Humans of interest

I do not follow Humans of Bombay recently trolled mera matlab hai recently in the news But I am a little addicted to my inboxOne Umarsquos Jeevansathi profile notifications mystifyingly appear in my inbox Her prospective matches Vinit Nishant Vishwas also appear in ties and suits Not so Abhishek from Aurangabad in goggles who messaged hello dear Could Uma consider one A Suitable Boy Or have Umarsquos parents made this account with faltu specs thus inviting suitors in suits who suit them not UmaUma is not the only one For some years now I have received notifications for a Mrs Paro Devi First her vegetable vendor application was acknowledged Thenmdashhurraymdashit was approved Small ATM withdrawalsmdashjust a few hundredmdashare sometimes made I wrote to one nonautomated sender to clarify the confusion But nothingrsquos changedIrsquom the generation that survived Nigerian post office scams google it under 30s walon and sheikhs and kings offering to drown me in dollars if I shared my bank account information bas ek baar Recently I even got confirmation of my alleged purchase of a gun yes for 569 I did not fall prey to clicking But I admit my fingers have hovered on the link to Umarsquos account involved in her story routine though it isI understand itrsquos probably an elaborate clickbait that will unleash a thousand junk mail jeevansathis into my life but still I am curious about Uma real or fictionalMaybe Mrs Paro Devi is not real either but I wonder The other day I received an OTP in my email for a prison visit denied per a later intimation I cannot stop thinking since then about my half namesake and what her life might be likeMy friend Hrujut Dave has received emails meant for another Hrujut Dave for years We have followed his professional life from a managerial position to starting his own momo business His irate customers want to send back nonveg momos he misdelivered Others sternly tell him they are losing revenue thanks to his tardy deliveries TBH Hrujut like that one unreliable cousin who assures us he will soon leave Elon Musk behind does not inspire hope My friend tried to set the mistaken identity record straight and for a while there was nothing When after a gap an email crossed tracks we perked up Hrujut was still selling momos Still being scolded I smiledAre humans interesting Well are people beautiful Sometimes objectively so but often It depends how we look at them Artists and storytellers chisel details from the familiar to reveal its beauty and meaning with a whisper not an exclamation This creates a bond of intimacy with the world so we see it and ourselves too as beautiful and involving Clickbait farms like Humans of Bombay are easy to diss But much of what passes for humaninterest even in highminded character driven documentaries also actually asserts that humans are not interesting in themselves They must be fitted into some readymade costume of victimhood or heroism to matter Rather than connecting people these narratives erode our capacity to know others or even ourselves The loneliness of our time is not coincidentalAre stories about humans interesting It depends on the storyteller So I will stick to my inbox with its partial mysterious view its slowly unfolding lives of othersParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at paromitavohramiddaycom