World is not a stage

 

The newspaper this morning carried an interesting piece of news on a certain standup comedian being barred from flying by a few Indian flyers.  The comedian, apparently, had repeatedly tried to provoke a news journalist into a confrontation that never happened but the standup act was not appreciated by the airline and was reported to the regulating authority.

I have often noticed that people who achieve success in one field are often enticed into expressing their views on subjects where they have no expertise. While some demonstrate utmost honesty and integrity by declining to comment there are others who unwittingly get drawn into a controversy.

One thing that people fail to appreciate is that they excel in one field and hence have a set of followers but that followership does not necessarily transcend into another field. A successful actor expressing views on society; a cricketer entering into politics with a certain ideology; another public figure with no background of history talking about historical facts or a politician with no understanding of finance commenting on the state of economy – often end up making a fool of themselves and lose their followership.

There have been very successful examples of many popular cine personalities successfully converting their followership into politics as well but very few have been able to sustain it. And they are exceptions.

Another aspect of such indulgence is to appreciate one’s domain and its canvas. You may be a news anchor but know that what you officially broadcast is different from what you say in private – those are leaks. You may be a humorist and can pull off by caricaturing an individual on a comedy show but when you do it in an open public place, it is a blatant violation of the person.

I support certain politicians on some specific work that they do; I love my favorite cricketers on the ground; and I love film personalities for their skills on the screen but that doesn’t stop me from caricaturing them in private (in a private circle of 4 people; never know when and where the sec 144 is in effect) and I enjoy it.  My friends like it and enjoy it. But that doesn’t give me the right to mock them in public or challenge them on those very topics. There is a thin line between humor and satire but there is a wide chasm between a humorist and an activist. We should know where to draw the line.

Shakespeare was a great playwright without doubt. But he was not a sage whose writings can be taken as a gospel truth. Else, only after a misadventure you may realize that the world is not a stage after all, where you can invade into someone’s personal space and get away with that.