By Gautam Bisht
Arya Iyer is the main lead of the new Netflix show Decoupled. One of the things Arya loves to do is to typify people. People hate being typified. Typification takes away from them something they felt was exclusively theirs. Typification also gives a sense of predictability to people and makes them look uninteresting. Arya Iyer loves to typify people, because he loves to irritate those who take themselves too seriously. In the show, these ‘types’ are presented as characters- Mr. Basu, the kind of person who is associated with academia and activism, but living the south Delhi lifestyle. The therapist types who are in love with the misery of other people. The nationalist type who connects everything quickly to national pride. The ‘driver type’, who knows the rich they are serving can’t stand them and in turn hate the rich. When not shown as characters, Arya typifies people through his one liners- the art film type, the type who publicly surprise their wife’s, the NDTV type people, etc. In that sense, what type of person is Arya Iyer?
What type of people typify others as a
form of self amusement, and sometimes as a form of livelihood? Probably, some
kind of writers, who could range from ethnographers to gossip column writers.
Arya in the show is the second best fiction writer. The best author is Chetan,
a type of bestseller who writes mushy romantic stories for the masses in simple
English.
Arya belongs to the tribe that likes to think of themselves as ‘authentic’. They are simply social misfits, who confuse their weakness for what they think is ‘uniqueness’ or a sense of ‘individuality’. They think having no friends or not being invited to social gatherings is a manifestation of their honesty. They believe they speak ‘truth’ at the expense of being insensitive. By truth, they obviously mean their opinion. They belong to that category who are desperate to appear neutral, and one way they do that is to be secular about their insults. They are people who like to repeatedly say that ‘I do not subscribe to any groups and like to think on a case to case basis’. They are the kind of people who complain about ‘political correctness’. And yet Arya is the kind of person who secretly loves the attention of the very people he publicly denounce- the feminist type. Imagine what would Arya do, if you take away the people he makes fun of?
The problem with Arya Iyers is that they cannot have our direct attention. They are neither heroes nor victims. They are not particularly ugly, and yet they are not very good looking. They are not at all failures, in fact one can say they are moderately successful. And yet they are not the Chetans of their world. They are that point of grey, which someone may just ignore. And they hate being ignored. So their way of drawing attention to themselves is to make unpopular opinions. Now the platform of doing so may vary. If you are an early stage Arya, you may be doing this with your best friend over drinks or as notes to the self. Subsequently through a low stake blog or opinion piece. If you work hard and become a little old, you might even get a Netflix show.They think they hate people who like Dravid, because Dravid is an art film. But they actually hate people who like Dravid, because Dravid was the second best, and they are too egoistic for accepting the consolation prize of secondness.
But the question is why do Arya Iyers behave in the way they do? Arya Iyers are born out of resentment and jealousy. They are victims to unfair distribution of attention, success and accolades. They are people who deserve much more, sometimes objectively and sometimes in their heads, but the system works in a skewed way. The reason that Arya Iyers develops a lot of theories about the world, is to explain away their failure to be Chetans. And yet they are always around more successful people, to see their backstage personalities and devious ways in which they maintain power. Arya Iyers do not leave any chanceto take digs at such nasty colleagues. Everyone hates bad people, but Arya Iyers hate the ‘good’ ones especially. They are too twisted and wounded to believe in happy stories and good people. Arya’s missing parents from the plot suggests a subplot about his lack of relationship with them. They would hate to hear it, but like everyone else, they also want to be loved, but could not let themselves be vulnerable. So they choose to be wicked and witty instead.
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