A Tale of Two Deaths

The curious disparity in the RIP count for Jagjit Singh and Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs’ outlook towards India can be summarised to closing Apple’s India office a few years ago, and thinking this is too much of a third world market for Apple products. Indians inevitably saw Apple products a few years after their launch. To Jobs, India, more or less, didn’t exist. Apple products are also too expensive for most Indians and we don’t miss anything by not having them. Everything Apple makes are playthings for the rich. Admittedly very beautiful and functional playthings, but playthings nonetheless.

Except for his performances abroad, Jagjit Singh, the ghazal singer, spent his whole life in this country. He is a self-made Indian success story, coming from a small town to becoming a national figure. Singh’s voice touched more Indians than Apple products or Steve Jobs.

Both died within the space of a week, and yet, if you consider the response to the deaths, there is no doubt who the Indian middle-class thought was more mourn-worthy. On the RIP scale on Facebook, that would be one RIP to Singh for five RIPs to Jobs. And in the English newspaper, that perfect barometer of middle-class concerns, Jobs got half the front page while Singh about one-fourth the morning after they died. And so the question: how is it that Jobs, a man who has little connection and is of no consequence to Indians, becomes so much more of a dead celebrity than Singh? 

There are two reasons for it. The first is that the middle-class values success in direct proportion to the level of success. Salman Khan will always be more admired than Naseeruddin Shah in volume terms; Jobs is a bigger achiever than Singh. And the reason they value success is because they recognise their own middle-class lives as failures. There is nothing more traumatic than the neighbour’s son getting into an IIT.

The second reason is most evident on social networking sites, but you can spot it in the real world too. It is the idea that if everyone is feeling something, then I must feel it too and therefore I am feeling it. And so here comes my RIP. It has little to do with grief. How can the absence of someone like Jobs who was never there evoke anything in any Indian? Online mourning is about being part of an illusionary tribe. It is like online activism—easy to do, quickly done, and absolutely pointless.

About The Author

Madhavankutty Pillai

Madhavankutty Pillai has no specialisations whatsoever. He is among the last of the generalists. And also Open chief of bureau, Mumbai  

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