When was the last time you remember being uncomfortable while watching a fictional story. It happened to me twice while watching the series, “Paatal Lok.” released on Amazon Prime on the 14th of this month.

Before you proceed further, let me tell you I’m not attempting to write a review. Also, My review doesn’t matter. I just want to talk about something else.

Like several others I’m also at the mercy of OTT platforms to get some good entertainment. I log in, I watch something, I either appreciate or crib depending on the situation and then I sleep. I have been blogging since last eleven years now. During these years I rarely asked someone to watch something or read something. I have mostly tried to strike a conversation. Its my basic nature.

But dude… this social media has slapped me with the opinions of another. At times I  have replied out of curiosity but mostly it has gone in vain. So slowly I’ve even stopped commenting on anything.

But you know what has still not stopped, fucking information/opinion/gibberish videos/other’s opinion about those gibberish videos and what not.

This evening I was minding my own business and Bam! Comes a whatsapp forward, wrapped in a twitter screenshot, telling me Paatal lok is hindu-phobic series and one must not watch it. I deleted the message and proceeded to do nothing in this lockdown.

It happens every single day. I know what has been happening in Big Boss or Roadies and trust me, I haven’t even wanted to know about that information. A couple days ago Carryminati roasted someone from Tik-tok, I left the video somewhere around the three minute mark. Exactly five minutes later I received it’s link in a group from a cousin who apparently has seen, “the most epic shit of life” and this followed a war. Not that fucking Youtube v. Tiktok war, what does that even mean. It was status war. A bhaiya I know is a tiktok enthusiast who if I can predict accurately,  has put only thousand small clips telling people to not listen to a 12th fail guy and on the other hand, I had wonderful people exclaiming how tiktokers are “hijda”, “Beti”, and what not. All those meme making Carryminati the Prime Minister we haven’t even known we needed. Meme. The meme has become the biggest Scam I’m telling you.

Man! how I used to laugh on memes. I loved memes. but then people happened. they fucking dragged it to a level which became annoying. Anything became a meme. Fake News started getting propagated through memes. Political memes,Dank memes became a tool of a narrative. A single picture has become the source of many. People agree or disagree depending that stupid picture. Kapil Sharma’s cartoon-ish caricature has started appearing under these memes which in my opinion is meme equivalent of that annoying laugh track and no-no-no-no-no sound which comes in tiktok videos. You know what I’m talking about. And guess what I didn’t even want to know about either of them.

Paatal lok is a brilliant series. I binged watched it. Damn! does this count as a review?

I saw a scene involving what a pedophile does. I was fucking disgusted to the core. I saw a woman vomiting because someone explicitly from the other religion opened his food container. I saw a Muslim character being told time and again about his community in the series as if he is on a constant trial.  And don’t you fucking dare to ask me what I was doing during Kashmiri Pandits exodus. I wasn’t born.

But now here I’m, practicing the ancient teaching of minding my own fucking business. Just don’t throw your fucking ignorance on my face like a slap. If you are not prudent enough to differentiate between truth, lie, propaganda, fandom, then you should also not be eligible to slap everyone with those.

And. Not just that. It’s about everything. If your heart goes out for a certain thing/people/incidence but not for the other people/thing/incidence then I’m sorry to say but your prejudice has blinded you.

Follow the simple principle of live and let live.

See You Later, Alligator

JD

P.S.  Now when I have said this much about the series then allow me to also tell you that Jaideep Ahlawat, Neeraj Kabi, Swastika Mukherjee, Abhihsek Benerjee and Bodhisattva Sharma  are my favorites from the series. However, Everyone has done a phenomenal job.