You have McDonald index for judging the purchasing power of every currency vis-à-vis the others. You have cost inflation index, you have happiness index which Bhutan has been heading for long years despite admittedly not being among the rich countries and you have stock market indices. While there is an index to gauge almost every progress, gyration or movement, if only there was one to gauge the voyeuristic urges of people across the world! In its absence, sensitive Indians may bristle at the suggestion of Indians being more voyeuristic than others. The author offers his sincere apologies if he has even unwittingly hurt their sentiments.
In July 2022, Netflix as per media reports was all set to livestream the wedding of the celebrity filmi couple Nayantara and Vignesh Sivam for a whopping Rs 25 crore to the couple. Had it gone through, it would have become a textbook case of purveying or pandering to egregiously excessive voyeurism. But as per the same media reports the streaming major reneged on its contract on the grounds that Vignesh had shared some of the photos of a few noted celebrities attending the functions on his Instagram account. If voyeurism is second nature to most of us, vain boasting perhaps is the third. After all, don’t we make public on social media account which restaurant or which shopping mall we have just entered? Don’t we preen with pride at the number of likes we beget for such vain boasts? In these lights, Netflix could have taken a lenient view of Vignesh’s faux pas but it was livid at this violation of the contract and pulled out as per the same media report. Netflix rightly figured that celebrities especially their personal lives are the subject of intense, salacious scrutiny and debate in the country as much in the social media as in the park benches! It obviously wanted to hog all the limelight of purveying to peeping tom instincts but pulled out at the first hint of the violation of the contract.
Fast forward to 2024. The Ambanis do not seem to have courted attention on the wedding of their scion Anant with Radhika Merchant and on the numerous bashes both in India and abroad in its run-up. The media both print and electronic filled the void though by its blow-by-blow and extensive coverage of the events with the race for one-upmanship all too evident. The media too knows full well the Indian proclivity for delighting in peeping into the personal lives of others more so of celebrities. The live telecast of Wimbledon 2024 saw Indian celebrities being fawned over — Rohit Sharma flush from his recent T20 world cup cricket victory sauntering into the centre court, Sachin Tendulkar alongside Roger Federer and even Kiara Advani being accompanied by Siddarth Malhotra to the center court braving rains. Even the foreign television channels know how to tailor and pep up the telecast with trivia its Indian audiences would lap up. Sidelights often are as important to audiences as meeting on the sidelines are to the busy leaders of nations attending multilateral meetings.
Back to livestreaming. It caters to invitees and near and dear ones of the bride and groom tying the nuptial knots. More so when NRI couples get married in India in which case their US well-wishers stay awake to partake vicariously in the festivities or when they get married in the US itself in which case their well-wishers back home vicariously participate without having to fly all the way to attend first-hand. Livestreaming of seminars and conferences too are extremely useful. So, it is not as if livestreaming is the instrument in chief in promoting voyeurism alone. Thanks to highspeed internet connections particularly in the wake of 5G technology, distance has been conquered even more.
Leisurely viewing video recordings is passe. Live participation is the order of the day. Telecom companies have rightly figured it out and selling data more than talk-time. The late Dhirubhai Ambani once famously quipped — Indians enjoy gabfests — when telecom was thrown open to the private sector as well. In hindsight he could have said gabfests and watching live. Technology is morphing peeping toms into a more dignified and less obtrusive watching Toms. Be that as it may.
Indians revelling in voyeurism has something to do with their hero worship tendencies. When they hang to the lips of their favorite cinematic and cricketing heroes, they can be counted upon to shadow them where possible with the same intensity and passion. And when there is a dearth of real-life heroes, the reel life heroes come to fill the void. Add to this the couch potato syndrome and you have a more plausible and wholesome explanation. We prefer to watch sports on television than play ourselves. To be sure, even in other nations, people throng stadiums and cinema halls but in addition generally people also take to games, exercise regime and extracurricular activities enthusiastically. But then one can argue that our roads are too unsafe to walk or cycle. Sidewalks and cycle lanes are by and large conspicuous by their absence. Condemned to passivity thus, we by and large have become couch potatoes in its broadest sense. An idle mind, it is said, is the devil’s workshop. True but it also fosters voyeurism wittingly or unwittingly. OTT platforms thus are as much a boon to voyeurs as to wannabe actors, scriptwriters and directors.
S Murlidharan is a freelance columnist and writes on economics, business, legal and taxation issues
