Personal Has Become Performative

Recently, I have been seeing a lot of youth come to temples. While many of us in our 30s and 40s grew up in a time where the media and institutions made us believe that going to a temple or being religious is ‘uncool’, it has been a refreshing change with those in their teens and 20s now. I see more and more youngsters dress up for festivals with great joy and vigour, participate in the chores at home, cook prasad, and visit temples more frequently than the previous generations. And that is precisely my cause of concern, too. I see more of them, I am not sure if I feel more of it.Outside Kapaleeswar temple in Chennai, boys dressed in shirts and veshti, adjusting the holy ash on their foreheads, posed confidently in front of the towering entrance, unmindful of the oncoming traffic and the evident glare of other devotees. In Nashik, at the Trayambakeshwar jyotirling, a family was obsessed with snapping away photos and posing for reels before a security guard pointed out that they were blocking the queue for others. In Prayagraj, at the Kumbh Mela, I was shocked at how many wanted to have photos of themselves bathing and dipping in the holy sangam, without sparing a thought for the many semi-naked devotees behind them, whose privacy was also getting exposed.But this is not about religion or religious spaces alone. To recount a conversation I overheard at a bookstore recently, a group of teenagers were deciding which shelf and which book to use as a prop for their social media posts. One even suggested her friend hold the book only as a prop, but stare broodingly at the floor, because that ‘fit the mood’. I am sure it appeals to the aesthetics of the gram, but does it work for the mind? I am a millennial, but I felt like a boomer.Wait. Boomers are no better. At a classical music concert, a lady and her husband were two minutes short of recording the whole concert through photos and videos and sharing it on their WhatsApp group. We had to hiss and nudge for them to put their phones away. At a recent movie release, I saw more men and women in their 40s and 50s wearing the hero’s insignia as t-shirts, scarves and amulets than I saw youth wearing such things. They had more photos to be clicked with the movie poster than an average actor appearing on the red carpet on an awards night.Is there anything personal anymore? Is it all a performance?Influencers have gone on to show their entire bathing routines. Celebrity couples have cameras in their bedrooms to capture their love from the moment they open the morning blinds to how they go about their chores, to winding up their day and getting back to bed. I have been appalled by more than appealed to. Our scriptures constantly encourage us to practice solitude. It allows us the opportunity to reflect, redirect and grow from within. We need a silent space, away from the glare of the world, to connect with ourselves. Here we are, shamelessly, making public whatever was once personal. Is there any sanctity attached to silent rituals like praying, reading, cooking, or gardening if they’re not recorded and posted? As I wonder what the middle ground is on this, let me know how you resist social media from invading your personal life.

Personal Has Become Performative

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