'Chaudah Din Ka Banwaas'

Crematoriums across the country are turning their parking lots into a smoldering congregation of mass-pyres, given the complete lack of space inside. Even in our last passage from this world, we take at least a few hours to turn into ash, dust and gutted bones and teeth. Tragically, demand today is far greater than the supply—for me, it has been macabre and sad just to write the last few words. But we are running out of vaccine, ventilators, oxygen, Remdesivir and Fabiflu to save lives. People are dying and as they drop like nine-pins, our shining TV anchors are exhibiting a new color, one that underlines just how shallow and insensitive they are, and how (ter)mite-brained they have become.

Moving on, we are also woefully short of wood to dispose of our dead after they have taken their final few gasps of breath; or tiny tracts of land for those who lived and now depart wearing a different cloth. The only definite and infinite is that many of us are moving on to the wild blue yonder fast and easy. Fast and with increasing frequency to a world that we are told is better. And if we factor in the sheer number of people rushing there over the last two weeks, we clearly can't wait to get there.

Is it a better world up there, though? Certainly, I am sure of that. How so? Well, because it can't be worse than what we are living through today. For far worse and heartless than the Coronavirus pandemic and the fear it has instilled in us are the 9 pm Prime Time television anchors and their squealing and mud-slinging that we suffer each evening. I shall nonchalantly call these sequels and episodes, for they are nothing short of a full-blown soap opera, complete tear-jerkers. What went wrong with India's television media?

Why don't you tell me?

Indian television always had superheroes. And we had lots of them through the 80s, 90s and the first decade of this millennium. Let's name a few and take a walk down memory lane. Pratima Puri. Nalini Singh. Gopal Kaul. Salma Sultan. Neeti Ravindran. Appan Menon. Geetanjali Aiyer. Manjari Joshi. Jaswin Jassi. Shailendra Singh. Shammi Narang. Renee Simon Khanna. Sarla Maheshwari. Komal GB Singh. Dolly Thakore. Jayanti Natarajan. Shobhana Ravi. Sunit Tandon. Ved Prakash. Meenu Talwar. Sudha Talwar. Veena Talwar. Mukta Srivastava.

And Prannoy Roy and Vinod Dua, who are still going strong, carrying forth the torch of Indian journalism. As for movies and Bollywood songs, we had the privilege of listening to Tabassum and Amin Sayani. Much as we heard Casey Cason of the United States, a 1980s radio jockey superstar, one we listen to even today on FM radio every Saturday, delectable and still very enjoyable recordings of his shows from over three decades back.

These people inspired us with their simplicity, professionalism and absolute lack of any hidden intent or agenda. For most of them, news-sharing was a side-job, a pastime, as they were all achievers in other fields as well. Somehow, that era seems to have gone.

Me, I wanted to be like them, but for that I needed knowledge. So I bunked school for 11 of my demarcated 12 years in basic educational institutions; I literally never went to school. So much did I play truant with school that it is a wonder that I know the language at all. I remember my brother slapping me once when I refused to go to school, insisting that Anurodh Geet and Binaca Geetmala kept me going while I sat on the front seat of Delhi Transport Corporation's (DTC) route # 89. The waddling double-decker bus plied from Sarojini Nagar to Raigar Pura and I devoured Alistair Maclean and Desmond Bagley through five-to-six hours of pure bliss, followed by more hours of Erle Stanley Gardner and Nancy Drew in the evening and night. I churned and romped through 1,000 pages of fantasy each day for years and somehow, it helped me grow up true and strong.

Not so, our TV idiots of today.

Who are these idiots?

As we live through a devilishly trying time, what astounds and staggers me is just how shameless the television media has become. They are brazen and unabashed, even at a time when most of us are scared sick of being infected and worse (and I shall not use the 'D' word here). Even against such a demoralizing backdrop, they pepper us with audacious levels of nonsense and unrequited spiel.

As I mentioned in the introduction, the fort has been well and truly breached. India's mainline media has fallen to embarrassing depths, with yesterday's award-winning anchors today justifying the new 14-day Delhi lockdown by comparing it to the 14-years' of exile of Lord Rama. "The Lord could do it for years, and you can't, not even for a few days," we are questioned, scolded and scalded. All this while a background score churns out hymns and scenes from Ramanand Sagar's epic Ramayana. Wah! Kya scene hai…

Others spend the one hour of their personal Prime Time sharing 'Exclusives' on how only yoga and bovine urine can rid us of the deadly virus. Others rant, rave and taunt their 'guests' from various political parties and a blame-game plays out, raucous debates that thresh out the culprits to blame for the healthcare crisis. And while all this happens, the infected gasp for breath and many take their last few, get-set-go to meet their maker.

I have, thus, made a decision. As many of my peers and colleagues touch new, depraved levels of journalism, I have decided to snap past ties. I have anyway lost respect for them, so I might as well lose their phone numbers too. I wonder sometimes; why are they resorting to such shtick to sell barely 60 minutes on Prime Time each evening at 9 pm, and through the next day? This is not prime or sublime. It is only slime.

Crossing the line

Sections of the Indian media have now crossed the proverbial line. They have cast aside the basic tenets of professionalism and turned into stooges of the powers that be, mimicking and aping the masters' lines, turning into back-scratching monkeys. Real issues and stories are being shoved under the carpet and fiction and semi-truths are being amplified. This is not journalism and it is certainly not what is taught in media prep schools and colleges. A year back, through India's deadly and world-best lockdown, I wrote about this backless and oft-heckled media mania, one that tried to forcefully feed us lies. It has carried on. More and more lies.

I wrote about the media coverage of the Sushant Singh Rajput death case, berating sections of the media for being hyperactive, counter-intuitive and insensitive, especially as they heckled an already-miserable Rhea Chakraborty. I spoke of other instances of shameless misreporting; such as the 'blight' on our farmers, our 'booming' economy and the impending takeoff in GDP levels, frightening levels of unemployment, even amongst the educated… But to no avail. My attempts to jolt them hard and wake up any remnants of professionalism and humility that still remained in their collective conscience failed. For even today, they continue to walk their in(s)ane walk, and talk their shameless talk.

Of Gods and courts

As mentioned, we have a slew of TV anchors telling us to follow lockdown rules. Why? Because, remember, pious Indians, our Gods did so too, eons back and for much longer. Really?! Are you kidding me or just running out of news ideas? Or are you playing subservient to your masters?

You want to be a journalist? Then visit hospitals. Talk to the infected people, meet their families and revert to the kind of reporting that made you household names a decade back. Stop using your wins of a bygone era to continue your non-existential personas in a changing world order. You have yourself become and are now fast making India the laughing stock of the world. But can we really expect more, if we proffer and prefer idiots on national television?

Over just the last one week, it is heartening (yet shattering) to see what is happening in Indian courts. Justices are venting spleen over the mishandling of the assembly elections in five states, asking hard questions on why the authorities should not be charged with murder for allowing staggered elections over many phases in such a dire situation. Others are threatening punitive action against those responsible for the lack of basic healthcare facilities in the country. Others still are raising scathing questions about what happened in the 14 months leading to today's deadly on-ground mayhem, barely a few months after we informed the United Nations that we had vanquished the virus. Unsurprisingly, none or little of this

has been covered by our mainline TV channels, perhaps because they are largely focused on bovines, political canines and body calisthenics.

I have made some mistakes in life. We all have. The only answer and tenet of life is to dust off the cobwebs, admit that we were less than we needed to be and re-invent ourselves. That's what separates the men from the boys. Our well-known boy and girl faces on today's television channels need an immediate overhaul—of their countenance, their approach to their jobs and, yes, their conscience.

The writer a communications consultant and a clinical analyst. narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com