Opinion Rains and Games
A river,a village,and bad words
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HEY,and guys in Delhi especially,let me first tell you this exciting bit of news,ok? Heard it on news TV. NDTV said the Brahmaputra has come to Delhi. Ok,it didnt quite say that,but I am just excited,because a NDTV journalist said,looking at the Yamuna,that our humble neighbourhood river bears a strong resemblance to the mighty one that flows thousands of miles away. See,this is great imagination. You dont say its raining heavily,all rivers may swell up more than usual. You say the Yamuna looks like the Brahmaputra. Then and only then will viewers be impressed,no? I mean I drive to my office near Delhis ITO crossing five days a week. If I take a turn from that crossing I can be close to the Yamuna in minutes. Boring. Now,suppose I think I can drive close to the Brahmaputra. I will probably bunk office,pack a picnic lunch and enjoy the proximity to one of the worlds greatest rivers.
I have developed a sophisticated theory on news TV and monsoon. The energy of TV anchors and journalists (e) equals the intensity of monsoon (m) multiplied by the square of coverage time (c). Yeah,e=mc2. I acknowledge the great scientists contribution,of course. When the m relates to rains in metros like Delhi or Mumbai,the c is very high,imagine then the value of c2. And then imagine how high a value e has. Thats when anchors go: the situation is extremely serious in city X,and we see visuals of a chap driving a scooter in rain and ankle-deep water. I will soon publish in these columns a ranking of major news TV channels according to this formula. For this week,I award it to NDTV.
So,on to the disputed structure,on which the verdict has been passed. Am I nuts,you are thinking. The Supreme Court has postponed the Ayodhya ruling. Use your imagination. I am talking about the CWG village. Whats remarkable about news TVs verdict is not what it said everyone has a view on this,all kinds of views but how it said it.
If I was really brought up well,I would have been blushing in front of my TV. But,no,I admit,I know some,as our teachers used to say,bad words. Hearing some of them on evening TV chat shows was something else,though. Like Jerry Springer had become the news chief of every major news channel.
On CNN-IBN,a panelist said the CWG preparations have been screwed. At least I can write out that word,although being a humble hack I will never dare use it in media communication the way prominent news TV personalities can. But I cant write out s**t. NDTV can say it,on The Buck Stops Here. Cool,these TV guys. I can never say,were I to be writing on Lalit Bhanot,that he should take a stray dog to bed. But,man,you can say that on news TV,as Mani Shankar Aiyar did on The Buck Stops Here. The anchor said something on the lines that they were all saying stuff thats not to be said on TV. Very jolly,everyone on the show was on hearing that. I cant write that such and such policy,programme,project is all s**t ,put a smiley after that sentence and joke,hey I am writing stuff thats not to be written in newspaper articles. Such privileges are for news TV people,who call for death sentences for the corrupt and ask whether nuclear missiles should be deployed after 26/11.
When a Times Now panelist seemed to be calling a CWG official a rotten egg,it seemed positively polite. Another Times Now panelist said a dog has sat on a CWG village bed. He said sat,I was listening carefully,not you know well,I will have to leave that to your imagination.
I use bad words sometimes in private conversations; as I said,I wasnt brought up well enough. And I find censorship of Hollywood movie dialogues on Indian movie channels utterly stupid (when a character says s**t,the subtitle replaces it with cr*p; I mean,is that a morality enhancer!). So,it aint the bad words by themselves that offend me,folks. I was just pretty amazed to hear them on news TV shows. Like I would have been had news TV told me that the big and growing rainwater puddle outside my house looked like the Yamuna.
Wow! The Yamuna outside my house! No s**t,as a
Hollywood movie character might say. Sorry. Make that no cr*p.
saubhik.chakrabarti@expressindia.com
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