SOCIAL media, it’s an amazing smorgasbord of platforms that allows all of us to share information, opinions, and ideas, and create content and share it with a wide audience.
But sometimes it’s easy to share the content in the hopes of immediately spreading the news, without much thought about the background of the situation.
This can be observed in a recent Deepavali commercial by Astro titled Marupakkam which translates to ‘The Other Side’.
In the heartbreaking five minute commercial, Arjun encounters an elderly man who bumps into his wife before accidentally tugging onto another woman’s shawl.
Arjun immediately flips out his phone and shares a video of the incident onto social media.
The video instantly goes viral, with netizens assuming that the man was intoxicated and floods the comment section with criticisms.
The elderly man is then confronted by his granddaughter who is in tears upon discovering the video.
Upon returning home, the elderly man’s family confronted him, without actually understanding what had happened.
The man then disappears to his room and in embarrassment, takes his own life.
However the commercial then takes a different turn, urging viewers to see what would have happened, if instead of taking a video of the elderly man, Arjun actually reached out to assist him.
The ending showed the elderly man happily celebrating with his grandson and his family on Deepavali, which is a stark difference.
“We often act without thinking of the consequences.
“But if we pause for a moment just before acting.
“Let’s be kind. Let us share love. Love everyone,” says the voice in the commercial.
Let us take the lesson from this commercial and hopefully apply it in our everyday lives.
Happy Deepavali everyone.
