THE DIARY OF Z

Be it Cosmopolitan, Verve or Women’s Era, they lower self esteem. The fact that some of them are available in Hindi and Kannada makes it even more distressing. Most of these magazines are editorially alarmist and politically biased. The problem stems from the conceit that women are victims. Do women spend their days worrying whether antiperspirants cause breast cancer or wondering if a long airline ride will cause a fatal blood clot? Or are we just observing today’s favourite media technique to paint women’s lives to women audiences as a picture of accumulated woes?

What’s worse is that even men are falling for it. If magazine surveys are to be believed, a large number of men read women’s magazines. Which means, these magazines find their way into homes where their mothers, daughters and wives get to read them, too. And this makes it even more worrisome.

The truth is out there. A typical women’s magazine is just a ‘survival kit’ for the un-liberated and edited for advertisers, not readers. Most publication houses use the female fear factor to sell magazines. There is a big difference between creating change and creating a stir. And women’s magazines create a stir that’s unnecessary. Take Cosmopolitan, Gurlz or even Verve and New Woman. Most of the articles are from a western perspective. You even have foreign models showcasing most of their stories. Not much is actually Indianised, so what are we selling to Indians? The West? And if that is indeed the agenda, then we are on the wrong track. For long, women’s magazines in the West have been pushing chemicals into the hands of unwary women in the name of health and hygiene. Editors must realise that they are often manipulating their female readership with negative messages and one-sided politics. It was convenient to tell women about their stress, their fears, their woes in the 90’s. But I don’t like what these magazines have become. They use over-the-top cover headlines to compete on the newsstand and to create insecurity that makes women the willing consumers that advertisers crave. Articles about stress, a hardy perennial, are mostly conjured. A woman comes home from work and she has to choose between chicken biryani and ghee rice, and that becomes stress. It’s silly.

I find pathology everywhere I look on the magazine rack. To judge by the articles, women are always in danger of being hunted and killed by the opposite sex. “He is going to kill me! Is anybody listening?” read one Glamour headline. The perils are everywhere. “The Health Hazard in Your Handbag” read the headline on another article.

Much of contemporary women’s magazines are built on chronic fakery. Insiders have revealed that quotations are changed or invented, celebrity profiles are sanitised where anything unpleasant or offensive is deleted pronto, and photos are altered at whim to suit the magazine’s glamour quotient.

So the next time you see a so-called Indianised version of Cosmo or Verve, think again. Is this really a ‘survival kit’ or just a glorified pamphlet from the beauty industry?

The media breaks a good story, starts a new campaign, but midway loses steam. There goes the real impact of those stories. Take the recent Bangalore campaign by The Times of India to depict the sorry state of roads in the city. It ran for just about a week and stopped abruptly. Not that the roads were in a better shape after that. This is the bane of journalism. Is their glamour in starting a new campaign but no such thing when it comes to following up on it? Does the city have too many scams breaking every day that there is no room for follow-up stories? I don’t think so.

Just the other day, The Times of India reported about how a civic amenity BDA site in HSR Layout meant for use as a playground/park was allotted by the then Kumaraswamy government to judges in the city. The best defence in the story came from BDA commissioner MK Shankarlinge Gowda who said, “Even a civic amenity site is a BDA site.” Agreed, sir. But that doesn’t give the BDA the right to violate it’s own law.

The saddest part of this story is that there has been no follow-up story in the other newspapers either?  What is Deccan Herald, The New Indian Express and The Hindu doing? Forget the mainstream papers, even tabloids that are generally known to raise a ruckus even on a trivial issue aren’t doing much in this regard, be it MiD DAY or Bangalore Mirror. Can’t they take up cudgels on an important issue like this? Start campaigns on how civic amenity sites across the city are being gobbled up by land sharks that come in many guises, including the BDA that in this case became the proverbial fence eating its own crop?

Here again, it’s important not to stop just here. There has to be a concerted follow-up done on the case until the problems are redressed and the law is restored. And I don’t think it’s an impossible thing to do. All you need is the will and sensitivity to do this. And for this, what the media requires are die-hard reporters and equally supportive editors. If they wield the baton responsibly, much can be done. After all, like Rome, Bangalore wasn’t created in a day. It takes a sustained campaign on just about everything to make things happen. And for this, the media needs to first ‘feel’ for the city and not treat it like just another news story.

Another major grouse against the media is that films that do well in Kannada aren’t really written about, particularly in the English media. Take the box office success of Aa Dinagalu (Back in those days) that dwells on the underworld dons of the 70s. I am talking about doing serious stories underlining the theme. Why can’t Deccan Herald carry a series on the diminishing power of the Bangalore underworld today and dwell a bit on its not-so-flattering history? Why can’t The New Indian Express do an interview with today’s small-time underworld dons and how they are faring today? Why isn’t the English media standing up and applauding when Kannada cinema does some good work? Beats me.

If you’ve read Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole series of books, you will know where I am coming from. Her works are a series of diary jottings maintained by a boy who is aged 13 3/4th years… her later books talk about his notings in his adult years and so on. Here is my interpretation of the Indian version of Adrian Mole on a variety of topics that are making headlines these days… have a laugh and keep coming back to this post as I will be adding to this diary as and when Indian Mole is inspired enough!

Feb 6, 7am

Tata flying fighter planes: Don’t understand why Ratan Tata chose to be the brand ambassador for F 16 and F 18 for free. He should learn a thing or two from Shah Rukh Khan. Atleast he charges an exorbitant rate and even has perfumes and watches named after him. And they call Tata a businessman. Beats me. Even a lowly pilot will charge a bomb for one sortie.

April 2, 3pm

Amitabh-Shah Rukh face off: I don’t understand how a lanky, 64-year-old can be a competition to a 41-year-old relatively shorter actor. Is there a comparison to begin with? Talking of competition, I see more promos of Amitabh’s movies on TV than of Shah Rukh’s. This could mean two things. Either Shah Rukh is lazy or he has fewer films. Did you ask, whom I prefer? No one. Shah Rukh is trying too hard on KBC. His humour is spontaneous sometimes, but most times, he comes across as a shameless fellow. If that is what he is in real life, it’s better if he sticks to acting rather than being himself on TV.

July 4, 8pm

Shilpa’s Big Brother win: Don’t understand how a failed Bollywood actress was even chosen in the first place. My friend chided me for that. He said shows like Big Brother are known for choosing B grade celebrities because they come cheap and are more game to such shows. Ignorant me. But I have one question? Her win doesn’t change her grade from B to A, does it? Isn’t it the public who decides that?

July 8, 11am

India’s world cup squad: The other day, I watched a panel of experts debate whether we have the right cricket team to win the world cup. After an hour, the experts concluded that the team wasn’t good enough. Such a waste of time. If they had only asked me, I would have told them. For corroboration, they could have asked any man on the street.

July 9, 10pm

Union budget: There seems to be an air of secrecy around the finance minister and his close-knit team that’s working on the Indian budget. Don’t understand the secrecy. My friend thinks the finance ministry is not shrewd enough. He suggests that the ministry leak debatable sections of the budget, gauge people’s reaction and then modify it before presenting the actual budget. I don’t understand him.

July 10, 5pm

Cyrus Broacha: Think I should replace Cyrus in The Day That Wasn’t on TV. I always believed that a better view often doesn’t need binoculars. But Cyrus appears to be shortsighted and missing the bush for the tree. How else can you explain this joke he made recently on his show? “Abell, 25, of Blue Springs was rushed to a hospital, where doctors removed a mobile phone that she swallowed to prevent her boyfriend from finding out who she had been calling. When asked. The boyfriend said, “I have no idea what the big deal is. I’ve been trying to convince her to swallow ever since we first met.”

Nov 10, 10am

Nokia: Just read in the papers that mobile phones cause rashes around the ear among people who are allergic to the nickel used in the metallic gadgets. I also read that one Nokia handset exploded while it was being charged at a shop dealing in mobile phones in West Bengal on August 31. Apparently, the handset was Nokia 1100 which had a B1-5C battery that is being recalled by Matsuhita Corporation. Hmmm… I have nothing to worry about, though. I am allergic to mobile phones and keep away from them. So no rashes and explosions for me. Sometimes, it pays to be cell-phobic!

Nov 20, 5pm

Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt: Don’t understand the reasoning behind the release of Salman Khan and the imprisonment of Sanjay Dutt. For gawd’s sake, Salman killed an endangered deer species and he’s out on bail, but Sanjay, who merely possessed an AK 47 rifle for self defence has been asked to cool his heels in jail (he was released two months later). The criminal justice system really needs to be streamlined. The system just doesn’t understand the difference between confirmed death and perceived death!
PS: My condolences to the deer whose sacrifice went in vain!

Nov 25, 10.30pm

Ram Gopal Varma: My friend is happy-sad. He was happy that filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma has made a remake of the superhit 1975 Hindi film Sholay, but he is sad that the film has none of the fireworks showcased in the old classic. He must have just asked me instead of subjecting himself to a three-hour torture. How can the fire keep burning more than 30 years after it first came into being? Common sense is so hard to come by these days. Whew!

Nov 30, 11.30am

Sting operations: Don’t know what they mean by ’sting’ operations. I have only heard of scorpios having a deadly sting, but all the TV channels were harping about a teacher forcibly asking girl students to get into prostitution. What is prostitution? Should be another form of institution. So where is the sting in this?

Dec 1, 9am

Yoga: Don’t understand all the fuss being made in Europe about how yoga promotes Hinduism. Unlike religion which promotes more fanaticism and bloodshed, atleast yoga only promotes health. If they really want to preserve their religion, let them ban all cigarettes, liquor, burgers and pizzas… after all, they need their race to live for atleast a hundred years to stand up and be counted among other religions. When most of their followers are dying by the day, what are they really fighting for? Beats me.

The first of the opinion polls is upon us, this time initiated by the Malayala Manorama Group’s The Week magazine. ‘Modi wins, lotus wilts!’ reads the screaming headline that prides itself on bringing the results of an exclusive Gujarat election survey. The kicker headline goes on to say that the CM is popular, but BJP faces a resurgent Congress. Can there be a more balanced story than this one? Consider for a moment that this story is manufactured, then who would tend to benefit from this? The Congress and Narendra Modi, ofcourse. Now consider that the story is sponsored by the Congress, why couldn’t they have said, ‘Modi loses, lotus wilts!’? Because everyone knows that though the popularity of Modi is on the wane, he is yet to find a competitor. So in the interest of some credibility, it was important for the survey to be semi-credible. After all, Modi’s winning margin might come down from his last victory (there is no Godhra this time around), but his utterances are continuing to make national headlines. If there is one publicity machinery that is working overtime, it’s the Modi camp. For them, any kind of publicity is good publicity. In fact, the more extreme reactions that Modi elicits, the better it gets for him. That has been his way to polarise voter opinion.

A similar story will emerge when any of our Kannada and English newspapers and TV channels undertake an opinion poll in Karnataka. Everyone who is in the know will tell you that these surveys tend to benefit the politicians more than citizens like us. In fact, they end up causing more angst and in some cases, utter confusion amongst voters. But what everyone knows is that most of these surveys are unscientific, sometimes manufactured and therefore never accurate. So how do they justify their ineptness? By saying that the voters changed their mind at the last minute. It could be true in some segments where liquor and money do turn around fortunes of many parties, but I would still blame the surveys for this. Noticing that their popularity has dipped, courtesy the opinion poll, a certain political party might pitch in with more money, resort to large-scale rigging and subvert the electoral process. This is particularly true in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Which is why, it’s in the best interest to ban opinion polls. Is the Election Commission listening?

But until that happens, expect to be reading a lot many opinion polls in the days to come. In addition to Outlook and India Today, you might have Deccan Herald, The Times of India and even The Hindu coming out with divergent findings on which party would win the state elections this time round. With TV9’s propensity towards the Congress, don’t be surprised if their opinion poll favours the Congress. Don’t be surprised if Zee Kannada favours the BJP. Similarly, among print publications, Deccan Herald’s findings could favour the BJP while the Times of India could very well pitch for the Congress. That’s where their respective ideologies lie. But I could be wrong. Political equations can change at the last minute, and thereby their stands. Opportunism makes politics highly unpredictable. But what is clear is the need for a stable government, both at the centre and the state. Happiness doesn’t reside in a country that is forever under a cloud of political uncertainty. Are you ready to cast your vote?

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