" I can e-speak awn-ly Englis! "

The Indian media never fails to astound me.

A country of over a billion people should certainly be up to the task of providing the newsman with his daily bread; he, however, prefers to dig his nose and claw into some obscure corner, to come up with a piece of what can loosely be referred to as information, and thrusts it in front of the nose of the populace.


I was surfing channels at my leisure yesterday, when i came across a news channel of sufficient repute broadcasting a most interesting programme. The topic of active discussion was a fourteen year old human male specimen who answered to the name of Rajesh Mishra and hailed from the small town of Bilaspur. This young prodigy(or so they claimed) had apparently started speaking farratedaar English(an oft-repeated term that probably means a combination of fluent and fast) all of a sudden, despite having no previous knowledge of the language. And what is more, the gentleman had a distinct amreekan twang to his tongue. It did not take me more than a word out of the kid's mouth to understand that he was either a fraud, or mentally challenged, but definitely not a prodigy. That word happened to be "exactly"(pronounced "egg-jact-ly). What he spoke was grammatically incorrect, incoherent and mostly devoid of any real meaning. However, the news channel kept banging on about how this was a miracle of nature, and how this child should be supported and how fortunate all of us were that this miracle took place in India. The director of ISRO called in and specifically said that he was proud of this young man, and that he would get whatever support required.

Come today afternoon, and the interrogators were singing a different tune. It transpired that this young prodigy gained his amreekan accented English from the movies Total Recall, The Matrix and the like. Hence, the discussion moved to his mental stability, and so on and so forth. In between, our protagonist alluded to certain "profits" he was receiving for coming on the show, owing to which (obviously) the presenter changed the topic immediately.

This exercise took up almost twenty-four hours of valuable air time that could have been devoted to something a lot more useful, or of greater consequence. A lot of people who genuinely require support never get even one hundredth of the kind of air time that Rajesh got. Ten thousand people murdered everyday, thousands of women raped every day, millions of robberies, tonnes of scams... all these are neatly swept under the carpet while people like Rajesh sit comfortably on armchairs on top of them. Stories that need to see the light of day are buried deep underneath the ground, and probably always will be.

Because the public enjoys seeing the unnecessary romanticisation of Rajesh-like people. And the media gives them what they want. A murder or a new scam is just not interesting enough anymore! It has become far too commonplace to generate the same kind of interest as Rajesh! So the people do not protest, hence authorising the media to, in effect, show whatever pieces of refined crap they want to show. A sad state of affairs indeed.

The Rajesh story is probably receiving the undivided attention of "experts" on the news channel as i write... they will probably bake him for breakfast and have the leftovers as hors d'oeuvre before lunch.

Best of luck to them.

Abhijit

12.45 pm. It was a bright, hot summers day (yes, in february; manipal weather functions in inexplicable ways), the kind when all you want to do is strip naked and go for a swim, or slip into a pair of shorts and leisurely sprawl out on some beach, sipping a cold drink(or beer, if possible). I was sitting on my roommates bunk (since my own was messy beyond description and i had no inclination whatsoever to clear it up) after an unusually boring half-day when Dutta ran into the room, looking paler and more distressed than i had ever seen him before.

Hey man...bad news...Abhijit's dad just passed away.

For a moment, a split second, i thought it was another instance of the sick humour that Ayushman sometimes delights in. But the expression on his face and the sombrerity of the statement made convinced me otherwise. For a few seconds, i just sat there gaping at Dutta, with my mouth open like a goldfish. Then, it started to sink in.

Abhijit's dad just passed away...

The last said words seemed to linger in my mind, repeating like a stuck gramophone record. And with it came the full realisation...

Abhijit. Next-door neighbour. A rare combination of intelligence and diligence, coupled with a great character and sportsman's spirit. A decent guitarist and singer. A good friend.
He didn't do anything to beget this.

This i'll have to say, he took it like a man. No show of emotion, none at all. Perhaps that was because it didn't really register, or maybe because it sent him into shock, but i'd like to believe that it was a great attempt at self-control. He talked to his TG tonelessly, packed his bags, went to TC and bought a ticket to Calcutta, came back and read the Holy Bible all afternoon and evening. None of us dared to talk about what had happened. The only conversation we made was about how and when would he leave, and when would he come back, and whether or not he needed this-and-that and so on. The real issue remained unapproached.

Later as he boarded the bus that would take him to Bangalore, i pondered on how frail life is; here for this moment, gone the next. We should really make the most of what we have been given, not fool around like we usually do. Who knows what might happen next? Maybe we won't live to see tomorrow's sunrise. If that happens, i should have the satisfaction of knowing that my life served a purpose, made other people's lives better or helped someone to some degree. That purpose is yet not very clear to me; if i should die tomorow, i would have a hard time explaining what i did or what i intended to do that set me apart from the millions and billions of other ordinary people, milling about in the great mass of humanity.

This incident woke me up. The harsh realities of life are not a fairy tale. They do not exist only in other people's lives and in our imagination; they are as much a part of our life as that of our neighbours. From now on i will try to live each day as though it were my last.

How long that'll last, i have no clue.

The Future Looks Bright

It was rather cold today. Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. Indeed, yesterday and today make up the two coldest days i can remember(in Delhi, that is). No amount of warm clothing or blankets could manage to keep the cold from reaching my skin. The small opening in my window that cannot be closed didn't help either. The Delhi(or should i say Gurgaon) smog persisted for these two entire days, an occurence that i have never before observed.

I was in the kitchen today, helping my mother make Gulab Jamuns, partly because i had nothing else to do and partly because the kitchen is the warmest place in the house, and since i had no intention of sitting motionless in front of a heater, i sought refuge there. It is a most delicate procedure, making Gulab Jamuns...making small balls, frying them with the utmost care, dropping them in a sugar syrup and all the time making sure that the balls retain their shape and texture. I was responsible for the frying part. For some strange reason, it struck me that frying G-jams is a lot like raising children...the jams must be exposed to the oil for a very correct and precise period of time. Fry them a little longer and they end up charred black; a little less makes them reddish, raw and undernourished. We must make sure that the correct amount of oil reaches the jams in a period of time, and turn them over when they reach a distinct colour; else they do not make good eating.

For some inexplicable reason, this reminded me of the big fight we had at MIT just before the exams. It was three days before the exams when some twelfth block guy made a pass at some fifth block dude on Orkut. This, it seems, was enough reason for the fifth block guys to gather a hundred people and beat the devil out of the twelfth block dude. Thats fair, a hundred to one. This was not the first time something of this sort had happened; a similar situation arose three months before this encounter, culminating in the same way...a hundred fifth and sixth block people beating the shit out of some poor guy.

Three days before the exams and organising a gang war, now thats something. Either these guys don't care about their result or they already know everything, and something tells me the latter might not be the correct option. Why, i ask myself. An outlet for there supressed anger, perhaps? Maybe, though where the supressed anger originates, i have no clue. Any reason will do...all they need is a chance to crack their knuckles and join in the fun.

Where did these people go wrong? Perhaps they were exposed to the oil a little too less, or turned over at the wrong time. Who knows? It makes me sad, to tell the truth. Here are a hundred well educated people, who are supposed to belong to "good" families and will make up the cream of tomorrow's engineers. Behaving in a way unexpected, bizzare and worrying, to say the least. The future looks bright.