Unwired Soul
Many years ago, on Indian television a serial used to be broadcasted every week. It was called “Mungerilal ke Haseen Sapne”. It was a comedy serial, popular, the protagonist much loved by viewers. “Mungerilal” that was his name, the main character. A simpleton. An honest hardworking, commoner. Living an absolutely boring life, with a 9 to 5 job, married, had a nagging wife, a father in law who criticized him for everything and a boss working for whom was no pleasure but just a necessity of life.
That was basically Mungerilal’s life, nothing exciting, nothing thrilling, just flavorless in all respects. Deep down Mungerilal hoped to escape this daily grind and accomplish a life, where he is a hero, respected by all, loved and cared by wife, living a life where there is no room for sorrow, no haplessness, never ever feeling like a loser. But it was beyond his capacities, courage, to escape the fangs of his cruel reality, facts of his life.
The only way he could live life like a Casanova, pumped with machoism, adored by society, was by day dreaming. And that’s what he did. Every episode of the serial was Mungerilal’s virtuality, depicting his day dream story, sabotaging his reality. At the end of each episode Mungerilal was humiliated, ill-treated for wasting, missing one more day for no productivity, sacrificed to his love of day dreaming. But Mungerilal the fool he was, didn’t mind any of that, because the pacification of virtual pleasure was worth more than his boring realistic life. A life where he had given up all hopes of achieving or feeling any good. That was an era when people loved watching “Mungerilal” and laughed at his foolish attitude towards life, and now we all a generation who more or less are happier content in our life of “Virtuality”.
The storyline of the serial was similar to short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’”. “Walter Mitty’” fictional character whose life revolves around similar day dreaming concepts. And so is the term ‘Mittyesque” derived from “Walter Mitty’” commonly used to denote a person, who lives a life disconnected from reality, spending more time in virtuality. “Deleuze” the French postmodern thinker, who explains “virtuality” so well. Virtuality” a dimension of life which is nowhere close to reality but allures a person to an extend where one starts despising the actual framework of life.
How different are we to “Mungerilal” or “Walter Mitty’”? May it be social network, or some trendy games, applications, we are trying to derive the zing of our unfulfilled desires through virtual platforms. Our Virtual relationships progress fast and strong, as it’s not tied with any real day to day harsh, practical cycles of life. And we like “Mungerilal” are so subsumed by the these virtuality energy spikes, leading us to condemn, find faults, magnify shortcomings and eventually mess up our real elements of life.
It’s like a trance mode we all are living in. Incapable of changing or fixing the things that worry and trouble us in reality. An escape mechanism, where we feel soothed, with “The Virtuality”. Pretending to be naïve, acting ignorant, we willingly surrender to such virtuality every day, in some way, and then complain life’s too complicated. The longevity of such virtual connections, we believe is forever, may be after a decade, realization will hit us hard and then it might be too late, no reality to suffice, to survive.
Serendipity 