9th Wonder of the world: Misunderstood statues of Maya

Facebook has changed the social fabric of our country. There is a revolution of sorts happening in India. It’s a mandatory requirement for everyone to have a Facebook account. Everyone from housewife to a corporate honcho has a Facebook account to flaunt. “Don’t you have a Facebook account?” is the dreaded question everyone wants to avoid. Grandmothers are learning to use Facebook from their grandkids, while parents do not want to be left behind. 

The only other revolution of this sort was when television became popular in the country. It initially started off as the thing to have. Everyone wanted to have television. As the television sales increased, not having a television became an insult. Everyone had to have a TV in their house.

Facebook has been naïve not to have a “Do it yourself” kind of courses. Everyone seems to be learning Facebook usage by looking at others’ pages. “If X does it then I guess it must be a trend or 

THE thing to do, so I better do it” seems to be the mantra.

The easiest way one can make a Facebook profile look strong is to fill it up with pictures. You are sitting in an auto with/without a friend, click a picture and upload it on FB. Out for a lunch/dinner, click a picture and upload it on FB. Sitting up late in the night, click pictures for a good profile picture. Even a stray dog on the street is not spared, click a picture standing next to it and there it goes into FB. Some even upload their honeymoon pictures (the ones with clothes on).  Now it’s become a trend to scan those old black and white pictures from the dusty albums and upload them.

You just cannot venture out without a camera, be it a mobile phone camera or a point & shoot one. You never know when a photo opportunity strikes.  Putting up pictures on a public domain has become a really pleasurable activity. So much so, that soon FB would have to multiply its server count.  

Not everyone in India is lucky enough to have access to computers. Even if they do have computers they may not have the technical know-how. Some may not have a guiding soul. How do these individuals cope with the need to show the happenings of their life to public?

A certain Behenji from the wild Uthar Pradesh thought out of the box and came up with a brilliant plan. She installed statues of herself and her close ones across the state.

When we upload photos on FB, we use the server space of FB. In the same lines, Behenji used public space and public funds to install the statues. It’s hard to figure out why the country is making such a huge fuss about these statues.

Election commission has gone a step further and has asked these statues to be kept covered till elections get over. We do not come across any such measures against the crores of pictures being uploaded on FB every day.

When there is no restriction on the pictures which can be uploaded (as long as they don’t have leaders of congress party), it would be wrong to target the statues of Mayawathi. These are after all her FACE BOOKed in marble.