Happy living, vicariously

Right In The Middle

Vicariousness is defined as feeling what other people are experiencing through imagined participation. To enable it, we, as humans, have the powerful weapon of creativity in our arsenal. It has been found that the human mind is uniquely capable of quick, spontaneous responses allowing us to smoothly position ourselves in another’s place. While watching something, where we are completely absorbed by whatever we are consuming, and this is where we live most vicariously.

I remember how my neighbour used to “get into the character” of whomever she saw on the television, so much so that she once even developed chest pain while feeling intensely the sorrow of a show’s heroine. And if that weren’t bad enough, I remember finding her inconsolable at Draupadi’s predicament in the 'Vastraharan' episode of the Mahabharat show on DD, where she sobbed continuously in her husband’s arms the entire day. Mercifully, she cannot watch the gory and trigger-happy shows of today on OTT platforms or God knows what state we would find her in.

Closer home, my husband turns into a batsman, bowler, fielder and umpire while watching cricket matches. He shouts irately “Not Out!” or “Six!” He criticises and lauds players as if he were there on the field in person and they could hear him when he shouts at them for bowling short or wide balls and allowing LBW’s and run-outs. Not surprisingly, I’m the only one privy to this expert game— carried out from our couch.

Reading is no stranger to the ways of vicariousness. My cousin began to experience labour pains during two pregnancies while reading The Good Earth and Gone with the Wind, and we had to ban her from such books when she was in the family way. In a Bengali film Bateswarer Abodan, people from all walks of life plead with a writer to not let the beloved heroine of his story die. A surgeon even warns the author that a number of his patients would die from heartbreak if the story isn’t given a happy ending, so deeply involved are his readers.

As it is usual with human beings, we should not give too much stress to the consequences of vicariousness, and in fact, make the most of a unique predisposition of living our fantasies. We are passing through troubling times and could instead spend time happily, in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’s Spain or Tamasha’s Corsica. When we are faced with the grim reality of the pandemic, I urge everyone to try living in happier times, even if vicariously, for though reality can disappoint, our vicariousness will never fail to get us exactly where we need to be.