Wrong Window

It was a hot dark summer night. I was chatting with multiple people at the same time, as I always do post midnight on almost all days. I always sit facing the window in my room. I was juggling between multiple windows on my Windows laptop and was looking out of my window every now and then as a reflex whenever I had to think about something.

“Oops… Wrong Window!” is the bottom most unread message in my Messenger window. That made me curious about the previous message.

1. Aditya Kumar (Twitter ID: xxx, Facebook ID: xxx)
2. Sai Babu (Twitter ID: xxx, No Facebook ID)
3. Mohammed Ali (Twitter ID: xxx, Facebook ID: xxx)

...

A long list of names. I follow each one of them in the list. There are boys, girls, men, women, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, North Indians, South Indians and all types of people in the list. There is one thing common about all of them. Each one of them is an opinion creator in my country. Each one of them writes against the government all the time. They ask a lot of difficult questions. While some of them  started doing it only after this government  came, most of them questioned the previous government also tooth and nail - with the same tooth and same nail. 

I have always wondered how thick their skin must be. They get trolled like crazy. Their family members, women, and children are cursed. Some of them have even received death threats. What’s interesting is, when you end up following one of these people, you will eventually become a follower of all of them. On certain issues you will realize that some of them have a crazy opinion and they don't deserve your attention. So what happens? You end up unfollowing them only to start following them again when you see one of their tweets retweeted by someone whom you follow. It's a vicious cycle.

There is one name that I didn’t find on top of the list. That’s Ramesh’s. Ramesh is the one who just sent me the list of names and oopsed. He should be the first one in the list. You can see his comments almost under each message of each of these people in the list on every social media platform. He strongly supports their views and fights with those who oppose them or troll them. I have seen him save many of these people from trouble.

Well, why did he send this list to me now? And then why did he oops about it? Why did he say ‘wrong window’? Then who is the owner of the right window?

After a gap, he started typing. 

“Nothing, bro. You can use it too. These are the people that you should follow on social media. Our tribe.”

***

Ramesh is the one who started the #gobackpm hashtag for the first time ever a few years back. He is also credited with many other viral hashtags — like #ourlivesmatter, #criminalsinpolitics, #democracyindanger, etc.

He posted “Go back Prime Minister. This place has no place for your hate politics. #gobackpm” when the Prime Minister visited the state for the first time after becoming the prime minister.

That became a national trend and then a global one. It was promoted by these same people. They don't belong to the same state. Then what’s their interest in the prime minister’s visit to a state where most of them don’t belong? Why do they do this?

“Where are you from? Why are you bothered about my state? #getlostantinational #mindyourbusiness” replied a nationalist who advocates ‘one nation — one religion — one language’ theory. He tweeted that in a language only his state can understand.

Ramesh replied, “My place has no place for idiots. #getlostidiot.”

The nationalist replied, “Another anti-national spotted. Arrest this ba$tard. @policecommissionerx.” 

He posted another tweet to his followers, “Good news. Anti-national ba$tard Ramesh’s bones will be broken tonight. His followers who miss him can meet him in X1 police station. Count your bones too, before and after.” 

This went viral in his circles. It got liked, retweeted and replied in large numbers.

***

If you look at the names of these people, both first name and last name, you will realize some of them HAVE to be the opposers of the government. There is no way they can be the supporters. It’s a government against them, their names and their existence. Likewise, some of the other names can no way be the opposers of the government. They should just be blind supporters and promoters. It’s their own government - of their people, for their people and by their people. Ramesh has a surname that'll surprise most people when they read his posts against the government. That attracts more people to him - both out of admiration and disgust.

I started following him when I saw his name three times within a few minutes of scrolling on my timeline one day, maybe a night - late night. He used to criticize the previous government too. He's one of those social media warriors who helped the current ruling party win this time. Everyone knows this. 

His hashtag #changeordie is one of the many hashtags that sent the previous government home. People called him names. 

“How are you paid by the opposition? Per tweet or per hashtag? #costlychangeagent” asked an angry reply.

“I keep saying this. There is no way I can prove this until we have a new government. I will be the first to criticize the new government when they do something wrong. Wait and watch.”

I didn’t believe it. Nobody would have believed it. 

But he kept his word. 

“I truly believed this guy had a spine. I made you believe it too. I am sorry I just realized it’s photoshopped. #photoshoppedspine.” 

This was his third tweet post election results. This was for inviting a leader that he hates to the swearing-in ceremony. Yes, he started criticizing the new government even before it was sworn in. His popularity soared. Those few weeks he had the following of people from both sides of the political spectrum. 

Then slowly people started unfollowing him for his ‘undue’ criticism of the government. People thought he went overboard and he was too negative.

“Hey, this guy is sick. He's just an attention seeker. All this drama for just more followers? Why don’t you have some stands of your own or standards? #killnegativity”

He never stopped criticizing the government in his own style and words. He started losing more followers. Nothing changed. He kept doing what he was doing. Over the next few years, he started getting back his followers, a combination of the same followers who unfollowed him earlier and a totally new set of them. 

The best thing about him is that he talks with facts. He is scientific. He throws numbers for everything. When he says something, people generally find it hard to refute him. When the fights get dirty he gets really dirty. He calls names too. Every now and then he drags people in powerful positions into a controversy and beats them to death. Every time he does this he is retweeted, liked and shared hundreds of thousands of times and made more popular. He keeps getting the regular threatening messages. But no one has ever done anything to him.

He trolls his own people too. There is a retired judge who keeps writing his views on politics every now and then. He has never spared anyone that disagreed with him. He is a master in bullying people with opposite views. Surprisingly, Ramesh and the judge have never locked horns on any issue so far. 

Suddenly on a dull Wednesday afternoon, this photo surfaced on Twitter — Ramesh standing with the judge in a family event — both of them visibly happy about standing next to each other.

One of Ramesh’s followers posted it on Twitter and asked, “Ramesh, what’s your relationship with this bully? Are you very proud of it? Is that why you never dragged him down?”

Ramesh replied, “He is my uncle and guru. Whatever I am today is because of him. My discussions and disagreements with him are private. I haven’t signed any agreement to make everything in my personal life public.”

The crowd was not satisfied. Each one raised a provocative question.

“You said only fools would call it a masterstroke. Your uncle called it a masterstroke too. Is he a fool too or does he have an exemption because he is your uncle and guru?”

“Anybody who calls anything by this government a masterstroke is a fool. Period.”

Someone replied, “Wow! You call your guru a fool? Your mom would be so proud of you.”

Then this one from Ramesh should have hurt the judge really hard: “He is a retired judge. That means, he is aged. With age, he lost his judgement. Don’t bother him.”

Then the bully master started firing from his handle too. “Boy, don’t teach your father how to…”

Someone replied, “Uncle, are you his uncle or father? The nation wants to know… lol.”

The social media showed its ugly face. It’s not that they haven’t seen this before. But this was getting really out of control. They both stopped tweeting about it at this point. They must have spoken with each other on the phone or one of their relatives must have called them both and stopped this from getting any worse.

After a few days, while Ramesh got back to his tweeting as usual, his uncle closed his account. Ramesh’s fandom celebrated him for belling the rogue cat.

“You are a disgrace to our community. You are doing all this just to bump up your popularity. All these at the cost of your own people who will come to rescue you when you are in trouble. Those who celebrate you here won’t be there to help you,” tweeted one of his people.

***

Then came the next masterstroke of the government. The prime minister came on National Television and said, “This is going to make our country a superpower within the next 6 months.” 

Next day, Ramesh released a 30 minutes video explaining how this was going to mess up the entire economy. No surprise. What Ramesh said happened. I couldn’t control myself from pinging him on messenger.

“Hi Ramesh, I am a huge fan of yours. I just love the video that you made about the recent masterstroke of the government. Have no words. I knew this was going to fail. But I just couldn't put them in words. I knew his fanhood was celebrating too early. Just out of their love for their leader they were wow wowing everything he did. You are awesome. You are unbelievable. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with these god forsaken deaf people.”

He just thumbs-upped. Not even a word. It was disappointing. That's okay. He's such a big intellectual. Why would he waste his time with me - one of his thousands of fans? He just has 24 hours. I understand. I understood. 

I pinged him privately to share my feedback on his next video  as well.

“Ramesh,  as always, this one is awesome too. Where do you get all these data from? And how do you make it such a coherent and convincing story? Wow! Hats off.”

This time, he said, “Thank you very much.” Four words.

Next time, he spoke a little more. 

“Thank you so much”

“Where are you from?”

“What do you do?”

Three questions.

Then I called him on messenger and spoke for a long time. I tried my best to show him I was smart too. I asked him a lot of questions - smart questions - what I thought he would find smart.  I showed my interest by almost commenting under all of his tweets.  He would like most of them. It worked. Every time I called him he spoke a lot with me. He asked me a lot of questions too.  That meant I had to read a lot to impress him -  a lot of his own writing.

After every discussion with him, I felt like I came out smarter. I really loved every discussion I had with him. Then we started talking about what to trend each weekend and how to go about it. We had some of these people (whose names were just shared by Ramesh) in those discussions. By getting into the inner circle of these opinion  creators, more people started following me too. That came with its own share of problems.  Here are some of the private messages I received:

“Hey ba$tard, Do you know how your death is going to be? Just note it. It's going to be very cruel. Have you ever thought about what would happen to your loved ones and wellwishers after that?  Think about it.”

“Hey anti-national bugger, wait for the day the police are going to knock your doors and then break your bones. You're being watched. I give you an option. You close your account today, we let you live longer.”

“If an individual with a few thousand faceless followers can do so much, imagine what a government with so much power and intelligence can do to you? Mind you, I am not from the IT cell. I have your name in the list. The government is watching you.”

***

Wait, let me read the list again.

25. Diya Singh (Twitter ID: xxx, Facebook ID: xxx)

26. Dev Patel (Twitter ID: xxx, Facebook ID: xxx)

27. AH! How did I miss this? Whom did he send my name to?

Oh my… He is a… I clicked on his name, clicked on the three dots, yes - ‘Block’. I don’t know what he will think. Let him think whatever he wants. Who cares!

I should block him on all social media platforms.

***