In media we trust, or in government?

This critique of reel vs. real media was thought provoking.

I have been on the other side of media, so I do know the argument that is used to sideline 'real' news.

Media patrons cover and publish what sells, not what is right or should be reported.

News reports have given way to 'features'. With 18 news channels competing for eye-balls, the most popular story sells.

In a sense it reflects the attitude and preference of society. More people care about Sanjay Dutt than about an unknown soldier dying for his country.

BBC can afford to cover it, they are a serious channel, funded by the UK tax payers money. Their primary goal is not eyeballs (TRP's) but a mission to deliver the truth.

Tehelka in recent times has tried to do that with limited success.

I can understand if news channels make a conscious discussion to go with the popular story, what I do not comprehend, is how our government pretends to care more about our cricket team. National security and welfare of those providing us with that security should be a primary concern of our government. What business does our government have to debate over cricket, when they should be consoling the family of the deceased and in no small measure at least issue an award of valor.

Alas, media reflects the trend and demand of society and the government of the people does in some way reflect the mandate of the populace.

It's a sad sad day indeed. But there is hope, that a few avenues of media (Internet) has set a course of natural justice by emphasizing on what is right. A trickle at a time.

Shame on media?

I received a forward which was a social critique on reel vs. real media. The article in question is marked below, I will share my analysis via the next post.

On Tuesday, this news swept across all the news channels 'Sanjay Dutt relieved by court'. 'Sirf Munna not a bhai' '13 saal ka vanvaas khatam' 'although found guilty for possession of armory, Sanjay can breath sigh of relief as all the TADA charges against him are withdrawn' Then many personalities like Salman Khan said 'He is a good person. We knew he will come out clean'. Mr Big B said "Dutt's family and our family have relations for years he's a good kid. He is like elder brother to Abhishek".. His sister Priya Dutt said "we can sleep well tonight. It's a great relief"

In other news, Parliament was mad at Indian team for performing bad; Greg Chappell said something; Shah Rukh Khan replaces Amitabh in KBC and other such stuff. But most of the emphasis was given on Sanjay Dutt's "phoenix like" comeback from the ashes of terrorist charges. Surfing through th channels, one news on BBC startled me. It read "Hisbul Mujahidin's most wanted terrorist 'Sohel Faisal' killed in Anantnag , India . Indian Major leading the operation lost his life in the process. Four others are injured.

It was past midnight , I started visiting the stupid Indian channels, but Sanjay Dutt was still ruling. They were telling how Sanjay pleaded to the court saying 'I'm the sole bread earner for my family', 'I have daughter who is studying in US' and so on. Then they showed how Sanjay was not wearing his lucky blue shirt while he was hearing the verdict and also how he went to every temple and prayed for the last few months. A suspect in Mumbai bomb blasts, convicted under armory act...was being transformed into a hero.

Sure Sanjay Dutt has a daughter; Sure he did not do any terrorist activity. Possessing an AK47 is considered too elementary in terrorist community and also one who possesses an AK47 has a right to possess a pistol so that again is not such a big crime; Sure Sanjay Dutt went to all the temples;
Sure he did a lot of Gandhigiri but then......... ....


Major Manish H Pitambare got the information from his sources about the terrorists' whereabouts. Wasting no time he attacked the camp, killed Hisbul Mujahidin's supremo and in the process lost his life to the bullets fired from an AK47.
Just like Sunjay Dutt he is survived by a wife and daughter who's only 18 months old.

Major Manish never said 'I have a daughter' before he took the decision to attack the terrorists in the darkest of nights. He never thought about having a family and he being the bread earner. No news channel covered this since they were too busy hyping a former drug addict, a suspect who's linked to bomb blasts which killed hundreds. Their aim was to show how he defied the TADA charges and they were so successful that his conviction in possession of armory had no meaning. They also concluded that his parents in heaven must be happy and proud of him.

Parents of Major Manish are still living and they have to live rest of their lives without their beloved son. His daughter won't ever see her daddy again.

Lost in translation: Chennai travel

This weekend I had breakfast in a land, far far away. Around 1200 km's, precisely 1 hour 45 minutes of travel with a large metallic bird with several powerful motors.

My first sense of this mega polis down south was a waft of lukewarm breeze, followed by a waft of even more warm breeze, the same temperature as piping hot coffee, minus the pipe. This was followed by a smattering of alien guttural sounds that were harsh from male origins and sing-song melodious from female lips.

This is Chennai, home of the proud Tamil people, south of the mighty Dravidan mountains which pierce India's soul. This is also the place affectionately called 'Madras' until politics played its poli-trick. I am not sure what may be thrown at me if I were to refer to these people as 'madrasi's', affectionately coined by north Indian's for all beings south Indian. I dared not find out, I made enough social gaffes to be made into an idli, or maybe a dosa.

Chennai is warm, and I cannot emphasize that enough through beads of crystal clear, porcelain, shiny sweat. These folks are brave, wearing the thickest silk sarees in equatorial soleil. For a white skinned delicacy, pink is the new white.

If the sun posed one challenge mightier than Mao's war cry, communication with a people who speak an alien language, was akin to Musharraf sharing mutter paneer with Shareef.

Unlike north Indian languages of yore, which are linguistically similar, where you can get a meal and a half, without any fries, in Chennai, you get hard boiled eggs when you inquire about a delayed order of egg biryani. The poor sod, all of 13 and a half, who got the eggs was extremely crestfallen, displaying abject deject, followed by a trance-like state, transitioned to a sizzling hot red, and uttered something which sounded like 'anda punda inge pinge singe dinge, cuckoo clock, mother, father, sister, cuckoo clock, inge pinge pinge.' I could imagine the amount of saliva that would drip when the hard boiled egg was replaced with the egg biryani. I felt for the boy, who could not understand English or Hindi. We were strangers in his domain, guests in Chennai who mistakenly inquired about an egg biryani which was 10 minutes late.

We did get our egg biryani, with a pregnant chicken, minus the young hot-blooded waiters saliva. We checked the egg, to inspect for signs of origin. Its a bird, its a plane, a bird flew over another plane. If you think it's absurd, you haven't heard what the waiter suggested we order instead of egg biryani: bird biryani. 'Vaary tiny bird, saar. Vee make baard saar.'

NO BIRD!

The art of the invisible

Humans are a blip in the history of our universe. The same way we think of a bacteria in our breakfast cereal. What bacteria? Exactly, invisible.

However, we continue to flex our muscles and battle nature, instead of living in harmony, like other creatures. What other inhabitants? Precisely, its an overdose of vitamin I.

Nature has her own art form, a kind of magic realism. Can you spot the flounder fish? Interesting, you take notice, big deal. However if you were told, this invisible fish was made in a laboratory, somewhere west of the Atlantic, you would be amazed. You may even think, what will they think of inventing next. Hmm, why do we underplay nature and her wonders? I don't know, but I will make it a point to be conscious and be more aware, will you?


In the battle of stealth, where have human's reached, a few million years after nature's invention, here goes:



9 of 10 people are more amazed watching a fellow man invent an invisibility cloak than the wonders of the natural world. Wonder why? Could it be the selfish gene? What's in it for me?

I say Democacy, you say Shamocracy

If there ever was a 'Politics 101' class in civil service school, it would most certainly involve watching and imbibing every show of 'Yes Minister'.

Yes, you heard it right, 'Yes Minister', the venerable British comedy about the tennis match between her majesty's civil service and the wily ministers.

James Hacker: This is a democracy, and the people don't like it.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: The people are ignorant and misguided.
James Hacker: Humphrey, it was the people who elected me!
[Humphrey nods]

This conversation between James Hacker (Minister of Administrative Services) and Sir Humphrey Appleby (his civil service counterpart) sums up the essence of modern Demo'n'ocracy.

And if you wonder that 'integrity' is but a word in our government's dictionary on a page that's gathering dust since 1963, the day the dictionary was printed, here is an affirmation:

James Hacker: Elbows: the most important weapon in a politician's army.
Annie Hacker: Other than integrity!
James Hacker: Integrity?
[bursts out laughing]

Apparently in the same dictionary, the example for 'humor' and 'joke' inadvertently refer to integrity, followed by muffled loud guffaws.

Is all lost? Is there a brotherhood of thugs who can hold these custodians of public accountable? Yes yes yes, in theory:

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Bernard, Ministers should never know more than they need to know. Then they can't tell anyone. Like secret agents, they could be captured and tortured.
Bernard Woolley: You mean by terrorists?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: By the BBC, Bernard.

Unfortunately, we do not have a BBC, however we did try to create a Prasar Bharati (custodians of Door Darshan, a dinosaur waiting to be privatised if the commies let it).

If some of you think private news channels are the watchdogs of democracy, think again. They are after TRP's, and TRP's reside in sensational 'breaking news' broadcasts (as per their definition).

This just in: The state of MP is considering banning a new condom claiming it is a 'sex toy'. This is one of India's most backward states, where women are slaves to men, and lesser men are slaves to upper caste men. From the forgotten land of the kama sutra, another cloudy day in India's democracy.

Google AdSense - Lost in Translation

At times, the best of technology falters to the humble word.

The word here is 'Devil' the topic of my previous post.

Google Adsense matches ad themes to content and blam, it's a cookie-clutter marriage where advertisers pay for a click.

However, at times, this marriage is acrimonious and unbelievable.

Guess which ad showed up for the 'Devil' post?

Monster.com

Devil without a Star

A single choice can mean a world of difference. Of the 11 questions, if I change the result in 1, I can get a personality transplant.

A star or a dreamer if I pick moon as my favorite 'heavenly' body, however I will stick to saturn and live with the consequences. My tarot describes me as a half-goat half-greek god. All for picking saturn, my ruling planet, since I don't really have a preference in 'heavenly bodies'?

I think I'll stick to material hedonism for the image, it's a little bit of gothic meets grunge in a shady motel in hell.

You are The Devil

Materiality. Material Force. Material temptation; sometimes obsession

The Devil is often a great card for business success; hard work and ambition.

Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. This is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement. As a person, the Devil can stand for a man of money or erotic power, aggressive, controlling, or just persuasive. This is not to say a bad man, but certainly a powerful man who is hard to resist. The important thing is to remember that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you allow it.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Poli'tricks' - Talibanizing India

Two unrelated headlines caught my attention:

Headline 1: Maharashtra to ban CBSE textbooks on sex education

Headline 2: Govt. bans FTV for showing 'indecent' programmes

Let's look at Story 1:

The Maharashtra Government is going to ban in the state textbooks published by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) containing material teaching sex to school students. (Talibanization evidence 1: Teaching sex to school students - interpretation of our fine 'small town' politicians. And it wasn't me who called them small town mentality politicos, it was our very own stiff mumbai mirror lip TOI.)

The Minister of State for School Education, Hasan Mushrif, announced the ban in the Assembly on Friday when the House debated the Opposition Shiv Sena-BJP's calling attention motion on the Government's move to make sex education compulsory from the standard six onwards from the next academic year. (Talibanization evidence 2: Kids of 6th grade onwards do not need sex education? Does our honorable minister prefer them getting it from 'blue films' and Internet chat rooms?)

The opposition members said amidst noisy scenes that the CBSE books contained obscene photographs and could harm the students who are as young as 12 years. (Talibanization evidence 3: Noisy Scenes? Obscene Photographs of reproductive organs which turned on our honorable venerable (or venereal diseased) ministers? Is this the land of the Kama Sutra? Oh wait, that's Hindu'ism territory, cannot mess with that, but yes, sex education, we don't need any. How else would our politicians parents produced 15 seemingly 'literate' kids if they had been exposed to sex education. Aah it's all clear, our fine politicos want to save the county from bad politicking and continue their race continues without the menace of sex education.)

Mr. Mushrif said that the Maharashtra Government had no plan to introduce sex education in the State. (Talibanization evidence 4: Let the kids learn from experience - our minister calls it 'experiential learning'. Ironically, politicians have been involved in many sex scandals from Kashmir to UP in recent times. Who needs sex education - we have Bollywood.)

Replying to a question, he said that the CBSE books would be banned "on the lines of the action taken by the government against the books by controversial American author, James Laine." (Talibanization evidence 5: I happen to like Shivaji and his level-headedness as a leader. How did a fine shivalingam worshipping people like us connect James Laine's controversial Shivaji book with sex education? I have a feeling Shivaji would be losing his appetite in heaven. He would've liked to be known for his valor, not for banning books and crafting statues around our fine state. Ohh, and the airports, train stations, towns that were renamed - maybe the Shiv Sena should thrash our coalition government for associating shoddy infrastructure with our patron saint. Oh wait, the SS did the renaming.)

The State Government had banned James Laine's books, `Shivaji — Hindu King in Islamic India' and `Epic of Shivaji' for carrying objectionable references and hurting people's sentiments. (Talibanization evidence 6: Oh yes, absolutely, this is just cause to ban an OFFICIAL education board's book on sex education in the country with the second largest population in the world, and the second largest AIDS population. India is truly shining!)

No offence meant to anyone, but who elects these jokers? Why isn't Soniaji (of Italian origin and Rahulji of cambridge-oxford mettle) coming into stop her party's people from committing absolute travesty? Can we ever expect good governance?

Story 2: Apparently, the rumor goes, our honorable ministers wives were worried that the ministers were spending too much time watching Midnight Hot on FTv every night. Unable to compete for attention with the fine european lasses in various states of undress, for the sake of national security, and development, the ministers wives blackmailed their husbands into banning FTV for 2 months. Some say, it was a sordid attempt by a rival failing fashion channel to steal audiences. P.S: The rival channel group's other channel still airs a show post midnight - Bikini Destinations.

Who needs sex education? We can learn from bimbos in bikinis across exotic destinations who drink copious amounts of alcohol.

Another proud moment in liberal India's destiny.

P.S: In a late breaking development, our fine goverment will allow adult programming from 11 pm to 5 am. The amendment to the law would be in the broadcasting bill of the winter session of parliament - lean season for our honorable ministers.

So why did we ban a fashion channel again - for a show that aired at midnight - only to cable tv subscribing audiences - not the aam aadmi?

Who needs sex education. Long live taliban for training our politicians sensibilities.

Ironically, it is not mandatory for a politician to be educated to be elected, and such fine folks define what the literate should be educated in. This is a time for our fine folks in the High court to intervene. Luckily, the judiciary has been keeping the political excesses in check.

Passive aggressive women - genus terribilus

N: yeah, just some minor jobs
S: secretarial duties?
N: u creep
S: Ill come there n strangle u, n then dissect ur body into unimagiginably small portions n then boil it n have it for my supper
How dare u call me an HW!
S: are you hungry?
N: ur such a rude freak, wats with u?

And men are supposed to understand women? Can anyone decipher how a seemingly nice catholic girl turns into a blasphemous cannibal craving human fresh - boiled not fried.

And then the person who is the subject of a mildly spiced dinner of unimabinably small portions (wouldn't that be soup, nevermind) get's called rude?

Animals are my friends and I don't eat my friends - George Bernard Shaw - where does that leave us humans? Am I still high up in the pecking order? Or, is the female of the species hungrier (deadlier in the original) than the male?

#355 in '365 Good Reasons to be a Vegetarian': "Nothing can be more shocking and horrid than one of our kitchens sprinkled with blood and abounding with the cries of expiring victims or with the limbs of dead animals scattered or hung up here and there." - Alexander Pope

#349 in '365 Good Reasons to be a Vegetarian': Animals are adorable - "eating bits of them makes no sense." Your cute, playful cat, dog, rabbit, bird, or any other pet is adorable. Would you really enjoy cooking up your pet? "We stopped eating meat the day we happened to look out our window during Sunday lunch and saw our young lambs playing happily, as kittens do, in the fields," recalls Linda McCartney. "Eating bits of them suddenly made no sense. In fact, it was revolting."

Well flesh-eating ladies and germs, go easy on the meat, it takes 16 times the 'energy resources' to produce a pound of meat. 1.3 billion people could be fed vegetarian foodgrains, if we 'reduce' not 'eliminate' - 'reduce' our intake of livestock - which in turn have eaten a lot of vegetarian supplies.

Interesting, how un-related threads in life connect: a colleague wanted to boil and eat me, my grandfather gave me a book: 365 GOOD Reasons to be a Vegetarian' and an eco-friendly blog.

On a poetic parting note, #335: You can become the "voice of the voiceless" animals. American poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) believed human beings had an obligation to speak for the "speechless." She expressed her conviction in this verse:

I am the voice of the voiceless;
Through me the dumb shall speak,
Till the deaf world's ear be made to hear
The wrongs of the worldless weak...
And I am my brother's keeper,
And I will fight his fight;
And speak the word for beast and bird
Till the world shall set things right.

The Year Of The Rooster

1921, 1933, 1945, 1957, 1969, 1981, 1993, 2005

People born in the Year of the Rooster are deep thinkers, capable, and talented. They like to be busy and are devoted beyond their capabilities and are deeply disappointed if they fail. People born in the Rooster Year are often a bit eccentric, and often have rather difficult relationship with others. They always think they are right and usually are! They frequently are loners and though they give the outward impression of being adventurous, they are timid. Rooster people¡¦s emotions like their fortunes, swing very high to very low. They can be selfish and too outspoken, but are always interesting and can be extremely brave. They are most compatible with Ox, Snake, and Dragon.

Courtesy: http://www.c-c-c.org/chineseculture/zodiac/Rooster.htm

The Encounter of the Moth and the Lamp as the clock struck 4

Come to me, said the lamp to the moth,
Come to me, said the lamp to the moth,
Light and warmth, I shall give you all,
a mother's caress, a nest for fall.

The moth was tempted but fear made him stall,
he had heard of lamps, burning moths and all.

Come to me, said the lamp to the moth,
Come to me, said the lamp to the moth,
Light and warmth, I shall give you all,
a mother's caress, a nest for fall.

The moth saw light and love enthrall,
he summed up his courage to approach his fall.
What if, what if, he peered into his soul,
as he drew closer, his heart grew bold.

Come to me, said the lamp to the moth,
Come to me, said the lamp to the moth,
Light and warmth, I shall give you all,
a mother's caress, a nest for fall.

The moth was hungry, for life and more,
he had not much experience, but...

To be continued...

Question: Should the moth live or die? Does he seek love or knowledge and why?