Pain - Through the eyes of a social worker

There’s this common line I see in movies when a guy asks a girl on his first date. "So then, what’s your story?" Why is the guy so interested in the girl’s life? He (I imagine) wants to know the series of events that has gone into making this beautiful person sitting in front of him. The more attractive the girl (at least on the first date), the more insipid her story. Generally, it’s the more unnoticeable people in the dark that have a more interesting story to tell.

It was only after I joined work, and was forced (by my employers) to go to houses and get to know poor families with people living with HIV/AIDS did I realize that I do not have many friends outside my class-group. It is human nature, I guess, to find security in relating with people who are of the same age, class, region, and language. After all, that’s what gives us our identity. No matter how strong and individualistic we think we are, we all constantly look to our circle of friends for approval. They are our support group. But there is another reason why we do not engage with the stories of those outside our group. This has much to do with the fact that it is those in pain that slip off our radar first.

Ram, a chaiwallah was once a bus-driver. As it happens to most people in his line of work, he slept around, got infected by HIV, came back home and his wife got infected too. The family has been through hell the last few years. But now, the wife actually tells us that HIV has brought our family closer together. Now how that happened would be an interesting story to listen to, and
praise God for. But who would have thought that the chaiwallah who slept around and got infected with HIV would have a story such as this?

There is another reason why, in the movies, the guy asks the girl that question. He wants to know what she is doing now, and what her future plans are, and tries to find his place in her scheme of things. He is working hard at trying to be a part of her life because he loves her so much.

Here, at our cramped hospital with ten beds, I know a five year old girl who takes care of her ailing mother, while witnessing at least two deaths that took place in nearby beds. To think at that age about the high chances of her mother dying anytime like those fellow-patients gives her a new perspective on life. She can now unflinchingly look at suffering and pain straight in the eye, that even when her father died, she cried for a week, accepted that her father died, and has taken things in a matter-of-fact tone. But she needs help. With her bed-ridden mother, and four sisters, the eldest in Std XII, and the man of the house being 7 years old, she needs a lot of support.

We try to sterilize every single uncomfortable thing that happens to us by hiding it, not talking about it, and covering it up with a smile. This is exactly the same reason why we are scared to engage with the poor. All we do is ‘Reach Out’. We prefer to go along with our gang of friends to the poor, interact with them and entertain them (and have them entertain us) and come back to our own lives, making the whole thing another "Slumdog Millionaire Movie Experience" where you really get into the minds of those in pain for exactly two hours.

But do we have the fortitude to actually love them? Do we have the fortitude to listen to their stories and try to find our place in them as they develop? Do we have the fortitude to make them one among us?

Do we realize that as we discuss global warming, and sigh in unison watching the antics of our political leaders, there are people groaning, lifting their hands and eyes to God and asking him to deliver them from their pain? Do we realize that we have this power to redeem them? Us who are able to make a difference (no matter how small it may be) if we only raise a finger. May be, we don’t know what exactly we could do.

How about listening to a story first?

keep watching!

First, it is our problem that we associate the media with the corporate media...who says thats all the media there is??? Second, tell me what has not become a slave of capitalism?? Aren't we the ones who read TOI and the BIG newspapers?? Aren't we the ones who want to be journalists with a brand stamped on our foreheads?? Aren't we the ones who watch the glossy channels?? How many of us will really leave the glitter of money and brands to do something alternative? Yes, we can believe, we can control...but can we alter???...Its been so long that so many groups, from the marginalized, the oppressed and the 'different' have tried to alter...read their miseries, feel their pain, understand their struggle, follow their blood, take up their challenges...if you think you can alter... capitalism is so strong, powerful and invisible that altering a part of it is not easy...I mean even the capitalists themselves cant understand it now...nobody understands it...
Third, who calls who the 'left'?? Its us, we brand someone and something as right and left??? Tell me how many people really understand it?? There is no left and right in media...there could have been before, but now there is only a system of news production, competition and profit...

Fourth...if there will be a market and a state...there will be media...its funny how we criticize it and how we could never dream of state- controlled media...or where there is no freedom of the media...

freedom is a mystery!

Fifth, it would be exciting to watch it, how it moves, even TOI has done its 'good' share...maybe telling us that its time to vote (for those who believe in the state!!haha), hinted worries of climate change...i know for the millions who are poor (dont mind me talking like that, but everyone is poor, coz we strive for money and everyone struggles for existence)...so i know for the millions of poor, self-oriented, discriminated bunch, climate change is some shit...but still the capitalists can do one thing...they can reach out to the largest number of people, powerfully...and now with recession...its sooooooo cool...lets watch it...watch what happens....watch the world, the media, watch decisions being made, watch the world realize that there is something called 'control'...

media control, or state control...its time for people to think about 'self control'...

the art is to choose what you can take from the system and what you can throw away...

Mind the Media !

So. We start. At this point, i should make it clear that i will be using the term 'MEDIA' in the singular and not as plural. So purists of grammar and literature need to chill.

I won't write any long complicated article here. All i wish to convey to all those who have shown faith in this idea is that the way the media functions today needs to be examined. Critically. I mean, do we need this media? Media, which is so lame that it merely ends up as a tool in the hands of corportaes and politicians, through which they can mobilize popular opinion and manufacture consent. Media, which cannot survive, leave alone function, without the support of corportaes. Do we need a media which is essentially a major profit-seeking corporation at the end of the day. All through our training, we have been fed with the fact that newspapers cannot function without advertisements and that advertisements are imperative for the survival of contemporary media. Now, is it not obvious to even the naivest mind that the news carried in such media would be dictated by their marketing departments to a considerable extent at least?

So, effectively, an entire newspaper, and not specific pages, gets reduced to an advertorial. The Times of India is a burning example of this. All they ask us to do, while we read our news, is to buy. Check out advertisements, leave the news out because its in black and white and dull and boring, as opposed to glossy, colourful ads. They publish ugly details of celebrity lifestyles and their consumption patterns, creating a covert, deceitful structure of culture industry. A structure that entices the masses by manufacturing desire and then selling these desires through content-based advertsising.

Well, let us not get carried away and blame one newspaper. At least the TOI is unapologetic about its faith in the market. That's perhaps a strong ethical advantage that the right-- economic, political as well as the cultural right--has over other ideological systems. It is explicit, overt and honest about its motives. Unlike, the so-called left 'leaning' newspapers like the HINDU. Now someone please explain to me. What the FUCK do they mean by left LEANING. If you believe in an ideology, you do it with conviction. You don't lean towards it. You have to take a stand. When struggles against the establishment are being scripted, you need to make it clear as to where you stand. With who do you choose to side? The point that i wish to make here is simple. Contemporary media is nothing but an adulterous bedfellow of the corporates, betraying the trust that billions of people invest in it.

And it is precisely for this purpose that we need to take control of any alternative avenues of generating public opinion and then believe in them and sustain them through this belief; and it is for this purpose that the subtext of our effort reads as CONTROL/ALT/BELIEVE. We need to give at least a little of our time to collective efforts like this where we can express any alternative opinions, analyses and interpretations of the news that we read or any events that we observe happening around us. Once again, to end, i would like all of us to think about this: DO WE NEED A MEDIA WHICH IS RUN BY CORPORATIONS, SUSTAINED BY ADVERTISEMENTS AND WHICH CANNOT FUNCTION AND SURVIVE WITHOUT CORPORATE PATRONAGE?

Thanks

Mahim

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