Vertigo

Has life just gotten faster after 24-hour TV news or were we just slow to catch up? Nowadays everything happens so rapidly, if your eyes are...

Has life just gotten faster after 24-hour TV news or were we just slow to catch up? Nowadays everything happens so rapidly, if your eyes are not nailed to the TV screen 8211; and wide open 8211; a lot of life will pass you by in a solitary blink. Was it always like this or has TV news changed us, life 8211; everything? Think: within minutes, hours on Thursday, there8217;s Hurricane Rita hurtling towards Texas even as the havoc wrought by Katrina still affects thousands why are hurricanes named after females and not called Hurricane George or Hurricane Bill?; there8217;s a cyclone over Andhra Pradesh, a depression in the Sensex, relief over India8217;s test series win in Zimbabwe, a no confidence motion against the Delhi government, the monsoon in motion over Mumbai and Tarannum in slow motion, a commotion in Kolkata at the BCCI AGM that was not an AGM on Thursday but became one by the time we switched on our eyes and TV sets Friday morning8230;

Did we say Friday morning? Then, there8217;s Greg Chappell and Sourav Ganguly if you were caught napping for an entire week, you might ask 8211; wasn8217;t that last week8217;s news? and the BCCI slugfest again, Karisma Kapoor again 8211; wasn8217;t she last month8217;s news, too?, her entire life and film history again, the Sensex oh no, not again! and Jagmohan Dalmiya exclaiming, 8216;8216;no, no,8217;8217; there are no divisions in the BCCI, that8217;s just for TV news and his opponent Sharad Pawar saying he looks forward to a good crop of votes?8230; Navjot Singh Sidhu insists Ganguly must go, cricket.com says he should stay8230; God knows what else might happen by the time we go to sleep.

Singer Bruce Springsteen was wrong: there are approximately 30 TV news channels and something is always ON. Too much in fact. You want the cycle of news to stop, so you can climb off, take a breath, a long commercial break before you climb on again. It8217;s going too fast.

Was it always like this? Were BCCI meetings always so fractious, did coach and captain brawl in public, were the lives of film stars national news, did hurricanes destroy cities and we didn8217;t always know because there was no 24215;7 live news to tell us. We had to wait for the AIR radio bulletins or DD8217;s prime time news to know learn of the main events of the day, not every trivial pursuit. Or is the spectacle we now witness, as Dalmiya claimed, all for TV?

Well, nature is not ruled by the electronic airwaves so TV cannot be held responsible for Katrina or Rita. However, human beings seem magnetically drawn to TV cameras and their words break the latest news. Previously, they might not have made next morning8217;s newspaper as a single line quotation. What8217;s more, today, you can be camera shy and tongue-tied, it doesn8217;t stop the channels speculating on your life. Ask Karisma Kapoor. Also, 24215;7 news has an insatiable appetite 8211; no matter how much you feed it, it needs more to sustain it. Maybe, life did change8230;

Which is why it is surprising that the Davis Cup matches, although reported, were not making the headlines on Friday afternoon. When Sania Mirza played at the US Open or at the Sunfeast WTA, every point lost or won was recorded for posterity on a little box in the corner. Poor Amritraj and Bopanna did not generate the same interest 8211; why?

Finally, there8217;s an absurdity called Games Bond Star One; yes, that8217;s Games not James, dear. Star has brought us many path-breaking series. This is not one of them. It8217;s a video game masquerading as a costume drama. It has Rahul Dev in a trenchcoat, and the two teams in fatigues: one is peopled with terrorists, the other counter-terrorists 8211; who else. On a monitor screen they they play out simulated acts of terrorism. They binge kill in order to achieve their objectives 8211; to commit the act of terrorism or be stopped by the other team. A bore. Worse, in the poorest taste 8211; is terrorism a subject for TV entertainment shows?