It was not too long back that a  monolith called Doordarshan used to rule the airwaves where positively mournful looking ladies and gentleman used to talk or present the news. Most of the ladies used to be from those families having surplus foodgrain which reflected in their girth and gentleman used to tie the knots of their ties so hard that they almost suffocated. A particularly interesting case was that of a newsreader(whose name I forget) who was very thin and had big eyes.I always thought his eyes were bulging out because he had tied the knot a bit too hard.And every night he used to finish his quota of newsreading allotted to him without suffocating to death.Its different story that the listeners got suffocated with the official news.Atleast that is what news what at time: whatever was thought fit for public consumption was relayed as news.Life was very boring what with two 'Chitrahars' a week, dose of Krishi Darshan daily, and once a week movie.There was a serial called HUMLOG, NUKKAD but that had an end unlike our present serials. (Infact story doing the round is that if a serial starts with 'K' then it wont ever end!). There were no girls with mandatory cleavage. No advertisement worth its name.Atleast advertisements were not more interesting than the serials before/after which these came.There was no sting operations or salacious saga of some politicians or TV anchorperson of Indiqan Idol fame.(Or was it infamy?) Life was very drab. TV was not very interesting which gave time for family togeterness. And consequently there were one less set of VIPs and celebrities in their own right:mediapersons.

Come to the new age.Doordarshan channel comes on our TVs only when we are channel surfing or are trying to adjust the various channels on our system. The newsreaders are now always smiling- so much so that while relaying the scenes of the airliner crashing into the WTC on 9/11, there was amazement, wonderment,awe and smile writ large on the faces of a few anchorpersons.Do any of you remember that?I have never failed to forget this shift from mournful to merriment.Infact all of you would certainly remember the recent things. Or atleast notice them later, if God forbid, these happen in future. Just see any newsreader reporting about any train accident.You will see a faint smile play  on their faces coming from that 'I-Told-You-So' factor.That it (accident) had to happen and that they(reporters) have been time and again telling that to the public.This self content smile comes while reporting about police atrocity,accidents,government misdeeds and overall condemnation of the entire set up. Their sense of conviction shows when they talk about police brutality on reporters covering Amir Khan's wedding and gatecrashed reception.Their lack of depth shows when they report about economic or technical issues.Thats why we have separate business news!!

Anyway, all our reporters these days are good looking-well almost. Infact, speaking in statistical terms, I think per capita beauty in media line is much more than anyother line save for showbiz.Hence does it mean that media is choosy about various reporters covering the news items? Is there also some kind of class system?However it doesnot really bother me as an unpleasant news coming from an aggreable mouth does pinch less!And while they might be condemning the whole world for certain ommissions and commissions, i just shut my mind to the import of what she might be saying.Afterall, you cannot trust anybody these days.Can you?

So we now have naturally big eyed beauties and the size of the eyes have in no way been enhanced by the knot of the ties or the scarf they might be wearing. And with so many channels, one even forgets the Indian style of greetings:people have now started saying 'Sahara Salaam'.And anybody who wants to irritate me always makes it a point to say so.Greeting is not the only thing you forget-you even forget what is the main news. It depends upon which channel you are watching. For one channel, tapping of a non-descript person's phone becomes the most important issue ever to have confronted the mankind whereas for another channel findings of huge amount of phoney currency(I am not using counterfeit because the currency found in Nasik was later shown to be the one used for some child's play,I think).For still another channel which wanted to make a mark, dishing out of the salacious details of Indian Idol's mis(s)advances ad nfinitum and ad nauseum was the news.Sometime back, when Crown Prince of Nepal murdered the entire royal family, one channel was, for days, showing the video of his girlfriend Devyani attending a marriage!

But there always is a silver lining-even if there was not, we would have invented it.Afterall we are optimists.With the sting operations a fashion statement, the urge of the many for the soft pornography of the types of the misdeeds of Babas,Idols etc. are now routinely being satisfied during prime time. Visual indiscretions are fully encouraged by the various advertisements which act as the teasers.(Remember the bull charging at the lady wearing the RED?)People sit through prime time news improving their GK and wait for some lurid details of misdeeds or for the ads which sandwitch the news.Many serials extolling the virtues of Saas-Bahu have come where one can find a reflection of their own reality.Movies, songs and a lady to drive imagination- which used to be so much sought after during the days of yore have yielded to the laws of diminishing marginal returns.Overexposure(pun intended) I think is the reason.

Isnt it time we exercised a bit of self-restraint? Censorship or moral policing-NO WAY. But restraint- yes.Can we say no to the channel dishing out shit as news?We must.We must stop news channels from promoting the business of their company or AajTak giving full half hour to Indian Idol preparation.This is 'you-scratch-my-back-i-scratch-yours'.I tell you time is not far when the big industrial houses will buy news time to promote their own point of view and TATAs will proclaim that firing and killing Adivasis in Orissa will directly improve indusrtialisation in the country.

We are being too placid. We must act now or we would have only ourselves to blame in the future.Let us make a Citizen Forum to denounce worst practises pervading the fourth state and boycott them.Or keep waiting till we are completely taken in.Afterall, in the long run we are all dead!So why bother, isnt it?

I wonder if anybody who has gained some name &fame in India can be left alone! It seems it has come in our blood and genes to question and condemn people and more so if it appears that that person is doing something for the good of the mankind.I say 'if it appears' because empirically the benefits of Yoga and Ayurvedic medicines of Divya Yoga Pharmacy might not have been proven beyond all doubts.Doubting Thomasses(I guess it is the right phrase-hopefully Nargis madam will correct me) will always be there.But when a lot of people all over the country  are claiming to have been cured or to have benefitted from the medicinal formulations given by Baba Ramdev, what business does somebody have to trample upon the belief and sense of well being of those people? People take medicines which are prescribed by their doctors. Only on the rarest of the rare occasion have I tried to read what the medicine contains.And even if i could manage to read that microscopically fontsized contents of the medicine, I would not have, for the life of me,  understood what that meant! Goto a person and tell him that his medicine contains acetyle salicyclic acid.Does it make him feel better? He is most likely to ask his doctor if this is going to cure him! Even if the medicinal formulations are placebo, as long as it is helping the patient, the placebo nature of the content of the medicine is not told to the patient.

Then why are some of us so worked up at Baba Ramdev and his formulations not containing the content?? Try reading the content on any of the tube prescribed for your eyes. I am sure you will loose your eye sight if you seriously tried to read the content:the tubes themselves are so small and the fontsize of the content smallest possible! This is lip service to the law and only adhering to the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law.In my opinion, for all it is worth, the spirit of the law is that if anybody WANTS to know the content of medicines he is procuring and its various effects, he should be given all the relevant literature.If he is not given the information he wants, then a serious breach of law has taken place.But not giving an information which has not been wanted and condemning the person for not doing it might be a breach of the letter but not the spirit of law.We need to sensitise the law rather than sensationalise the breach.

I wonder if the lady who wears big bindis and supposedly fights for the downtrodden knows what is the chemical composition of the adhesive which is used on the back of the bindis she wears and what all side effects can it have.I wonder if the chemical composiion of sindoor is known to all of us-atleast to those traditional ladies who continue to use it. I wonder if the different dyes and colours which are used in the fabric industries are known to those of us who wear clothes(I think all of wear clothes!).I wonder when we buy sweets from the shops- or when the bindi-wearing ladies buy sweets from the shops- do we or do they ever insist on a commentary on all the compositions of the additives used in them?

Dear friends, it becomes too much if somebody wants some prime time of various a-dime-a-dozen channels devoted to him/herjust because (s)he has the power or the nuisance value to trample upon the beliefs of a few lakhs fellow Indians and hurt the image of someone who, in the eyes of those ailing Indians, was helping them recover. A doctor's first duty is towards the recovery of his patient and if he has been successfully doing it then everything else is secondary and meaningless.

We can politly ask the arm-chair social activists and politicians to try and tackle issues confronting the nation rather than embrace the non-issues attracting them.This has been done far too long by far too many commitment lacking men and women of this country which has bled our country dry.Atleast wait for some more time: no more blood is left. 

»8:49 PM    »1 comments    

Posted by: scmitra
Modified on January 8, 2006 at 8:54 PM

Will these surprises never cease on the times!!

Amazing.How can we ever thank Bhatnagar Sir.?Or should we call him Sir Bhatnagar?

Saurabh