Let's talk about empathy, maybe?

My first encounter with what I assumed to be a strange creature of the third kindthe proudly indifferent as against the political and the apoliticalwas when Id just moved to Mumbai chatting with my young spunky hajaamhairdresser at Bandras NaliniYasmin when I casually learnt that she didnt know who Indias Prime Minister was Vajpayee at the time although she knew of Sachin Tendulkar only because he used to visit that salon quite oftenCiting this in a rather shrill piece later on political apathy being the curse of uppercrust India I made some nonsensical joke proposing humans like certain species be allowed to eat their young borrowing a line from Outlook magazineWhich is something a 22yearold would do and I was For from that vantage point with a long distance of life and its infinite possibilities ahead everyone who isnt 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 systemAlso ancestrally from Bihar which like most poor regions with high unemployment rates turns politics into popular entertainment of the chowksquarestreet Desi news media likewise follows the same public cues to deliver hesaidshesaid likehate kinda journalismdebates chiefly centred on gossip not very different from filmy tabloidfanzines leaving many severely boreddisinterestedExcept in all of this one forgets to adequately define politics outside the textbook term Is it an individuals 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 decisionmove we makewhether to do with family gender environment money name itright down to whether we take busrickBMW home I suspect soOnly that when people call themselves apolitical or nonshiyasiarajnaitik they mean they arent into sattapowerpartisan 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 weekQuick backstory In an interview to me many moons ago actor Ranbir Kapoor confessed he doesnt make political statements because hes too privileged for his personal problems to gain larger tractiondimension Im not at the brunt of anything I live a luxurious life I dont have water or housing problems I dont have any issues so who am I to comment on politicsIts 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 againfair enough totallyActor Kangana Ranaut saw Kapoors 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 justifiedThe 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 operateunable 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 neitherAnd frankly that is is the larger point about politics worth addressing herenot Kapoor Ranautgiven 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 everyones talking genuinely no ones listening Anything missing EmpathyAnd what used to happen with sportentertainment at the bardrawingroom has effectively become true for politics Everybody is an unshakeable expert On everythingfrom NASAs 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 politiciansThis sort of supposedly political discourse would of course be okay if the loudest voices werent from the evidently affluent For how else can they afford so much time for such leisure My hairdresser eventually moved out of NaliniYasmin 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 diddidnt know who the prime minister was Hardly as much as I thought it should haveMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates