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Journalism of Courage
When I received a note from a teachers’ gr-oup describing the millennium celebrations as a “come-back of neo-colonial forces”, I knew things were getting serious. The three-page note contained an appeal to “shun millennium celebrations don’t ape the West and cause colossal waste.”
The note went on to talk of exploitation of the South by the North, the hoax played by multinational firms to make a cool profit, the crass materialism of the middle class, and so on. It made the millennium celebrations take on the colours of a grand conspiracy. I could imagine wicked-looking men sitting in the dark and planning the whole thing out. Perhaps, they were out to get simple people, make fools out of them and trap them.
The next day I received yet another press release. This one gave 10 more reasons to keep away from all millennium happiness. A group of sci-fi teachers had taken pains to scientifically prove that the year 2000 was not really the end of the millennium and the start of another. They argued that thebig bang theory, the exact position of the solar system today, the accumulated seconds caused by the discrepancy in the revolution and rotation of the earth all these theories put together proved that the millennium would not end this year but the next.
One of the bespectacled professors even came over to the office to make sure I made sense of the press release. “Madam, you should not celebrate this year,” he said. “If you do party on December 31, you should realise that you are being fooled. I don’t understand why all of you are pre-poning the celebrations. Don’t you have patience? Can’t you wait for one more year?”God! What lengths people could go to. These sci-fi teachers must have really worked hard to ensure others don’t enjoy their millennium plans. But they were not alone.
In no time, the jholawallas joined them and started persuading people to keep away from anything remotely to do with millennium partying. Just how can you have millennium celebrations when there are so many problemsplaguing the city, they argued. Think of the water contamination, dengue, conjunctivitis epidemic, loadshedding, unruly traffic, accidents, air pollution, spiralling crime rate, etc, etc. Unless we tackle these problems first, how can we welcome the new millennium?
That’s not all. Along came the computer professionals to predict all kinds of disastrous, unthinkable things caused by their very own Y2K monster. They spoke of airplanes nosediving, ships sinking, bank accounts disappearing and all things terrible that can happen when the clock strikes 12 on the last night of the millennium. They wanted everyone to ready themselves to face the worst store food, water, candles and warm clothes. If that were not enough to ma-ke you hate the new millennium, columnists, print and television jo-urnalists added to the common man’s confusion.
This group of busybodies took it upon themse-lves to show us what we had failed to achieve in the past so many years, giving enough reason for not celebrating the millenniumnight. They even did a lot of research, putting in facts and figures to add that extra punch to their stories, lest people not be convinced.
Just think of the number of people who have put their heads together to convince us that this is just not the right time to celebrate the new millennium or celebrate at all. But really, who can ignore the party spirit?There are would-be moms waiting to have millennium babies, families storing enough bubbly for the occasion, chacha-chachi, mama-mami buying gifts for nana-nani, kaka-kaki, the first day of the millennium is a Saturday, mama’s cooking your favourite dish, boss is throwing a party, Kantibai is taking chhutti, your doggie’s found a new friend, so what else do you want?Which side are you on? Let your hair down and, as they say on television, enjoy!
