Lindsay Pereira: We are fast and we are furious

Snapchat cofounders Evan Spiegel L and Bobby Murphy Thousands of us uninstalled the app after Spiegel allegedly called India a poor country PicAFPWho are the angriest people in the world The seeminshygly innocuous question was posed by an anonymous user with the handle HisSmileIsTooshyTooshyBig on the social news aggregation website Reddit a few months ago There were a bunch of interesting replies ranging from failed art school entrants voted the best answer for some reason and gender studies majors to middleaged men stuck in traffic the Taliban short people and even middle aged men who live through their childrens sportsI was surprised as I scrolled thrshyoshyugh the rest of the responses to find absolutely no mention of my fellow Indians I assumed it was a nobrainer this label of being the worlds angriest people given that any foreigner on our soil or anyone tracking us on any social media platform wouldnt help but notice that most things on the planet rile us up on a regular basis Its as if the list of things that dont piss us off is smaller and easier to deal with when one considers just what got us hot and bothered over the past couple of weeks aloneThere was that little matter about the CEO of Snapchat allegedly calling us a poor country for instance Thousands of us uninstalled the app in protest Thousands uninstalled the wrong app too because anger prevents a large number of us from paying attention to detail None of the thousands expressed anger about the fact that successive governments have failed to bridge that increasingly large gap between rich or poor and chose to attack someone for expressing the truth insteadPopstar Katy Perry angered a bunch of us by posting a photograph of Goddess Kali on her Instagram page with the caption Current Moshyod She meant well of course and has often spoken of her interest and respect for Indian culture but that didnt prevent a few from frothing at the mouth and demanding that she remove the pictureWhat made this anger amusing was the fairly obvious fact that few of the ones abusing her had a viable excuse for why she coulshydnt post the picture Some of the trolls abusing her didnt know who she was either but thought it made sense to attack her simply because she wasnt Indian The image in question wasnt abusive doctored or demeaning in any way but its hard to have a logical discussion with people who learn more from WhatsApp than they do from educational institutesIts easy to dismiss these vitriolic attacks as exceptions to the norm or ignore them by mentioning how for every one person ranting online there are thousands of Indians without access to a smartphone or television set Thats beside the point thoshyugh Its fairly obvious to anyone looking at us from the outside that we are fast becoming a thinskinned nation and contrary to what a number of people on Facebook or Twitter may have you believe this isnt necessarily a good thingWhy do the angry Indians among us stay calm in the face of oppression corruption or stupidity Why are they never as angry about the state of our roads the absence of public toilets the sheer waste of taxpayer money on things that dont matter or the incompetence of people who run for government Why dont they attack the people who should be attacked regularly mdash the ones who make or enable poor decisions that affect millions of us on a daily basisWhy dont they use their tremendous capacity for outrage in the quest of accomplishing something good for a change in this country Why dont they question longheld beliefs that make our lives miserable simply because their parents failed to question them too Isnt that how people evolveI remember going to school a few decades ago and laughing at jokes on just about every community under the sun I remember mimicry artists on Doordarshan talking about the little things that made our religions and cultures unique the foibles that marked us all Nothing was sacred and if it was we simply didnt notice it I find myself thinking about that time in my life often these days whenever a standup comic is threatened for cracking a joke or an actor is asked to leave the country for simply posing a questionThe saddest thing about life in India in 2017 is how its safe to say that our ability to laugh at ourselves has been lost Which is probably why its only the rest of the world now laughing at usWhen he isnt ranting about all things Mumbai Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet He tweets lindsaypereiraSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom