Back in the day, a challenge meant a challenge — actually inviting someone to take part in a competition or fight to decide who was superior in terms of ability or strength.
Take Rajinikanth. He was the Master of Challenges. Just before the interval, he would challenge Sarath Babu or Suman that he would become
a. a billionaire in three months
b. the joint chief minister-cum-governor of all of South India in six months or
c. make the Earth spin North to South in, okay, one year.
And he would do it. Hundreds would dance behind him and sing of his virtues, and style, no doubt. But all the doing was his. He would achieve said challenge during the course of a cool montage song. The slo-mo walk in the end was proof, dammit.
But even for us non-Superstars, a challenge meant something like, “Let’s both run up the hill to see who gets bitten by a snake first” or “Let’s go bottoms-up on these neatly-lined up glasses of Old Monk and Thums Up and see who projectile-vomits farthest” — that kind of thing.
Today, thanks to social media, and the fact that we have decided our maximum reachable physical/mental top-speed is lying semi-comatose in our Poomex, watching Big Boss and scratching our beer bellies that desperately need manscaping, we give ourselves challenges like this:
“I have been challenged by my good friend Murugesh Jhunjhunathan to post the covers of my most favourite seven books this week! Here are two: The Madras Telephone Directory, 1986 and Herbal Remedies for Loud Digestive Issues. I challenge my friend Viraktesh Mukhopadhyay to do the same.”
Or
“My good friend Sreevalli Jajimalli challenged me to write three rhyming words every day for an ENTIRE week. So mine for today are (drumroll) GOO, POO and GILFONSOO (it is a word according to Chinni Jayanth, okay?). In return, I challenge my good friend Cedric Alagusami to three words. Game on!”
What game on? Where is the challenge? And who wins this challenge? And if you win, what do you get? A big embroidered velvet ‘L’ that you can dangle from your forehead?
Worse still, does someone actually admit defeat in these ‘challenges’?
“I am sorry. I give up. This is too exhausting. I cannot find two words that rhyme with ‘PIG’. I am going away to a spa to recover. #feelingsad.”
This tremendous lameness has moved on to social media ‘tests’ as well.
To my knowledge, a test was something one took to judge one’s proficiency or knowledge in a particular subject. (Unless, of course, it was a urine test.)
Today, we have tests on social media where a “certified examiner” scientifically evaluates your personality, character, aptitude and looks in one shot. And how does the “candidate” prepare for this gruelling test? Well, she is given the gargantuan and perilous task of keying in her name.
“Congratulations, Srivalli Jajimalli! You have passed the test! Your name indicates that you have strong leadership qualities. You are compassionate, borborygmus and have good cheek bones. You should take up a career in teaching Kathakali to aliens. You will find a partner who is intellectual, slavish and has mild dandruff.”
This incontrovertible result is then automatically shared on your page. Making other people — whose chief eligibility is that they, too, have a name — aspire to take up this challenge. I say we change this before it’s too late. Let’s raise this fallen bar.
I’m using this platform to throw open a real challenge:
I challenge seven of my Facebook friends, all parents who have sent their kids to expensive foreign universities with their hard-earned money, to put up one paragraph each for an entire week about how horrid, thankless, lazy and entitled their offspring are.
Krishna Shastri Devulapalli is an obscure south Indian writer. He finds looking the other way the biggest challenge of all.