As the US moves to ban the TikTok app today, I couldn't help but think about a passage in the book Life of Pi.
In the book, Pi’s family is preparing to leave India, the only home they’ve ever known. The scene lingers with something profound: as the Patel family gets ready to board the ship that will take them to Canada, Pi’s mother, elegant in her finest sari, makes a small but significant gesture.
Mother was apparelled in her finest sari. Her long tress, artfully folded back and attached to the back of her head, was adorned with a garland of fresh jasmine flowers. She looked beautiful. And sad. For she was leaving India, India of the heat and monsoons, of rice fields and the Cauvery River, of coastlines and stone temples, of bullock carts and colourful trucks, of friends and known shopkeepers, of Nehru Street and Goubert Salai, of this and that, India so familiar to her and loved by her. While her men -I fancied myself one already, though I was only sixteen- were in a hurry to get going, were Winnipeggers at heart already, she lingered.
The day before our departure she pointed at a cigarette wallah and earnestly asked, "Should we get a pack or two?"
Father replied, "They have tobacco in Canada. And why do you want to buy cigarettes? We don't smoke."
Yes, they have tobacco in Canada-but do they have Gold Flake cigarettes? Do they have Arun ice cream? Are the bicycles Heroes? Are the televisions Onidas? Are the cars Ambassadors? Are the bookshops Higginbothams'? Such, I suspect, were the questions that swirled in Mother's mind as she contemplated buying cigarettes.
Today, for the first time ever, I've downloaded TikTok. I didn't bother creating an account. I just wanted to have it on my phone before it was removed from the App store.
Do I use TikTok? No. Will I use it if it is reinstated? Probably not. But I downloaded it anyway the same way Mrs Gita Patel wanted to buy cigarettes. It wasn’t about need or use. It was about the loss.
I've always advocated against tiktok. It is a time-sink that drowns our brains in a perpetual state of climax. Every video is designed to bring you to climax, and before it is done, the next video is loaded only to do the same.
But I've downloaded it because it was banned for the wrong reasons. TikTok wasn’t banned for ruining our brains or harvesting our data. It wasn't even banned because of National Security. No. It was banned because it didn't conform to manufactured consent.
The public's opinion may be completely irrational, but in a country that preambles with "We the People" we have silenced the voice of the many to please the few. If the ban is lifted tomorrow, it doesn't change anything. It's the very fact that it is possible to do so for "our protection". It makes you wonder: who’s really being protected here?
Sometimes, it’s not the app that’s dangerous. It’s what happens when we allow our freedoms to be erased, one ban at a time.