The selfie satisfies the urge to make the statement, “I was there” and confirming that with, “if you don’t believe me, here’s a picture I took myself of myself”. It is a strong urge, and stronger now for having been dormant for generations while we waited for some clever person to invent the phone-camera. And for another clever person to invent the selfie-smile.
This smile is one that is reserved for the selfie; many practise it for days and weeks before they get it right. For it has to go with the selfie-hair and selfie-look and a selfie-casualness that looks like it was natural and just happened. Most people have to work hard on appearing spontaneous.
A selfie is often the picture of a hysterical person at a historical site. “See, that’s me in the foreground with my lovely dimples (or French beard or whatever), and way behind is the Taj Mahal which has no dimples,” is the underlying message.
The selfie has claimed a few lives too. People have been run over by trains, hit by buses, fallen into rivers and drowned, fallen off cliffs and been charged by wild animals in pursuit of the perfect, defined as one that causes universal envy.
I haven’t been in any of these situations – in any case, if I want a selfie with a charging bull, I would have to ask the bull to click the picture – so I probably don’t have the right to comment on people who have. Like the government official in Chhattisgarh. He was taking a selfie with a water reservoir holding two million litres of water when the phone slipped from his hands and fell in.
Of the least sexy edifices to share a selfie with, a reservoir is probably high on the list. Universal envy? Doubtful. But then that’s just me.
I have no idea what I would have done had my phone fallen into a reservoir holding two million litres of water. Or even one million, for that matter. Perhaps I would have shrugged my shoulders and walked off with a vague note to myself about not taking selfies in future. Or perhaps I might have offered a reward to anyone who would dive in and retrieve the phone for its sentimental or economic value.
The government official initially went for the second choice, and when that didn’t work, he ordered the reservoir to be drained – all two million litres of it. It took three days to empty the reservoir of the water that would have irrigated some 1500 acres of land during the current scorching summer.
Even at this stage I am tempted to comment, but I won’t because I haven’t been in his situation ever. Remember the opening lines of The Great Gatsby? “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
The water may have been lost forever, but this story has a happy ending: the phone was retrieved.
