CAUSE and EFFECT – A SYNOPSIS (The Fleeting Film Part I)

A note to the casual reader- ‘Cause and effect’ is a short film I made during my college days. It will be of great interest to me if you read this synopsis and post the comments in the following direction- Did the piece make you want to see the film.

Cause and Effect is a comparison of two very different personalities, of two opposite perspectives. At the heart of it, a debate: Does anything matter in the larger scheme of things.

Ila and Arul are a contrast in personalities. Ila is a thinker, the philosopher, questioning Life and its meaning – or its lack thereof. Arul is his intellectual opposite – a boy seemingly bound by routine, schedule, the sameness that dictates most people’s lives. He has concerns about money, notes for a test, fear of displeasing those around him – things that Ila on the other hand does not care about. If anything, Ila seems to hold these things, and the people who hold them dear, in contempt. Do they really matter in the grander scheme of things?

This film is a combination of abstracts and fiction that bring into focus, the universal debate of Life. Does anything matter in the larger cosmic scheme of things or do little; seemingly innocuous events that often go unnoticed have the power to alter the course of one’s Life? These two questions are explored in this film through the two protagonists, Ila and Arul.

Two people, two different lives, two different views of Life with one tiny incident – a thread that connects the two – and seemingly sends both worlds in opposite directions. Is there common ground? Is one right and the other wrong? Does nothing matter in the cosmic sense at all? Do even the littlest of things make a difference?

Cause and Effect is a visual exploration of a question, yet to be answered.

Sex and the internet city (Orkutting Ourselves to Death Part II)

I have with me an interesting case typical of boys and girls on Orkut. The girl's profile reads thus -

About Me:
narcississtic. highly hateable. wild hair. random. foot permanent fixture in mouth. rudeness personified. beat up people i like. look good in photos here so if u want to be "friends" with me coz i look "byooteephul" or sum such thing in the photo on LHS dont bother. flight inducing nostrils. have big feet. calvin n hobbes.glass bangles. as good as blind. wear contact lanses (such bad spellungs!)-6 power. hate wet cockroaches.n i love wet blue paint. and random windows. and stone. need to cultivate feminine type gait. not very well behaved. may also need to discard habit of pointing at people while loudly saying horrible things abt them. possess heart of gold. and gem of person. excess adipose in some parts. goldfish have 3 sec memories.or is it 3 min..for some reason people think im "very dominating"..they also seem to have a tendency to suddenly stop doing what they're doing and stare at me for a second as if hit by blunt heavy object and say "you have no etiquette''...very bewildering behavior this

note: for those who didnt get the dont bother me msg. I DO NOT NEED NEW FRIENDS..i can say it slower and louder and in simplified language for the hard of understanding..I NO FRIENDS WANT..so do not scrap etc me unless ur a talking chameleon or a purple hippopotamus..or unless ur long lost item of yuman bean variety that i know..also if ur new to orkut n need to increase number of "friends" from 1.2 to 1200 do not consider me a candidate worthy of the honour please.and and i hate the word dear. hate it even more if it is spelt daer..so all dear and daer keep away

Well the girl is very impolite to say the least. Not just to the outer world (or just Orkut boys) but also herself and her crude definition of herself. It’s not because she is seething with her self image or has self esteem issues (surprisingly). But it’s in fact the other way around. It’s built into my generation that we pride ourselves in our negative representation. My Resume for instance reads that I have always been an academic failure all through my school years. My dad was baffled to say the least and gave me a one hour lecture on how I should model my Resume in such a way that it focuses on my ‘Positives.’ But I feel that- me being able to recognize and acknowledge something negative (though I don’t see academic achievement a huge positive) about myself shows not only my confidence but also my ‘I don’t care, take it or leave it attitude.’

Coming hence to the second part of her profile description. Now this brand of the Indian youth even I can’t tolerate. It’s the lets become friends on Orkut cause I don’t have any real friends category. They are a bunch of losers for all I care. And I can understand the annoyance that girls face when they get scraps from random guys who just discovered Orkut. But to what extent will some go-

hey ****...this is farhan(name changed)...a student of law...the fact that you seemingly seem interesting is the sole reason for me to scrap you...just a lil curious if there could be some other additional reasons to keep me interested...i aint here for pseudo friendship/romance/open relationships...am nihilistic, jaded and naive...and am lookin for sumone who can cope up with erratic mood swings and sarcastic behavior which is just a little short of being rude...all that i want is somebody to hold a good conversation with...sounds like a simple search...but it really is anythin but simple...of all the people i know and have met...just a very few of them with which i can hold a decent convo with...i hope you can help my case...i've heard and also believed for a substantial time now...that "what goes around...comes around"...will tell you more once this comes around...ciao


Again this reflects what I was formerly talking about. And curious as I was I went through the scraps of the boy and girl to see if there was any reciprocation. But I guess the negatives canceled each other out. One of my lighter observations shall we say :)

The following excerpt is from my thesis-

Sex and the internet city
Another important characteristic specific to the Indian youth is the sex anxiety. The sex anxiety has various components of curiosity, lack of fulfillment, fear of inadequacy, etc... Prolongation of the period of education means inevitably in our society a prolongation of the period of sexual deprivation. (Gore 1977:64)
Drilling deeper I use Psychoanalysis (and theories on repression) to discuss why the Indian youth find it easier to approach members of the opposite sex online. The sexual component instinct of scopophilia (the active component of looking), like its passive counterpart, exhibitionism (the passive component of being looked at), are subject to numerous restrictions in our culture.(Nagera 1969:146) These components play themselves as the research will find how many youth like going through pictures on Orkut and the nature of the picture they have uploaded.
This brings us to another sensitive subject ‘pornography’. The research will find how many of the youth find porn acceptable. Porn is a relatively new phenomenon. The youth of bygone on the other hand had a different substitute- Cinema. As Kakkar (An Indian Psychoanalyst) explains- I see cinema as the primary vehicle for the shared fantasies of a vast number people living on the India subcontinent who are both culturally and psychologically linked. Kakkar says that he has used the word fantasy as another word for a world of imagination. (Kakkar 1996:25) He gives the example of the rape scenes which were a staple feature of the Indian cinema. ‘What is being enjoyed by the audience is the sadomasochistic fantasy incorporated in the defenselessness and pain of a fear stricken woman.’ We can hence find easy explanations for the ‘item number’ which are also popular in Indian cinema.
But with porn nothing is left to imagination. More on this and voyeurism will be examined in the data analysis.

What’s going on?

I waste time. The sentence written with disgust and weariness means exactly what it means. That time is one thing in this world that exists as a permanent itch that you can choose to scratch or just pretend it doesn’t exist. Musicians have sung about it, philosophers thought about it and preachers preached about it. Even in Einstein’s world of relativity time can be only perceived as a constant. And I waste it. So logic has it that I was useless and purposeless for those few minutes I choose not to scratch.

But there exist something more profound more complicated that makes time so abstract.

For if my life is limited on this planet then so is my time. Then wasting time means wasting precious seconds of existence. For those of us who think man (wait the feminists are protesting) or humans were created for a purpose, the precious seconds wasted could dent a hole in the overall picture of gods plan. Or if you are an atheist, it’s a hole in life’s plan. But if human life were purposeless just a dialectical circle of chaos then there ceases an importance of time.

I may have wasted my time writing this. But if intimate reflections like this are a waste of time then I choose to waste my time happily. That's me.

Where do I begin? Orkutting Ourselves to Death (Part 1)

I don't think I will never work on another research paper again. Its way too much work and I have a feeling that I won't ever stumble upon another topic just as interesting. Also I did this work because I had to (As a part of my Post Graduate requirement). Don't get me wrong- I will do research, but i will not put it down so systematically as I have done. So to enlighten the world I will release chapters of my work one at a time as 'Blogs' for the interested people to read. It will be a diluted version of my actual work because lets face it, attention spans are low for the average internet user.

The topic of the thesis is ‘Orkut net-community –The search for Virtual Relationships and a new cultural identity among the Youth Today’ was not just constructed on the eve our research assignment was given to us but over my postgraduate days of studying media and its effects. A direct result of many books and journals I had read on media and its effects. I disagreed with many theories especially on the understanding of the so called youth. I thought the theories were an over generalization and like a dejected adolescent I thought to myself ‘they don’t understand us’ (more on that later).

Then I stumbled on other theories by more recent researchers and authors and also on many articles (in newspapers and magazines) that constructed my ‘adolescent feelings’ into more organized ideas.

And this research assignment was an opportunity to explore these new theories and construct a better understanding of how media (or new media) has changed the face of the youth today. I will study how this new youth or the M generation[1] views online relationships, sexuality and purpose or meaning of life.

The research was done in two stages. In the first stage a questionnaire was prepared, circulated and collected. The data collected from this process was analyzed. And in the final stage relevant literature was reviewed in order to give meaning to the findings of this research.

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[1] India Today (20 Nov 2006) in their cover story “Wired Generation” use M generation to describe those born between 1985 and 1996