By Ratna Manucha
Funny, I really don’t seem to remember when subtitles began showing up on movies and serials. My guess is probably with the advent of OTT when we were flooded with movies and serials in all different languages and then gradually, our eyes and focus from the centre of the screen started shifting towards the bottom and we began concentrating on the subtitles, especially if we were watching a foreign language film. Understandable.
Speaking only for myself, I now find myself totally immersed in the subtitles, even when I am watching a Hindi movie! That was when I realised I had begun watching TV like a moving book!
So, there I am, reading the TV…yup, that’s right! Talk about being lazy. One more example of technology giving rise to a slothful generation. Ever since subtitles began on movies, slowly but steadily, my eyes started fixating on the bottom of the screen and before I realised it, I began reading movies.
Now, the scene plays out something like this, even if it’s a Hindi movie (!!!) I am busy reading the movie till I suddenly realise that I have missed watching the expression on the actors’ faces – especially when the dialogue is interesting and I get FOMO. Often, I don’t realise who the actors are on the screen, my eyes being totally fixated on the subtitles. Picture this. I’m deeply immersed in the subtitles, till I realise I have missed seeing the actors, in fact, I don’t even know how many there are on the screen right now! I hit the pause button, lift my eyes to look at the screen, rewind and then begin actually watching the movie. But then I realise that I am so engrossed on the actors that I really haven’t paid attention to the dialogues. Or is it that I am so tuned to just watching the dialogues that my ears have gone on permanent vacation? ‘Cause unless I look down at the subtitles, I find I cannot comprehend the movie.
And this is why, an ordinary film that may generally finish in about an hour and a half, takes almost two days for me to get through.
Read, Pause, Watch, Pause, Read, Pause…Repeat.
Remember the good old days when we had the phone numbers of our family and friends down pat? Those were the days when the stout, black telephone occupied pride of place in our living rooms and its strident ring had everyone scurrying to its side. Of course, beside every telephone there were one or two other ubiquitous items – a telephone directory and a diary in which phone numbers of all one’s acquaintances had been entered laboriously by hand, in fact in different handwriting and different pens or pencils depending upon the number of people in that particular household!
Though more often than not, one never needed to consult the directory or the telephone diary as everyone had memorised the numbers by heart. Their yellow pages were opened only when a new person was being contacted. Now we have the numbers of our loved ones on speed dial, actually not even that, we just speak into our phones and Siri (bless her soul) does the rest. She dials numbers, opens garage doors and even switches on the lights before one enters the room.
Another example of how technology has made our brains expendable and taken laziness and indolence to a whole new level.
Whatever little is left will be completed by AI.
So don’t be surprised if one morning you wake up and you find my article with more eloquent, ornate and erudite words and a pretentious style which actually doesn’t sound like me and you wonder what happened.
No, I didn’t take a course in creative writing. It’s probably AI doing what it’s supposed to do – making writers like me redundant.
And that is the day I and others of my ilk will disappear into oblivion.
(Ratna Manucha, columnist and author of 36 published books and numerous short stories and poems, lives, dreams and writes in Dehradun, her happy place.)
