exacting soulmate, political action.

Egyptian anti-government protesters calling for the ouster of President
Hosni Mubarak block an Egyptian army armoured personnel carrier (APC)
at Tahrir Square in Cairo on February 5, 2011. Protesters sat on the ground
around some of the tanks to prevent the troops pulling out and leaving
the square vulnerable to the feared interior ministry riot police or militants
loyal to Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party. Pic/u00a0AFP Photo

We all know, deep down, that our lives have very little to do with what is happening in Tunisia or Egypt. Our onions do not come from either of these countries. Nor do our call centre jobs. Our current wild interest in the happenings at Tahrir Square is purely voyeuristic. Since school, Egypt has occupied as much space in our everyday thoughts as Prince Tut, Cleopatra or Nefertiti occupies on our office desk.

Egypt or Tunisia is irrelevant to India, other than as a middle-class fantasy. There are a million issues closer home strong enough to set our streets ablaze.

How many of us have come out to protest the absurd 17-18 per cent food inflation? How many of us will ask our leaders why we are made to travel like rats on our public transport, or spend our best years choked by loans to buy a tiny, shabby house? When I interact with the rich and powerful who work the system, I am told even middle-level officers heading government functions like the police or tax are worth a few hundred crores each. How many of us, otherwise hardworking professionals, will see one crore rupees which we can call ours in our lifetime?

Every day the middle-class becomes poorer, our living standard slips, we feel helpless at government offices and police stations, VIPs take siege of our roads, our artistes and writers are bullied, our cities and towns become dirtier and more congested, some family like ours gets torn by some unimaginably violent crime. And yet, Egypt's revolution becomes ours, while we quietly abort our own revolutions every day with the poison pill of patience.

What JK Rowling said at the commencement address at Harvard in 2008 seems spoken to us: "And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know. I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do."

The Indian media, for all its faults, knows the pulse of its target audience. That is why the coverage of Cairo has become a contest of which journalist has spent more time in detention, whose camera got smashed or seized. The channels know that their viewers are not interested in how the revolution came about, or stories of people who changed lives and whose lives got changed. They know all we are looking for back home is the heat and drama of reality television. The real issues in Egypt don't mean a thing to us, and the real issues in India we have learnt to swallow.

Abhijit Majumder is Executive Editor, Mid Day. Reach him at abhijit@mid-day.com