What a movie with friends has to do with your ecosystem

When I was in school, I used to be particular about lay person usage of the term “your friend”.

By Nivriti Butalia (Meanderings)

  • Follow us on
  • google-news
  • whatsapp
  • telegram

Published: Mon 20 Nov 2017, 8:05 PM

Last updated: Mon 27 Nov 2017, 2:10 PM

On Thursday evening, at a friend's place, with burnt microwave popcorn and takeaway falafel doing the rounds, we watched a Bollywood movie Toilet: Ek Prem Katha. I love random plans. I like the unpredictability of them and people who enable randomness. Makes life interesting.
When I left work that evening, I did not think I would be watching an Akshay Kumar movie. But I am glad I watched it. I remember the news about an incident on which the movie is based, and about which Wikipedia has this to say: "...19-year-old Priyanka Bharti fled her husband's home in 2012, when there was no toilet (at his place). In the film, before the end credits, Toilet mentions that it is based on the story of Anita Narre from Madhya Pradesh who refused to go back to her husband Shivram's home due to lack of toilet."
There are scenes in the movie in which the fabulous Bhumi Pednekar yells at a troupe of head-covered women marching to answer nature's calls, addressing them the "lota party" and blaming them for their fates, for perpetuating the malaise of no toilets at home, for not taking a stand and saying enough is enough, I shan't be trotting off to the fields anymore.
When the movie got over, we were discussing among ourselves whether the movie had had a positive social impact. We wondered if any mindsets had changed. Something to ask the director and writers of the film. Did they hear from people in villages? What kind of fan mail have they received from inspired Priyankas and Anitas. Did anyone's life become better because of the ripple effects?
***
Eco-systems have been playing on my mind, and the difference between eco-systems and comfort zones. I looked it up but Google threw at me some stuff about bacteria, nearly 500 varieties of it, being comfortable on our skin. Not what I was looking for.
I was telling a colleague how I feel like a fly trapped in the Apple eco-system. How I would happily use a OnePlus, seems like a severely underrated phone, if it weren't for the hassle of migrating my endless and mostly useless data from one set-up to another. You know what I was blaming? This dependency and lulling effect of, in this case, the Apple eco-system.
***
Further eco-system-related curiosity led me to glean fascinating psychological truths. From more Wiki-surfing, I discovered Bronfenbrenner's The Ecology of Human Development. There's a graph there, concentric rings and all, most interesting. I understood stuff about individual-microsystem (family), mesosystem (interactions between two microsystems - so, like, yours with the families of your cousins), exosystem (more removed; the community, your dad's workplace), the macrosystem (the culture in which we live), and chronosystem (the long-term effects of, say, your parents' divorce on, say, your kids). All these systems are still a few short of the number of bacteria on my skin, apparently, but wow! Why don't they teach this stuff to non-psychology majors, to just people mulling over relationships - real or what they see in movies, about the social construct that binds a gang of head-covered neighbourly women in a village holding a pot of water, headed to the fields?
Demarcations help process certain mental networks. When I was in school, I used to be particular about layperson usage of the term "your friend". If you used 'friend' in my context loosely, I would jump in and correct, "my acquaintance, actually", or "a classmate", or whatever. This seems a bit stern and laughable in hindsight. But I must have just been revering the space I accord to my true friends.
So I wonder about how even though people moan about labels, and how they don't mean anything, I find that sometimes a little micro-labelling can go a long way in comprehending your 'ecosystem'. Makes sense?
- nivriti@khaleejtimes.com


More news from