THUMBS DOWN TO THE BIGGEST BOSS

“Everyone, including the children, should watch Bigg Boss and Rakhi ka insaaf,” thus spake the biggest boss of our country --- the media (and judiciary nodded in agreement).
The government cannot determine what children should see and what they should not, the media said. “Who can then?” one may ask. The answer, most definitely would be, us i.e. the media.
Call me dogmatic, call me fanatic, call me Stalinist or communist, I think the fourth estate trying to usurp the role of the other three estates is the worst thing that can happen to a democracy. Unfortunately, legislature and executive are so corrupt in India that the common man has lost faith in them. The judiciary is still held in high regard because people seldom get to know how corrupt some lawyers and judges are. As judiciary’s power is extremely limited outside the court, media has become the most revered estate. And the powers that be in the media have wasted no time in turning the “big daddy”, whose only concern is the well-being of the citizens.
The biggest responsibility of this big daddy is cleansing the system. “Politicians are so corrupt, my God! Politics should be banned in this country. The only thing politicians do is take bribes, waste taxpayers’ money and do nothing for those who make them leaders,” the newspapers write everyday in some way or the other.
They are lucky that there is nobody to expose them. Otherwise the general public could have known how many editors have reached their positions not because of their journalistic abilities but because of efficient sycophancy. One could have even written a research paper on the journalistic equivalent of the casting couch. Let somebody find out how many renowned journos are son of X, cousin of Y, nephew of Z and so on. The reams published on dynasty politics may then look like unfair criticism.
And bribes? Every second some journalist or the other is accepting a bribe in cash or in kind to malign A’s enemy or exalt B’s efforts. Even when an individual is working as an honest journalist, the owner of his channel or newspaper is making him do a story that will benefit some company or some politician who will arrange for huge ad revenue in the next fiscal. Some media houses have even institutionalised doing stories in return of something.
Having known all this, it hurts when the media criticizes the government for ordering two TV channels to telecast some programmes unsuitable for children late in the night so that least number of children get to see it. The logic behind the criticism?
a) The government cannot decide what is suitable for children and what is not.
b) Children anyway get to see a lot of vulgarity around them nowadays as a result of the moral fabric of society loosening.
Let’s discuss a) first:
Admittedly, the best judge of what is suitable for a child is its parents. But nobody’s parents are powerful enough to determine what is shown at prime time and they have every right to watch TV at prime time with their son/daughter. The people who have that power are those whom these parents have elected to the legislature. So why can’t they decide?
At this, the pundits would say: “You are defending censorship. There should not be any censorship in a progressive democracy.”
Rubbish.
There is no democracy in the world which is absolutely censorship-free. Even in the USA, if somebody is convicted of distributing “obscene” pornography, he can be sentenced to long prison term and forfeiture of assets. So which progressive democracy are you talking about?
The kind of things shown in the two programmes in question, may not amount to pornography but they will not be deemed fit for children in any civilized country.
Bigg Boss contestants hurl abuses at each other at will and the ugly fights they get involved into are mental violence at its worst.
What Rakhi Sawant does is, at times, adult content. Just the other day she called somebody “impotent” on air. The guy went home humiliated and committed suicide a few days later. Even if he had not done that, imagine your 7/8 year old daughter watching it even if you don’t watch it with her (nowadays there are times when children watch TV alone), and with the natural curiosity of that age, asking you: “What does impotent mean?”
Is that a word that should enrich her vocabulary at such an early age? If the government has said “no”, what is there to criticize? In fact, for the first time in free India, the government has not tried to ban something deemed offensive by it. It has not tried to determine what adults should see. Making certain programmes late night is as good (or as bad, if you think so) as marking a film PG (parental guidance). Why should that be regarded as an attack on the right to freedom of speech and expression?
To end this lengthy discussion, let me say that even if it is a decision the government should not take, the only possible loser are the two channels who might get less advertisements for those slots. What are the other media houses so concerned about? The answer is in my question.
Let’s come to b) now:
What a logic! My grandmom is 80 years old. She has got asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes and arthritis. Everybody knows she can die any day. So let’s shoot her. What’s the big deal?
The moral fabric is loosening everyday. So let the children lose their morality asap, or better still, let’s ensure they don’t develop any by showing them foul-mouthed celebrities jostling to win a reality show, and somebody like Rakhi, whose only achievement in life is showing off her big breasts, ask people most personal questions and wash everybody’s dirty linen in public.
But let’s not lose hope, let’s rewrite what Rabindranath Tagore had written:
Where the mind is without media and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into revenues
By voracious media moghuls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dark lanes of profit and loss
Where journalism is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening action for welfare
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

HOW HE GOT THERE

November 5, 7.30 am
“Want to earn some extra money?” teammate R asks me at breakfast table. “Extra!” I wonder. “Ya. It’ll be good. You could go for a holiday in Switzerland with the money,” he says.
“Bad joke,” I say with a smile, concentrating on my toast. “No. I’m not joking, I’m serious,” he insists. “Arre that’s a lot of money. My family hasn’t earned so much in five generations,” I laugh him off.

11 am
“Boss, you don’t have a choice. A and W have agreed. Talks are on with S and F. S will agree I’m telling you. Don’t act like a stupid. Everyone’s earning. Why should you miss out?” R tells me my room.
“What are you talking about? I don’t understand,” I tell him bluntly.
“You seriously don’t understand?” R’s surprised.
“No.”
“What a simpleton you are, Inshallah!” he says, and locks the door. “Don’t you know what the lords of the sting did? They are suspended all right but do you know how much they earned? Much more than I’m offering you.”
“I don’t do all those things. I can’t ditch my country. I won’t do all that. Besides, this is highly un-Islamic. I won’t do anything napakh,” I tell him clearly. Being a senior player, he must have thought I am a greedy young cricketer.
“Is that your last word?” R, palpably angry, asks me.
“Absolutely,” I confirm.
He sits silent for a second. Then reaches for his mobile phone and calls up somebody: “Mian, this guy is refusing… I haven’t yet told the money but he says he won’t do it for anything… Napakh and all those bogus stuff he’s saying… Ok, you come over, see if you can make him understand.”
“K is coming. He’ll tell you. You should have agreed by now. He is angry. I’m not responsible for what’s going to happen now,” says R.
I can’t believe my ears! K is into all this? I always thought cricket is his second religion. I know he’s very particular about discipline and hardwork. He doesn’t miss one namaz on non-match days. There’s a knock on the door as I am submerged in my thought. R opens it and in comes K.
“What? You think you are a saint? What’s your problem? You’ll be at the crease with the last man today. Make sure we lose. You’ll pocket $ 10,000. Extra if you drop catches or miss stumpings. Are you happy or you want more?” K shouts even before I can open my mouth.
“No, money is not the issue. I just don’t want to do it. It’s wrong, it’s immoral. You know it,” I utter with a little bit of hope that K will change his mind.
He doesn’t. He grabs my collar instead, and says: “To hell with your morality. I’m offering you jannat. Take it or I’ll show you habia dozakh. Everyone we need has come on board. If you don’t, today’s match will be the last you play for Pakistan. And don’t forget you’ll have to return to the country. Nobody will be able to save you. The man who has made this offer is very influential. You have no idea how much power he has.”
He pushes me on the bed and says: “I want your answer before the match starts. You also have to help us lose the last ODI,” and leaves. R leaves with him.
Lying on the bed, I realise what a huge trap I am in. I can’t do what they are asking me to but the way things have been set up, I can hardly stop them from doing what they want to. What to do?

2.30 pm
I have made up my mind. I have talked to my wife and brother. They’ll support me in whatever I do.

Midnight
I hit the winning runs. I have seen to it that my motherland is not sold. The way some of my colleagues looked at me told me I have hurt their cause, which means I have done the right thing.

November 6, 10 pm
I has stopped talking to me. So have the others. This atmosphere is killing me. Everybody is normal in front of the TV cameras but inside the hotel nobody is talking to me, nobody is sitting beside me. Am I somebody who has a contagious disease?

November 8, 9 am
I am scared. I have no shame in admitting that I am scared. Anybody who wants to live shall be scared in my position. I got an sms from an unknown number telling me my days on the earth are over. For not letting Pakistan lose, they are going to kill me. Where could I go? I don’t know who’s on my side, who’s to be trusted. But I know who are not on my side. So I decided to run away. I have. I have been able to fool everybody to get my passport and am on a plane to London. I know their hands are really long but I think I’ll be safer in London than in Dubai or Karachi. But I’m worried about my family. I hope they can join me safely soon.

N.B. The piece above is a piece of imagination. Likeness to any actual event is purely co-incidental.

The exception

There is no grief bigger than personal grief.
It took me a death to realise this. The country was holding its breath for the landmark judgement, a judgement that may change the course of history. But I was not holding my breath. I was not thinking about what would happen to my country, my people if for Ram people take up arms against each other once again. All I was thinking about was how my untimely widower friend would be able to restart his life after a short circuit burnt the CPU.
The biggest issue in my life right then was not the settlement of Ayodhya but the reality that my closest friend’s wife, to whom I owe a lot of my current happiness, is not there to help us out next time around. Even in death, she did me a favour. She taught me to control my emotions. I had to hold back my tears for a long time so that my friend could shed his. For the first time in my life, I realised Gautam Buddha was right. There is no grief unique, no pain biggest.
Death, this was not my first brush with you. I have seen you from closer quarters, taking my beloved uncle away bit by bit. I have slept in peace when you took away a dear grandma in the middle of the night without the slightest warning. But I never felt you lurking by my side with a silent threat of crushing my carefully built universe. That’s what you did to my friend.
“I was dreaming of becoming three from two. I ended up being one,” was what the hurt heart could say. At that very moment, I realised I didn’t lose anything paying least attention to maths lessons. Those lessons would have taught me 2+1 is always 3, without any exception. But life is exceptional, life is one and only. Death is what makes it exceptional, and he who doesn’t know the exception, is ignorant. However, this ignorance is, as usual, bliss.

Don't forgive

Sir/Madam,
Forgive us for the lies we told you to guard our friends, the lessons we didn’t memorise, the sums we couldn’t solve, the questions we answered wrong as students.
But don’t forgive us for the sins we commit as parents. We know that whatever we are in life today is because of the caning you awarded us with when we bunked classes to watch Sholay,because of the dressing down you gave us when we taunted girls at the bus stop near school. But for the fear of you reaching our homes and catching us fast asleep well past 7 am, many of us would have slept on and never done anything worthwhile in life. Some of us still remember the cold look you gave if anyone was found outside the class after the tiffin break was over.
One of us has become a revered judge, but was the most shameless liar till you caned him constantly for 15 minutes for overwriting marks on his report card. He caught fever that evening and after recovering, he never lied in his life.
One of us never understood geography. His notebooks had more fictions than facts and figures. Sitting on the last bench, he used to thrill us with stories in boring classes. One day his notebook fell in your hand and he almost peed in his pants. Next day you said: “I went through your notebook. You write well. But class is not the place to spin a yarn. If I ever find you doing that again, you’ll be rusticated.” He ended his relationship with geography with 80% marks. The man is a famous writer now. His first published story was the last one in that notebook, and he didn’t have a clue to what had happened to that small thing till you handed him the issue of the magazine which had published the story.
Our doctor friend had lost his father when he was five and his mother was a domestic help. She did not have the money to send her brilliant son to coaching classes for Joint Entrance. He would not have cleared the exam had you not given him free tuitions after school. How many times did you call him a thickhead? He does not remember. But he never forgets that he owes his career to you.
We know you don’t remember any of us as it is impossible to remember everyone whose life you have changed with your canes, cold looks, shouts, guidance and encouragement. Forgive us for our mistakes and the choicest abuses we hurled at you on your back. But don’t forgive, cane us again instead, for supporting our sons and daughters when they don’t do their homework and complain about the teacher’s behaviour if scolded.
Cane us for bringing up children in such a way that they develop an ego very early in life and commit suicide if caned by the teacher. Cane your students in the media, who always side with students in depicting teachers as villains and cane your administrator students, who think antagonising students against teachers means protecting students’ interests.
We bow to thee once again on Teacher’s Day, but with a complain. Why didn’t you teach us the mantra to be ruthlessly affectionate, the mantra that drove you all your life?