International airlines have perfected the art of fooling passengers, and we happily cooperate.
The first thing they do after take-off is ask you to pull down your window shades. Outside, the sun is blazing away. Inside, they create midnight. Hundreds of passengers obediently shut out broad daylight without the slightest protest.
The meals, however, continue according to the time at which the flight departed.
If you left Mumbai after dinner, dinner arrives right on schedule, irrespective of what your watch says.
You eat happily, watch a movie, doze a little, wake up for another snack.
This goes on for the duration of the flight, when everybody inside believes what’s outside, with what they’re served inside.
And then comes the announcement, “We are now about to land, Ladies and gentlemen, you may now raise your window shades.”
You lift the blind.
The sun is just rising.
Morning!
For the last few hours you have been sitting in broad daylight, convinced it was night, simply because somebody else decided what you were allowed to see.
The airline never changed the sun.
It merely controlled your view of it.
As I looked out of that window, I realised our government has certainly learnt the same trick.
Keep enough blinds pulled down over the media, and people slowly stop looking outside. They begin accepting whatever is announced over the public address system.
Unemployment can be worrying millions of young people, but if the television channels are busy discussing everything except jobs, people begin believing jobs are no longer the issue. Press freedom can quietly shrink, but if those who should question become jailbirds, nobody notices.
Citizens slowly lose the confidence to speak freely.
Peaceful protests are frowned upon.
Hatred becomes everyday conversation. Women continue to face horrifying crimes. Rights disappear, not with a bang, but quietly, one curtain at a time.
Yet the announcement never changes.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is now time for dinner.”
The frightening thing about this created illusion , is that it does not have to change reality.
It only has to change what people are permitted to see.
History tells us that this illusion never lasts forever. One day the blinds are raised. The sunlight streams in.
People rub their eyes in disbelief and wonder how long they were kept in the dark.
By then it is often too late.
That is why a free press is not a luxury. It is why uncomfortable questions are necessary. It is why citizens must occasionally ignore the official announcements and lift the blinds for themselves.
Otherwise, one day we will wake up to discover that while we faithfully believed it was day, our rulers had quietly turned it into night…!