The online saree war

After a whole decade or more, we have finally got a year that is unique and unprecedented. The last one might have been when India got its Independence in 1947 or helped Bangladesh get theirs in 1971. Sorry, I forgot the year 1999 when the Kargil war was fought. True that we have lost thousands of lives but never ever had any year been capable of bringing all the nations down on their knees, fight a war collectively, be empathetic towards its people and still hope for a miracle that everything will be ok soon.

While India is slowly going back to normalcy by keeping aside the monstrous virus and busy solving Bollywood conspiracies, I stumbled upon a very amusing online war which is quite similar to the Mahabharata plot of Draupadi's vastra haran.

A so-called Bengali celebrity(not too much of a celeb status) recently opened up her Facebook page of some curated world-class (as claimed by her) sarees with prices that clearly denotes her clientele can be anything but lower and middle class. And since her clients are fewer in numbers she started screaming out to others when they copy her designs and sell the same saree some thousand bucks lesser. She was rude enough to point out that since she is so creative she can think of designs like anything and the other boutiques will have to sit and think what to print. She doesnt like people texting her with "Pp" . Come on don't u have anything else to do other than only asking for the saree price? If u can't afford why ask? And mind your English, please. If you write wrong spellings that means u r not qualified enough to be her client. Day in and day out she would post pictures claiming which stores have copied her masterpieces and try to expose them only to be heavily trolled. 

The latest was the one where she shared which quality of tussar silk is original and how the shops sell low-quality fake tussar whose price never goes beyond 5000. I find the entire episodes very interesting to the fact that people do come up and raise their voice against her. The only time I supported trolling when I saw her rudely accusing people and putting them down for their status. The boutiques were adamant enough to nullify all her claims and openly challenge her. And the followers of her page were open enough to point out how rude she is and how she is using negative publicity to sell her goods. But wait there are so-called Bhakts too who would support her and the moment she threatens to close her shop do these bhakts appear. 

Social media has given us the liberty of being a hypocrite as and when we like. Most of them silently enjoy the entire war but at the same time mind their own business. Now how does it feel to be trolled? Why is a person so defiant that he/she can go to any extent to put others down? If your work is genuine u might not fall short of serious buyers. But again in this cut-throat competitive world, negative publicities do help.