Rape and TRPs

So there was a rape. You know which rape I’m talking about. 

A gang rape.

Bang in the national capital.

In a moving bus.

That went undetected through a police check point.

The victim, a 23-year old girl, was thrown out of the bus into a wilderness. She sustained critical injuries and had to have her intestines removed.

All through this, the social media, which includes me, posted a gazillion outrage messages and pictures, and signed petitions.

The social media came up with several ways to threaten a potential a rapist, ranging from capital punishment to barbed tampons.

I share things, I know what’s happening, but I, a print journalist, have not read a single comprehensive news article on this. Shame on me. I know.

And I admit I know too little. Courtesy, the news channels, to a large extent.

After having watched a few visuals of it, I must say, I’m thoroughly disgusted.

I’m not saying it is overdone. I’m saying it’s so overdone, that I don’t want to even think about the entire episode or read any articles on the same.

Incidents like these put me in a state of quandary. I’m a journalist. Our kind earns their bread and butter by covering such news. 

But displaying large-sized fonts of OUTRAGE! NATIONAL SHAME! VOICE YOUR OUTRAGE on the screen, leaves me wondering what the channels are trying to do.

Yes, a channel needs TRPs. It needs ad revenue. That’s just good business sense. I embrace it.

But forcibly stoking the emotions of the public, instead of telling them what's happening currently, that's just greed.

Calling the mother of a rape victim, and bombarding her with questions like "So, did your daughter ever recover from the trauma?" borders on cruelty. 

What could the news channel possibly be thinking inviting a mother over for the show? A sense of drama spikes TRPs, understood. But this? It’s just plain insensitive. But who cares about insensitivity, when you're earning a couple of crores, right?

And then, there are the ubiquitous debates that have turned into loud shouting contests. For whose benefit, I beg you.

The guests barely get to share their expertise on the issues. Moderators hop from one guest to the other, leaving them bewildered, and rendering us plain confused.

Debates are intended to inform the audience of the current state of affairs, start a thinking process and encourage discussions, not whip the audience into a state of frenzy.

A little information, always was and always is a dangerous thing.

With a large, visible platform like Facebook and Twitter, we run the risk of letting half truths seep through large portions of the population.

For example, someone posted a status that a new law, requiring capital punishment for committing a rape, would not help the situation, because women can’t be trusted. Why? Because four of his friends were victimized by the misuse of dowry harassment laws.

And quotes from a news channel, dubbed  “the national TV” were used to close the argument, which by the way received over 250 replies, consisting of outrage and nonchalance alike.

Do you see what’s happening here? The debates on TV channels are supposed to provoke thinking, and encourage discussion, and not leave us feeling empty and helpless at the state of affairs. 

It’s our kind’s main duty to inform the public. Not dramatize, but inform. Not hold trials on TV, but simply inform. And let the public come to a decision. And we’re failing at it. 

The channels have little information to share. And that's what stumps me. They showcase shows that earn maximum ad revenue. So how come there aren't enough reporters hired to feed information into the system?

And so, what they display, is what they talk, is what they repeat. It’s not information overload, it’s just good-old fashioned spam.

Everything is dumbed down. The information is not served on a platter. But the appropriate reactions to it are fed to us, with one giant spoon.

All of which goes to show something is really rotten at the core of the system.

We seem to be failing in that one sacred duty our profession demands from us- To inform, without dramatizing the situation for the sake of TRPs.

Failing miserably. Every step of the way.

She sat in front of her computer, typing away furiously.

She wrote and cried, wrote a bit more, bit her lip, clawed at her face, but she continued nevertheless.

She shook, she shivered.

Dabbing her eyes with a tissue; she tried to let her mind rein in on her emotions. She took a deep breath, moved back and forth on her chair.

You can do this, she repeated to herself, while touching her keyboard fondly.  

The shivers returned. 

She was a writer, and an accomplished one at that. Words opened new worlds for her. She believed in their power to drive change, to drive her into a new story. She also knew the fatal power they had. She had used them, far too many times, with heaps of success.

She decided what they meant, what they conveyed. 

When the letter arrived today, the words, her one true friend, suddenly seemed alien to her. They were neither charming, nor blunt. They were just a scramble of letters, threatening to push her into the unknown. 

She realized the meaning of her words would change. She knew her view of life would change. A new meaning, a new form. Her imagination, her means of sustenance in this dark world, would be stuffed into a tiny little corner, overshadowed by what would come.

She had made peace with the discomfort over the last twenty years. What she did, earned her enough money to keep her going for a lifetime. She enjoyed her work and lost days together, immersing herself in it. 

But now, at this point in life, she wasn't expecting it, and honestly thought she wasn't in need of it. But she couldn't refuse it. She had to do it, not for herself, but for her family, who raised her and loved her.

With little time on her hands, she made her choice. With a new found resolve. She decided to have the surgery the next day.

Tomorrow she would see strange things, as a stranger in an unseen world. 

She stilled her shakes. 

She went back to writing. One last time. One last story on her braille keyboard.

Glut - of several kinds

If one had looked down to the earth from outer space on July 31, both North India and parts of North America probably showed thick strokes of black, although  for two very different reasons.

That day, India played host to the world’s worst ever black out, while elsewhere in the west, companies were setting fire to their share of natural gases, a byproduct of excessive oil drilling in certain parts of United States.*

When oil is pumped from an oil well, natural gas also is recovered. While oil is stored, natural gas is processed and the remnants, which are unusable, are ignited using gas flares.

The flares, orange in colour, evolved into thick serpentine smoke above the Americas, and on the other end of the globe, life came to a halt for about 600 million Indians.

Typical gas flares Image courtesy:Wikimedia

At the outset, the two issues have a common denominator-lack of infrastructure.

Grid failure in Agra brought life to a standstill across 21 states in India. Excessive use of electricity by states, fuelled by transmission losses and lower production, failed the grid.

There’s barely enough for the Indian states to get by. Nuclear power plants are being set up, much to the dismay of the locals and environmentalists. Precious time in the parliament is lost over debating energy issues.

Spanning wide away to the west and rewinding to about six years ago, natural gas and oil was thought to be in shortage in United States. People then learned to drill horizontally into shale formations (Shales are sedimentary rocks, rich in petroleum and natural gas), by pumping sand and water into stone structures to release the trapped fuels. This new technology helped tap oil and natural gas in the previously unexplored areas.

Availability rose, prices fell, storage houses maxed out, while flaring rose to an all time high.

According to an article by David Fessler, about 100 million cubic feet of gas gets burnt everyday at Bakken shale formations, at the northern part of United States. That’s enough to heat up 5,00,000 homes.

He also says, “Burning that much natural gas spews about two million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually. According to the Times, that’s as much as 384,000 cars, or one moderately sized coal plant, throw off.” Read the article here

Pipelines and processing plants haven’t been able to match up to the speed of extraction. Oil prices have been falling, with U.S. crude touching a three month low of about $77 per barrel.

Indians continue to pay sky high prices for fuel, thanks to the complicated pricing system, which I honestly do not have the energy or patience to understand.

I work at US timings in India; spend time getting to know their resources, while spending ours.

While we’re talking about energy, lets also talk clean energy—solar companies. Incidentally, U.S. companies are shifting away from clean technology. Chinese companies are producing them at a price the U.S. companies cannot hope to compete with.

If I sound patronizing for the American companies, you should know I have no special affinity for them. But I do care when the clean tech stocks fall, because that’s equivalent to raising a red flag to all those who would want to invest in a cleaner tomorrow.

On one hand, investors are pumping money in oil companies, which are burning gas away by the second while on the other-they’re taking money off solar companies, which could pave way for a greener tomorrow. On a third hand, if there is one, India is.. well you know what’s happening in India.

Life,world, earth, nature... thy name is paradox.

*Parts of North America and other oil fields in the world, would have (probably) shown thick black smoke since quite some time anyway

Stumpd

There were three of them.

“My favorite car is … Esteem,” a girl, the eldest of the three said.

The younger ones, a girl and a boy, watched her in awe, stumped by her brilliance.

They didn’t know how to top her choice.

Why? – asked the little girl, attempting to understand how god could give her all the good ideas.

"Because I like how it looks..!" the eldest replied.

The boy was silent.

Next day, the girl, the middle one, walked into the hall, where popular Kannada serial starring Sihi Kahi Chandru was running on TV.

"My favorite car is Esteem!"

The eldest scrunched up her face. “You cannot. It’s mine.I chose it yesterday already,”she said.

“I don’t know, I want it too,” the younger girl despaired.

The youngest boy joined in the conversation. “I want Esteem too,” he said.

Two against one. The eldest knew she had to do something.

“Why? Why is Esteem your favourite car?” she asked them.

“Because I like how it looks!” both said in unison.

“Naa ..That was my answer.Cheating!” the eldest said.

“aaa..ummm.. I know I know,..” The two young ones came up with random phrases; looked up at the sky with big round dumb eyes until they realized they truly did not know the answer.

The eldest smiled and explained “I like it because it looks is run on petrol and petrol smells so nice.”

“Ah.” Stumped again! The two kids go back.

Next day, the younger girl sees a black jeep on the road and tells her sister. “My favorite car is jeep! You can smell more petrol in jeep. Aaannd it’s black! My favorite car is the best!” she beamed proudly.

The boy, sensing new development, half falling off his cycle said, "Mine too!"

The eldest smiles. “Esteem is not my favorite anymore. I have new best favorite. You can have it if you want, "she says to the boy.

The boy, confused between jeep and Esteem, again looks up, big eyed, hoping for a solution.

The younger girl meanwhile challenges her sister. “Why? How come? No way is your car better than mine.”

The eldest smiled, contented with her smarty-pants-answer.

The boy, in shorts, meanwhile, is still figuring out what to choose.

“Pss..My favorite jeep is black in color” the little girl offers.

“Oh!” That seemed to clear up his confusion. “Okay.My favourite car is black jeep,” the boy announced. 

The two triumphantly look at their elder sister. 

The elder drops a bomb. She smiles and says. “My vehicle needs no petrol.”

“Ha ha ha..” the kids guffaw.. “You can run esteem on water? Ha.. hoge le … no chance!”

“Is it black?” the younger girl questions suspiciously.

“No.”

The boy turns away disinterested. What is not black isn’t interesting, he decides. But still hangs around for the eldest's answer.

“Then?”

“I don’t need petrol.. I can run my vehicle on air!” she proudly announces.

With no hint of a prank on her face, the two kids make a horrified there’s-something-in-the-world-I-don’t-know expression. The defiant girl looks up at her and asks, “What is this vekcle (she couldn’t pronounce or know what a vehicle was back then)

“I can ride it without a license. I don’t need to spend money on petrol, can your “black” jeep do that?,” eldest prodded.

The boy comes back to join his sister in her dumbfounded expressions. They look at each other gloomily and look down.

“My favorite vehicle is a Cycle!” she happily says.

Realization dawns.

 Another day, another challenge, we will win, the kids think.

Besides eating-pooping-sleeping, the younglings had to now think of newer ways to beat their sister. Phew, life’s hard; the girl thinks and goes to sleep, skipping her usual poop routine at bed time. “I have to think. I will not do extra work I won't poop,” she declares to herself and drifts away to sleep. 

Looking at Aradhane from the periphery

This new avatar as a journalist has me questioning a lot of things I previously took for granted, things that I thought was fairly basic and fundamental.

For example, consider the aradhane. 

Yesterday, Aug. 5, 2012, was the third day of the Raghavendra Swamy aradhane. And I visited three mutts (a temple of a different kind)- I insisted on visiting one of them, something I would never ever do previously- just so I could understand the logic behind grandeur of it all. More on that later.

Let me give you a little bit of intro- This was 341^st aradhane(anniversary of his cremation in Mantralaya).  All mutts celebrate the festival with pomp and show; most of the mutts I’ve visited over the past also serve a free meal (read elaborate lunch).

The number of devotees that throng mutts is enormous.

On a personal note, I have never been excited by religious events. At best, I can call myself secular. I’m happy to live my set of opinions on god and religion. However, I do like them for one reason, it gives people, a reason to celebrate and be merry. I look at the faces of people and enjoy, while all the religious folks bathe themselves in the customs and traditions of it all.

The aradhane is, to a large extent, a carnival for the elderly. Just like I sit with friends and compare notes before the exams, the elderly (atleast in my family) compare notes on the sweets served, the bhajans sung, and the benefits volunteers receive across different mutts. And the fervor is even more pronounced in my family- not just because we( excluding me)  are sworn devotees .. but also because we happen to be direct descendants of Rayaru(aka Raghavendra swamy). Yeah, blue blood and all..Go figure! The middle name Beegamudre should point you in the right direction.

On Aug. 12, I sat through 10 minutes of comparing notes on food and the niceties of the event in my cousin's home.“Oh, nam matha(mutt) dalli haygreeva kanri.. Fruit salad oo hakidru,” mom beamed proudly, as if it was her family function. “Also...” (I tried to translate this for the benefit of non-Kannadigas... sorry... I cannot..! It’s impossible!)

Unfortunately, she was interrupted by another family member, who was busy recalling some funny incident that involved an aachar (priest) and a volunteer.

Before that could end, another started on how nice the previous day was, which was cut short by who they met in the event... It was at this point I decided to sneak away and troll on Facebook. Much simpler you see.

Anyway, in one of the three mutts I happened to visit, an achaar was narrating a purana( a story--specifically glorifying rayaru).

“Who, here is poorer than he was at that time.”

My reaction- errmm..Duh! Several millions! What with all the inflation and all! And back then, when rayaru existed, the economy was much better that it is now. People dealt with gold, like they buy rice now!

I became a bitch for facts when I became a journalist.

Sure, he was poor. He went on to inspire people and do great things. No one’s contesting that- but making a statement as blatantly misinformed as that, I thought was thoroughly off putting.

He made several other statements.

“Who here, faced more difficulties than he did?” and several rhetoric questions basically aimed at glorifying him. I have nothing against the glorification. But delivering such a misinformed lecture to everyone –I wouldn’t recommend him!

 I was even more mesmerized with the crowd’s reaction. Every single syllable out of the priest’s mouth the devotees gulped down. I walked out of the hall after thoroughly rolling my eyes at the ignorance of everyone around.

In the main hall, people were busy praying- getting prasada in plastic cups, dropping wads of cash into the hundi( the bigger, religious version of piggy bank) and I stood in the middle of the crowd wondering how much plastic, water, and electricity went into this three-day fest.

 I quickly brushed the thought aside because I knew, there are several events around the world, which consume far more resources and waste more than half of it every single say. At least this event gave hope and renewed faith in people’s lives, gave them an anchor to align their lives around, no matter how exaggerated the claims made by the aachar were.

That afternoon, I was left alone by my family, amongst a sea of devotees to eat food.

Surrounded by two ladies, well past their seventies, eating the most traditional food I could get my hands on, on the most holiest (supposedly) of days, I got invited to hang out at a pub in the evening.

I gave myself the most tactical face palm, involuntarily guffawed, much to the annoyance of the pious aunties..and realized how random and warped my life is.

PS-- A request to all the devotees... read--extensively! Question what the priest says. Reaffirm your faiths with facts! He is not your encyclopedia.. Religion is much more than bowing your head to the elderly and trusting the priest to dictate your way of life. Discover.. Because religion and life are more colorful than one can imagine!

Then and now..

    A year ago, I wore purple and black.

    Today, a year later, I wore purplish black.

    A year ago, we were together, but boundaries were abound.

    Today, we're miles apart, but the boundaries have faded away.

    A year ago, every feeling, every reaction was distinct.

    Today, I was one big pickled bag of feelings.

    A year ago, my goal was clear--broadcast it would be, I had decided.

    Today, I work in the field of convergence.

    A year ago, I was on the terrace, thinking, I'd miss every moment of the ten months to come.

    Today, I look back, and I know I couldn't have been more right.

 

Compiling memories of the last days..

May 3, 2012
Two more days to go before we're officially kicked out of the college. Kicked out of our rooms. Kicked out of Kumbalgodu. The journey has been short. The journey has been mental. Frustating. Exhilarating. Embarassing. Tiring. Rewarding.

Time flew! But not by normal standards. It flew at supersonic speeds. It seems like it was just yesterday that I made myself pick up a newspaper and forced myself to read. Just yesterday that I woke up at 7 a.m., got ready, read the newspaper for the news quiz and went down for breakfast like a good girl.

Seems like just yesterday that I named my roommates Baba and Mantri. Just yesterday we laughed like a pack of hyenas in the room till 2.a.m. Just yesterday, we were nervous wrecks about story idea grading.

And today I sit, with 2 others in the lab sans electricity, on what might as well be my last day in the lab, fending away flies at 8.p.m in the night, while writing this article.


June 11, 2012
Well yes. Post the graduation, we cried. We parted. We started a new journey.(PS- I started working in the meantime..)
To add a few more details to that day before I forget them:
The reason there were flies in the lab on May 3 was because there was no electricity and it was raining outside.
Gwyn was the only other person in my cubicle. He was there for the same reason I was- there was no net or electricity in the hostel, although, he was gaming to glory and I was transferring data into my hard disk, occasionally getting all nostalgic and misty. About half hour before I logged out, Lolly and Arjzoma were there. I made sure there was photographic evidence that we were once upon a time, PC partners, lest she decides to ignore me sometime in the future. You never can predict Lolly.
Sometime after Lolly signed out, I did too. Arjzoma and I took a walk back to the hostel, discussing about her plans about the future.
Thank god it rained that night. The hostel was blacked out. And Mantri and Isha were in the room, minding their own business.
I made sure Mantri came out, sat on the wet terrace. (I made sure her polished, well-refined habits lost sheen over the course of the, well, course.)
We sat in the rain, and we talked, not for long, but we did talk. We got hungry, went back to the room, *we knew there never was any food in the room* but still.. Sush and Veeney came back after a while.. and here's where my memory betrays me.
Will update this post, when I remember more of it..

New Beginnings

I’m almost on my way to becoming a journalist*. So, before the course ends, I thought, I should write. The thought of making assumptions and adding opinions had managed to keep me off the Blogosphere for long.

In retrospect, when you write for a living, the lines blur—the lines between what’s personal and what’s professional.

Like my professor says, in the world of journalism, everyone knows one another. So it’s possible that your blog will be looked at and analyzed, much more than any other ordinary blog. So you can’t really write about stuff that happens in your everyday life, given that it could be potential newsy or newsroom stuff, can you? Well... Nope!

Can you write about what a nice day you had interviewing a source who was ultra nice to you? Can you divulge information that could be potentially hazardous to your story? Of course not.

Can you write about your hostel life or hostel mates, in turn offending sensibilities of a number of people who you live with everyday? Hell no.

But what you can write is what you saw, what you heard, what you think- that’s everything that my job demands me to do, except for the last part. Here I can give an opinion. And I cringe at the thought of that as well. Because, your opinions stand to fall like a pack of cards if they’re not well researched and backed by a strong argument. Lines blurring again..you see?

On several occasions when I did make an effort to write, I asked myself if this was way too opinionated way too many times. I had to remind myself that this was a private blog and I could make assumptions.

And, even as I write, I’m mentally spellchecking, looking for structure, avoiding passive voice, looking for sentences that don’t fit, reducing the number of words in sentences. I had to remind myself, proofreading the page was not part of the exercise. I guess once an editor, always an editor.

Well yeah, journalism changes you, radically. You see things critically. For example, prior to this, I would look at ads with an awe of monstrous proportions. My sister was right in calling me a sucker for anything flashy. I’d believe every word they say, and hope that the product will work its charm eventually, much like a big eyed bunny. And now, well, let’s just say, my sister would be proud of my judgments.

When you’re a journalist, you become a bitch for facts. You inherently develop the knack of getting outraged at anything that hurts the public. For example, you look at the traffic and wonder not about the number of cars in the city, but the terrible town planners. I could go on..but well, you get the idea.

I guess, I’ve changed in more ways than one. I’ve tried so hard through the year to get my writings published on TheSoftCopy, that I forgot that I had my own space as well. So well, hello blog..! And best of luck, because the editor in me is going to look at the previous posts with a critical eye and is sure to frown at them . :/
Old me versus new me. Perfect :/


*To everyone who I’ve interviewed, I was a trainee journalist the past 9 months. Just saying.