Breaking News!!!!

BREAKING NEWS

News and newspapers have always been central to my daily life, but it wasn’t until I started working for media houses that I began looking at the process of delivering news as a form of art. There is speculation, quite often followed by a conformation, followed by fact gathering and then the delivery either in print form or in audio visual form. Now, that is the basics of reporting – speculation, conformation and fact gathering – or at-least that was what I was taught and that is what I have practiced all this while. But that form of news reporting is on the wane. That form of news delivery is now classified as boring and often mundane. What people want is action, breaking news – sansani tez khaber!

The sober and classy act of news reporting over a period of time has undergone a sea of change;gone are the days of idealism, intellectualism and sincerity. Gone are the days when journalists wore ragged clothes and sported a beard and toga/jhola. Gone are the days when journalists made a hand to mouth living. Gone are the days when confirmation and fact gathering was done. Everyone’s an expert.

News reporting is the next big thing after bollywood, every failed actor/actress who knows a word or two of English makes is making it big in media. And why not, even though they are dumb they look good, and they are confident – they can hold a mic, face the camera and speak in English. Well that’s not all that has changed, the art of news delivery has undergone an even drastic change, news rooms are no longer sober looking rooms, they’ve gone hi-fi – big plasma screens, hundreds of acrobatics trained camera men, lights, computer generated graphics, music directors, choreographers, art directors, script writers and what not. News delivery is turning out to be even more difficult than making a B grade bollywood flick and leading the pack are India TV, Aaj Tak, Headlines Today and Times Now.

Its hard to believe that a crucial and perhaps the most powerful and autonomous pillar of democracy, the media, is undergoing such drastic degradation. I mean what is the logic of showing tantra vidya on news channel? Of showing the existence of a goat who people claim is the descendant of some long dead emperor? I mean for days I been seeing news anchors predicting Islamabad being captured by Taliban any minute, all this while foreign security experts politely call these claims stupid. What shit are these guys on? What on earth have they been smoking?

I have always held a firm belief that reporting ought to be dispassionate and in such a manner that the reporter’s opinion are not reflected on the report that is to say that a news report should not in any way be biased, it is the public that ought to ponder over a news report and formulate its own opinion. Well, what we see here is a bunch of uneducated, superstitious freaks on a drug trip of their own. I mean, what are they contributing to the society if not their own fears and beliefs, with exaggerated fears. They are as dangerous as the Taliban or Al-Queada. Look at this, every Muslim to us is a symbol of terror. Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia are terror centres.

We often say that one thing that the British left behind when they left India was the divide and rule policy – a policy that we often associate with political parties and politicians. Its not just the politicians who have been using this, media too has been using this, for quite some time now.

Media has created stereotypes – you can identify a Muslim with his beard, a Hindu with his right hand, a christian by the manner of his speech and what not. I was denied two houses on rent because the owners were wary of my beard and because I spoke Hindi.

Muslims are terrorists, Hindus are black magicians and trouble makers, Christians are loose characters and Punjabis are gossip mongers and trouble makers. What kind of idiotic shit are we being told? And why are we taking this shit?

The once forgotten concept of ghosts and evil spirits are back in fashion. Why? Well where else do all these evil spirits go? After-all villagers no longer want them. Everyone talks about nimbu mirch. Chicken pox is mata ka aashirwaad and family troubles is padosi ka jaadu tona.

Where the heck is our rationale? Where is our intelligence?

Oh! I am sorry, intelligence’s death is what we’re celebrating here. Sorry.

Well, ladies and gentlemen due to the untimely demise of our dear friend Intelligence, we have but no choice, we are heading back to the good old medieval times and you, each one of you, is heading this journey.

My Crime? I Am A Woman…

He took my rib to make the dumbest thing ever

Marxists view the world as a society composed of classes, the clergy view it as a society of sinners and puritans, the philosophers as a society of the observers and the observed, historians and sociologists look at this mortal world as a mixture of cultures, different people look at the world through different eyes. Through the glasses their roles require them to look at this absurd human drama, and yet somewhere we’ve forgotten to look at ourselves as human beings as man and women.

Women in Mangalore are attacked because they are women, moral brigade is up in arms against Frieda Pinto because she is a woman, Fiza is denied justice because she is a woman, acid is thrown on a child on her way to school in Afghanistan because she is a woman, houses are denied to single women and why not? Born out of a man’s rib bone women are to blame for all the miseries in the world. It was Heva or Eve who brought sin to the world, Eve was the reason man was thrown out of Eden and had to face the hardships of the real world. It was Pandora’s curiosity that brought sorrow to the world and Helen’s defiance and love that brought war upon Troy, Draupadi’s Vastraharan that caused Mahabharata, Sita’s beauty that caused Ram to declare a war on Lanka. Women have for centuries been blamed for everything that goes wrong, a child becomes spoilt because of mother’s love, a family looses honor because of a woman’s emotions or love and is often termed as defiance. Man is righteous and hence man will forever be free of blame.

What kind of losers are we to believe in that crap? I mean seriously!?

Our society is fundamentally made of two kinds of people not capitalists and laborers not laymen and clergy, but of man and women. And both have their importance, importance that cannot be denied. A man is nothing without a woman and woman is nothing without a man and this society is nothing without either. And yet women are placed below men when it comes to social hierarchy, why? Well that’s what the Bible teaches us, a woman was made from a man’s rib bone and not from the soil like man, the doomed city of Babylon is represented by the famous whore who sits on a beast. Is our history biased? Or is it that we’re wired that way, wired to accept that women are lesser of a species?

I dunno, but I would like someone to answer that? Why does history portray women as a lesser being? Why do religious texts portray them as whores and gossip mongers? Is it not because men are ready to pay for their carnal desired that women become prostitutes? Is it not because our society has resigned them to the four walls of our homes and kitchen that they find time to gossip and spread rumors?

I mean a man can remain a bachelor if he chooses to no one says a word but why isn’t that the case with women? A man can sleep around with whoever he wishes to but the moment a woman does we call her a woman with a loose character, a slut or a whore? Why are women looked upto as keepers of morality, do men have no share in that?

It’s depressing to see how our societies have evolved over a period of time. Women who once were deities and commanded respect are now beaten up on the streets, acid is thrown on them, their dignity questioned and above all paid lower wages!

I too am a victim of the above mentioned stereotyping, I believe that most, if not all, women are dumb and would prefer to spend my time with men than with a woman.

We seriously need a total brainwashing, we need to erase all the pre-fed data in our brains.

We need change.

I need some grass.

Censored Humor.

Beauty, said someone, lies in the eyes of the beholder.

Same is the case with most things I suppose, humor in particular. Whist the fact remains that the line dividing what is funny and sick is a rather thin one, what defines the quality humor(or any work of creativity) is primarily how someone interprets it for example while many swore and still swear by Shakespeare as the most prolific playwright ever, Leo Tolstoy dismisses him as a pretentious writer who contributed nothing to the world of literature and instead fooled people with his word play.

The muslims went off their rockers when the infamous cartoon about Prophet Muhammad was published in a Danish daily. A fatwa was issued and people descended the streets.

The world witnessed a similar situation two days back when the New York Post published a cartoon relating the latest stimulus package unveiled by Obama and the Chimp that attacked a woman in the US. The cartoon was prompted by a comment made by an noted economist wherein he said that a better package could’ve had been written by a monkey.

The critics have been loud and lashing their tounges like whips asking the paper to apologise for having scooped a racial joke at the (seemingly still marginalized) Black Community. I am at this point reminded of a quote by Dostoevsky which goes like:

 

“If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.”

With lack of self respect comes a sense vulnerability, you end up becoming a cynic forever under the impression that the world is conspiring against you. That is the same emotion I believe that most marginalized communities, which have tried to mingle and demand their rights over the years, have – a constant sense of rejection a constant sense of vulnerability, a feeling that cannot be eliminated unless they start respecting themselves.

And then again there are politicians and opportunists, constantly trying to politicize every possible issue.

But more than anything else what bugs me is the fact that the man who claimed would bring about a change hasn’t reacted? Where is his sense of humor/maturity? Why is he not helping the so called marginalized develop a sense of self respect and stop being paranoid?

Does he too suffer from the same feeling of being marginalized?

I liked the paper’s statment/apology:
Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon – even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.