THE DIARY OF Z

For years, I used to pity people who were into self-help books (which meant most of America). Until Betty Shine happened.

There I was browsing for more than an hour at Sankars Book Stall when my eye picked out her book, Mind Magic. Maybe it was the jacket blurb. Maybe it was my age – I had just turned 30. Maybe it’s a bit of all this, but the fact is it was a fortunate accident.

The next few days stretched my mind. Shine says that we are energy beings first. Without our energy counterpart of the physical body, we would not be here at this moment. But stress causes energy blockages in the physical system causing distress and disease. The underlying reasoning: Don’t underestimate the power of your mind. If it can create an atom bomb, it can also create great art. It makes waves – of love, compassion and understanding – and it heals.

Shine was a medium (she died four years ago). She not only existed in this dimension, she could also interact with ‘dead’ people in the next dimension so that she could pass on their messages to loved ones telling them not to grieve. They came to her to prove they had survived ‘death’ and were happy in their new world.

The healing powers of the mind drew me more than anything else. I wanted to heal and be healed, physically and soulfully. I have tried healing my father’s dislocated knee – though it’s yet to be healed completely, the pain has receded to a large extent. Now he heals himself. The process is simple: Visualise your palm as a magnet that takes away negative energies. You place your palm on the place of pain for a while and move it away, taking with it all the negative energy that was embedded within the body. It’s a process that demands faith.

If it’s about healing people living away from you, you could still work the magic through visualisation. You could send loving thoughts to the person even without that person’s knowledge. And the best way to heal yourself is to go to bed blessing your friends, enemies and strangers.

As Betty Shine puts it, to be happy, one can never afford to lose the child within. A child is innocent and has faith and allows things to happen. We are all born with this talent, and it takes the child within to find and nurture it.

While every secular-sounding newspaper and TV channel is crying itself hoarse on how Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi is the Hitler of India post the government-sponsored Gujarat riots of 2002, I have a simple question: who made him that? Is it LK Advani who rode drunk on his chariot to reclaim the ‘Ram Janmabhoomi’ and helped in demolishing the Babri Masjid? Is it Praveen Togadia of the Vishwa Hindu Parishat whose inciting speeches can light the fire beneath any normal human being least associated with fundamentalism? Or is it you and me for remaining silent over the issue and not reading too much into it?

In this murky scenario where everyone looks to the other for raising a voice, Tarun Tejpal’s Tehelka played a proxy war on behalf of the silent majority by exposing the misdoings of Modi on national television only recently. He had irrefutable visual proof of Modi’s henchmen boasting of how the Gujarat riots of 2002 were indeed genocide, a systematic ethnic mass murder pogrom to eliminate the Muslims from the Hindutva heartland. Some even argued that the looting, raping and murder seemed to be far better planned than Hitler’s. When Tehelka showed a visual proof of how the riots were actually a state-sponsored genocide, it opened the eyes of the staunchest of Hindus. What could be worse than a Modi henchman claiming to have slit open a pregnant Muslim woman’s womb? Or a daughter being raped in front of her father?

The TV channels played and re-played these visuals for greater TRPs the day they were made public. But no follow-up stories were carried thereafter either in print or visual media. There was no concerted campaign to indict the culprits who boasted of their nefarious sins on camera. Even the courts didn’t so much as take cognisance of the visual misdeeds. What’s worse, even the Congress government at the centre seemed impotent. Some say, this is for fear of the “Hindu vote” and others say, the Congress is as communal and therefore keeping silent. After all, weren’t they behind the Sikh riots of 1984 that left nearly 3000 Sikhs dead in just three days following Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards. But what about the Gujarat genocide that lasted three months and left 2,500 Muslims dead and several thousands injured?

Whatever be the case, it’s the job of the media to create a furore a la Jessica Lal murder and keep airing the revelations, reactions and keep the momentum going until the guilty are brought to book. At a time when the fortunes of business houses, films and politicians are decided by what is shown in the media, it becomes even more important to follow-up a story that is in far greater national interest. But sadly, it is not to be.

Then again, who comprises the media? People like you and me. Therefore, if we are really looking to stop mass rapes and murders based on ethnic and religious lines, tolerance should begin at home. We should remove the biases we hold within us towards people of other castes, creeds and religions and imbibe the same set of values in our children. When this reaches a crescendo, politics based on caste and creed will disappear. That is when the real idea of India will take root. Until that happens, lets pray real hard that this happens.

Amen!

The title just about sums up the little bit of suspense that envelops SRK’s latest starrer. Ofcourse, the storyline has now been told a million times on our promotional TV channels and newspapers/magazines, so I will skip that. But what I will tell you are the following:

1. Shah Rukh Khan: His screen presence can leave any novice wishing he had one. Dress him up in the worse shirt and trouser, and he will still get many heads to turn. Get him to mouth all the clichés in the world, and he will still deliver a superhit like it has happened with OSO that has beaten several records not only in India but also in the UK and the US. Indeed, ‘someone above is happy’ with him as he had said many moons ago. And that someone continues to be happy till date.
2. Deepika Padukone: She has an effeminate screen presence that is a perfect foil to SRK’s. So when SRK credits Deepika for the success of the film, he could well be partly right. She is indeed eye candy. Ofcourse, she needs to now concentrate on her acting, but then, knowing a heroine’s role, there isn’t much scope for acting in Bollywood potboilers anyway. So she can heave a sigh of relief and continue to dazzle us on screen.
3. Farah Khan: It’s her attitude to filmmaking and her easy confidence that works for her. She has never made any attempts at couching the storyline, or hiding the source of her storyline. She is in fact made that her USP and delivered a hit, keeping all the clichés that are considered the bane of Hindi cinema. As Himesh Reshammiya says on the reality shows, this is “fantastic, awesome, mind-blowing!’
4. Arjun Rampal: He needs to work on his facial muscles that lend an important role in the acting department. That is missing. Ofcourse, this has a hidden advantage. None of his co-stars will ever feel threatened sharing screen space with him, because his villainous acting is far from menacing. He has neither the growl of Amrish Puri nor the steeliness of Pran.
5. Vishal-Shekhar: The young music directors know what it takes to transform you to a different world where joy reigns supreme. From the background score to the peppy number where 31 Bollywood stars join hands to celebrate Khan’s superstar status, they have gone hammer and tongs in making the music a more than saleable commodity. My favourite: ‘Tumko paaya hai to jaise khoya hoon, kehna chahoon bhi to tumse kya kahoon, kisi zabaan bhi, woh lavs hi nahin, ki jin mein tum ho kya, tumhe bata sakoon…’
6. Reincarnation: Don’t know if there is such a thing, but there’s one thing that is still a mystery. How many times have you noticed that a certain event in your life doesn’t seem new, and you’ve experienced it before? A sense of déjà vu… Maybe, we’ve dreamed about our future, and we feel it’s happened before. Maybe, it’s a repeat of a similar event in the past. Or maybe, it’s an incident from our previous birth. Maybe.
7. Publicity: The media went into a frenzy. The public’s expectations reached sky-high. It was a gamble that could have repeated the monster failure of another much-hyped film, Boney Kapoor’s multi-crore dud, Roop Ki Rani Choron Ka Raja. Coupled with Hollywood’s entry into Hindi films with Saawariya, the stage was indeed set for a royal encounter. SRK even went to the extent of saying, ‘The publicity budget of Saawariya was equal to the budget of OSO’. But in the end, joy (OSO) won over sorrow (Saawariya), keeping in sync with the spirit of Diwali where good triumphs over evil. Not that Saawariya was a colossal failure. I loved the art direction, the cinematography, the big-screen feel, the colours, the moods, the sets… but then, there was no soul, no drama, no suspense. It’s perfect as an experiment, but in a commercial set-up, it’s important to keep the viewer glued to the screen. Otherwise, it could spell disaster. And statistics prove me right here. While OSO has been declared a blockbuster, Saawariya’s collections have been disappointing, particularly in the second week, while OSO’s collections have remained rock steady. This is only the beginning. Abhi picture baaki hai mere yaar!

I mimic, therefore I am. This seems to be the credo of TV anchors and news readers today. If some are bad at what they do, others are good at imitating their channel founders. If it’s not Prannoy Roy’s accent on NDTV, it’s Vinod Dua’s Hindi inflection on Aaj Tak. Will people ever find an identity of their own? What’s worse are slip-a-thons. Not a minute passes and there goes the slip. If it’s not the pronunciation, it’s the anchor’s persistent lack of knowledge. If that isn’t all, it’s their awkward pauses and grammatical errors galore.

The regional news isn’t any better. Tune in to any language channel, and you will find half-baked anchors trying to ‘fit in’. Some sport a frenchie, some speak with a heavy accent, and a few others belong to the staid Doordarshan variety – no spunk, no attitude, no nothing. This species is worse off because their credo seems to be: ‘We are like this only’. Which means, you can never expect them to improve and move with the times.

What bothers me even more is that all the good anchors on TV pretend to be Mr and Miss Know-it-alls. That’s fine, so long as there is no abject disregard to every celebrity being interviewed. After a point, the anchor’s superiority complex just gets to you. I know the dude sitting next to the anchor is known to be the most corrupt, but by turning an interview into a one-sided slang match doesn’t prove anything, does it? Can’t the anchor be more neutral and let the viewer decide who is the villain of the piece? Isn’t this a democracy? Can’t there be fair play? Take Karan Thapar’s famous court martial with advocate Ram Jethmalani. In taking on Manu Sharma’s case, has Ram Jethmalani betrayed his principles and scattered all morality and ethics to the winds? This was the premise of this interview that made for some spectacular viewing. However, there was this niggling doubt that the whole thing could well have been staged. How else can you explain Jethmalani threatening to storm out of the interview several times and not doing it? What about the super calm composure of Karan Thapar in the tensest moments during the interview? Does that mean even interviews and news chat shows are being staged in the race for maximum eyeballs? Is ‘shock and awe’ the only way to tell news today?

Just when I thought I had heard the last of it, Yahoo announces that it will soon launch a news service where the anchor will sing the news for you. Does that mean, if it’s to do with someone’s assassination attempt, the music will be hip hop? And hymns, if it’s an obituary?

If this isn’t a parody of news, what is?

PS: Perhaps we are also to be blamed for this trend of ‘shock and awe’. How else will you explain the survival of the seven-year-old nakednews.com that has its anchors shedding clothes while reading out the news?

The song ‘Dard-e-disco’ in the just-released Hindi film ‘Om Shanti Om’ has become India’s new anthem. No problem with that. It’s got a mellifluous Sufi influence. Has the timbre and tenor needed of a song that waxes eloquent on matters of the heart. But what gets my goat is the way the TV news channels are airing interviews with the cast and crew of Om Shanti Om and Saawariya ad infinitum. I have no issues with promos breaking the news segment for some comic relief, but advertorials disguised as editorials is definitely not on. If the general entertainment channels air similar-sounding reality shows at the same time, I am okay with that. After all, they could do with better viewership ratings (TRPs). But news channels should concentrate only on giving breaking news in the fastest and most accurate manner possible.

The worst happened only last week. While I was surfing the news channels for the latest in breaking news, all I saw was an enthusiastic Shah Rukh Khan talking about his film Om Shanti Om. What’s worse is that every news channel, be it NDTV, Aaj Tak or Times Now had the same SRK clad in the same t-shirt and sitting on the same sofa and talking the same shit. SRK has no issues with this ofcourse. After all, he’s preparing for an all-out fight to the finish with Saawariya. It’s revealing to know that a superstar like him gets the jitters from a big banner film. Shah Rukh Khan is even quoted saying, ‘My movie’s budget is equal to the publicity budget of Saawariya’. Ofcourse, it’s exaggerated but he conveys the competitive streak between the two filmmakers. Competition is fine, so long as it is healthy but what isn’t is the way news channels are giving up their sacrosanct editorial space for what is downright promotional stuff. Have things gone so out of hand that TV channels are airing the interview simultaneously for more TRPs? Is this a new form of overkill? Or is this a novel way to make money by the TV channels even before the film reaches the theatres? Call it what you will, but one thing is clear. The TV channels have just lost their nose for news in pursuit of material happiness. By airing the interview on the same subject with the same person at the same time, they are creating a visual blind spot. When a person views the same thing on every channel when he’s particularly looking for breaking news, he will simply switch off and get on the Internet for the dope.

The statistics point out the rot within. According to an industry survey, Hindi-language soaps and movies corner 40% of all TV ad revenue. No wonder, news channels are morphing into general entertainment channels to sustain themselves. But then, why call themselves a news channel? If this isn’t enough, there’s more bad news. According to reports, the total number of channels on air is set to hit 700 by 2009. This means, broadcasters will be forced to slash advertising rates and spend heavily on improving technology to ensure their channels are carried into homes, or face the prospect of being swallowed up by rivals.

This media trend is only going to worsen in the coming days. The pressure on advertising rates and the load on overburdened analog distribution systems is expected to benefit deep-pocketed broadcasters and edge out smaller and niche broadcasters. The upshot? Hapless viewers like you and me will be witness to many more OSO-like advertorials ad infinitum. But we don’t need to just grin and bear it. There is hope yet. We can always turn off the TV set and log on the Internet instead.

(This piece has appeared in my Media Watch column that runs in Agni every week)

Ekta Kapoor and her counterparts like Dheeraj Kumar and Aruna Irani seem to be intent on saffronising television. Pick any soap on Sony, Star Plus or Zee, and you will see some or the other pooja being telecast into drawing rooms across the country. Agreed, it’s a Hindu-dominated country and such rituals are part and parcel of the majority, but the frequency of such rituals has gone beyond tolerance levels. Remember, this is on national television and therefore needs to be tailored to every other religion in the country. What’s more, much of the customs and rituals shown in these serials are predominantly North Indian and find no resonance to South India. The TV channels seem to be happy overdoing one religion and ignoring the rest. If this isn’t a sign of national disintegration, what is?

There is more to this. When the odd serial does have a storyline involving members of other communities, it’s only by name. There are no rituals being shown, no pilgrimages being captured on film and no recitations of their sacred texts. Why these double standards? Why can’t an equal emphasis be paid to all the other religions and showcase their customs and rituals as well? And by this, I don’t just mean Muslims (sunnis and shias) and Christians (catholics and protestants), but also the Jains, Sindhis, Punjabis, lingayats, vokkaligas, Brahmins, vaishyas, shudras – each of them have their uniqueness, be it in the way they conduct marriages to the way they eat and dress. If the media is a mirror to society, then why is the mirror not functioning like one? Why can’t we show what is real and leave the interpretation to the viewers? There are numerous cases of inter-religious marriages of the famous and the not-so-famous. And like everything else in this world, some work out, some don’t. But the reality today is that there is more of an integration of cultures than ever before, and barring the fundamentalists, several others are co-existing in a multi-religious environment. Why isn’t this being reflected on the small screen? Why is their a bias not only towards non-Hindus, but also towards different regions, creeds and colours? Why can’t a real India be shown on national television?

Films are worse off. They of course represent the minorities, but only to reinforce stereotypes. A Muslim crops up if it’s to do with terrorism, a Sikh is in the picture to convey colour and variety and a Parsi couple figures if it’s to give a comical touch. This is particularly predominant in films, language no bar.

Thankfully, our regional TV channels are much more rooted in their portrayals. If there’s a pooja, it’s rare and it’s only because the script demands it. What’s more, they use non-Hindus to take their story forward. There isn’t any perceived religious bias. And even if there is, it isn’t so in-your-face like the Ekta Kapoor serials. Will she and her ilk drop their regional bias and become truly national and stop furthering the RSS agenda?

There’s a looming threat of misinformation in the Indian subcontinent. Most media houses are either run by businessmen with strong links to politicians or worse, run by the kurta-clad themselves. If it was a covert operation earlier, today the ownership is out in the open. Every political party worth its salt is trying to gather as much media steam to envelop the country. Knowledge is power, but when the power of disseminating it is at the hands of netas, you have to take every information from their media vehicles with much introspection.

Experts attest that many communal riots would not have taken place but for the false stories deliberately planted in news papers. Editors beholden to their employers and often to politicians regularly dissuade younger journalists from pursuing awkward stories, preferring instead to print safe plants and handouts from politicians. Such freedom tends to be confined to the editorial pages, which have now become the unique preserve of a select menagerie of wind-bagging superannuated bureaucrats, and pious academics.

A few years ago, the debate was about whether the media controlled politicians or whether politicians controlled the media. Now TV news channels are lining up along political lines and have become more in-your-face. NDTV is owned by Radhika Roy, who is CPI leader Brinda Karat’s younger sister and Prannoy Roy’s wife. The Times Group is partly owned by an Italian, Rabritio Mindo, who happens to be related to Sonia Gandhi. Hindustan Times is no more with the Birla’s and is now controlled by the Times Group. Andhra Jyoti is owned by Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM), a Muslim political party. The Statesman is controlled by the CPM. Mathru Bhoomi is funded by the Muslim League and the Communist Party of India. Kairali TV is controlled by the CPM.

The situation isn’t any different in Tamil Nadu. If Jaya TV is owned by AIADMK supremo J Jayalalitha, Kalaignar TV is run by the DMK while Mega TV is funded by the Congress. The Dalit Panthers of India have floated the Tamizhan channel while the PMK have set up their own. The political equation is as polarised in Kerala. There’s Jai Hind TV owing its allegiance to the Congress. That places it in direct opposition to Kairali owned by the CPM. New entrant, Sudarshan TV is backed by the RSS. Karnataka hasn’t remained untouched either. JD (S) leader Kumaraswamy has launched Kasturi channel and is also the proprietor of Amogh, one of the largest cable distribution networks in Karnataka. Udaya TV is part of Sun Network and the Maran brothers who are related to the DMK. Rumour is rife that Ramoji Rao’s ETV Kannada could be bought by a rival outfit. With the Lok Sabha elections scheduled for 2009 and the Assembly poll in 2011, things could get quite convoluted and muddy. The viewing public wouldn’t know whom to believe as they are clearly media vehicles for their political masters.

The solution lies in community radio, community newspapers, video and audio cassettes. Internet is another medium, which can contribute to free and speedy dissemination of information and usher in ‘digital democracy’ and creation of ‘netizens.’ Folk media like Harikatha, puppet shows and street can also be revived and used as vehicles of effective social communication.

The question is, are we discerning enough?

(This piece has appeared in my Media Watch column that runs in Agni every week)