They converted our feelings into ‘Breaking news.’

With Wing Commander Abhinandan’s bloodied nose, blindfolded interview and subsequent calmer interview- news channels and twitter was on overdrive this last week.

And that’s the thing- it happened during 26/11 as well. News channels did whatever it took to get TRPs even if it involved giving out sensitive information.

It happened again.

And it will keep happening.

We can keep criticising. But in a world driven by ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ and ‘re-tweets’ what news channels are doing is only what each selfie obsessed individual is- trying to get the most eyeballs!

It is times like these I miss the joy of knowing a secret, of having a meal that didn’t need to be photographed , of knowing that my exact whereabouts wasn’t traceable every minute of the day!

Today nothing is a secret. Everything and every one can be found. The world is smaller but also infinitely less interesting.

I enjoy going to countries where my photograph of my new favourite place is my photograph and not one that a few thousand people have already shared with filters, stickers and the likes.

I miss the days where wars were not front page news, but creating a new record was; where suicides were not relegated to small print and back pages- these pages had columns and opinions and interesting thoughts and debate starters.

I think we need to start being more mindful of what we share that will hurt or upset or even destroy people. I am definitely not a fan of censorship of speech but I think we need to have a certain amount of self censorship and responsibility towards the larger picture. In our joy of being liked, retweeted and shared- shouldn’t we be mindful of what we represent ?Shouldn’t we also support, share and like and retweet restraint, sensibility and applaud the responsible?

Wing Commander Abhinandan must come home today. The world is waiting and watching. But I’m hoping that his family gets to feel the joy of his return before we make it national news.

P.s. (Palat says)-: Today each of us has a voice. Let’s use our voice to help create the world we want to live in.