"News Now"

Around this time last year, I was wandering aimlessly about Chennai while friends paced around J frantically waiting to see their names on notice boards hoping to make one of the placement lists.


Me? I was among the 'fortunate' few who happened to end Day One with an offer letter in hand.  Those who knew me were shocked at why I chose the paper I did in lieu of the `respectable' one.


First month in the paper, I got my front page. With each week, I was tucking away one more lead story into my bonnet. After six months,  I was pretty much where any newbie can hope to be.  Then, in a  move that made my Editor blow his top off,  I quit.


Turned down every other offer I got.  Chose to turn into a zucchini than work at a newspaper again.


Why?  I could opt for a diatribe and do what N. Ravi (incidentally, was one of my favourite lectures from J) from The Hindu seems to have done.   Or,  simply let Amit Verma say my bit for me.

Observations I'm making when I'm not sleeping

1.  All men are gay until proven otherwise.

2.  There's nothing like the look on your mom's face when she's just seen you watch dirty dancing and then you tell her that you're going dancing. 

3.  When I find out that the guy I like has a girl,  I don't hate the guy, I start liking the girl.  Talk about hopeless.   

4.  Assignments are unnatural. Surely, man was created with a higher purpose than to argue why one -ism cannot replace another?  

5. A strange foreboding that I'm going to ape the Chicago cousin and marry a Tambrahm. Venda god, venda!  Don't let it come true. Not that. 

6.  Switchboards are evil. They make you feel like an intruder in your own house. 

7.  How do I find out the one thing I want?  And, not the hundred things I don't? 

8. Wolf is a mega cute techie from Delhi going to the States to become a corporate cockroach. What a waste.

9.  I'm going back to Chennai to sit at placements for a job I don't want and a degree I have no use for. Yuck. 

10.  Not being able to sleep before 6 A.M every morning is turning me into an incomprehensible but certifiable nut-case. 

Rann: A review

Before you make up your mind about Rann, it’s important to understand what this film is and what it isn’t. If you were to oversimplify it and put it, the way Ramgopal Verma does throughout Rann– its noble and it’s ambitious.  What it isn’t is anything watchable or worthwhile. 

Vijay Harshwardan Malik (Amitabh Bachchan) is a veteran journalist and the head of News 24 x 7 – a news channel that is struggling to survive in a morally deficient sensationalist market; rapidly losing ground and TRPs to his erstwhile protégé Amrish’s (Mohnish Behl) channel, which in contrast, is thriving on infotainment and paid news.  

In comes the twist in the tale, when the prodigal son and heir apparent, Jai (Sudeep) in a bid to save his channel, is lured by his avaricious brother-in-law Naveen (Rajat Kapoor) into a industrialist-politician nexus, when he sells his soul and with it, his channel’s integrity to the greasy politician Mohan Pandey (Paresh Rawal) by agreeing to ‘create’ news; staging a sleazy sting operation incriminating the PM in a communal riot that ends up toppling the ruling regime and leading Pandey to the seat of power. 

Meanwhile, intrepid young reporter Purab (Riteish Deskmukh) noses around the fishy business, finds ‘proof’ which is essentially is another over-enthusiastic sting operation, and so unearths ‘the terrible truth.’  Like the good boy that he is, he dutifully delivers it to his hero Vijay, who nobly apologises for his pig-headedness and that of his son’s on live broadcast along with a few personal dedications, an eight minute lecture on media and morality and takes leave.

So, it ends.

It’s not by accident that the women in the cast are missing from a mention here.  Notwithstanding the entirely expendable role as that of a snitch played by Nalini (Suchitra Krishnamoorthy), they are simply not even a part of the plot. Gul Panag’s role as Purab’s partner is blink-and-miss while Yasmin (Neetu Chandra) as Sudeep’s neurotic girl-friend does little else but to hover annoyingly on the screen like a mosquito you can’t wait to swat.

Even so, Rann’s white-and-black characters are still among the best things that can be said about it. The music is mediocre, the cinematography creepy.  And, the potential of the movie’s premise is lost in its craze for clichés and the sheer scantiness of its detailing. For instance, why the country’s most respected journalist would run an anonymous it-just-arrived-in-the-mail tape on national television without checking for sources, except to obviously further the plot, is beyond anyone’s comprehension.  That’s just the most glaring plot hole. There are many more. 

With the media being what it is today, the amount of ammunition available for RGV to work with is staggering, if only he had cared to scratch beyond the surface.  In the absence of that, Rann is, just like the news channels in it that he points fingers at – a farce. 

As a student of journalism, I object to Rann not because it mocks the media. But because it doesn't. Not nearly as well as it should have. 

PS: I watched Ishqiya after this. This is the review -- It was very WTF.  Even in a film noir kinda way.  That's it? Yup, that's it. 

Just Friends

Guy and Girl meet. Become "friends". Go out. Movies. Dinners. Parties. Drives. Talks. Gifts. Have 'moments'. Guy proposes. Girl rejects. Guy is perplexed. Girl is annoyed.

I can count, off the top of my head, at least twenty cases of this syndrome that I have been witness to. With a few variations maybe, but with inevitably the same ending - tragic. For either or both the parties. God, I should know. Very much been there and done that, you see. And it is ugly, I'll tell you that. Coming out of it suspecting every friend you got, measuring every word you say, fearing (and hating yourself for even worrying) that your friend is going to tell you one day that he's in love with you.

Today though, I saw a guy's side to it. The thing that impressed me the most was that he owned up to it. He didn't flinch. Didn't discount his feelings or retract once even in face of her blatant rejection. Just handled it with a sort of dignity that is rarely found in men. I was more proud of him than I can ever remember being of any male friend I ever had.

Until now, I never saw what the whole fuss about dating was. I thought it was pretty much the the same as hanging out with a friend. I get it now. A 'date' is a declaration of intent. It is like saying, " Hey, I think there's something between us, wanna give it a shot and see where it goes?". It's coming out in the open and saying here's what. As compared to going out with a friend which can be so many things. Amongst others, it can either be genuinely platonic and completely innocent. Or it can be with one or both wondering all the time what the fuck the deal is between them.

I hate knowing these things. Because every time you learn something new, it robs you of your faith in the old. Of the warm and fuzzy comfort that ignorance allows you.

I hate growing up! Absolutely, completely and totally hate it.

Paradise Regained.

I woke up with a fatalistic feeling about being in the same terrible shape that I was in yesterday. Ironically, it turned out quite the opposite. Because, I'm in one the best moods I've been in recent times. All my friends got together for me. Thanks to the blog, I didn't need to tell anyone anything. Most of them who read, got it.

Maybe because I pushed everything else to the back of my mind and got into kick ass work mode, or because the arm behaved nicely, I even had quite a good day at work today. I came back home and talked to the plants. One of them is flowering. I'm going to have a real garden, flaura & fauna et all. God, I'm so kicked. Anyway so then, Amen came over and we snuck up to the terrace to just lay back and watch the stars. It was, for the want of a better word, cathartic.

At that moment, I realised what a wuss I was being all this time. Cribbing about work and friends and well, everything. It's over now. Two months. That's what I'm giving myself. To change. A very "Yes, I can" type of change at that. It's about time too. Before you tax your sad little grey cells, of course, I have a list. And duh!, no, I'm not putting it out here. There is still such a thing as privacy, even if most don't know what it means.

Starting now, I'm going to go have some fun. Enough of fretting about why a certain 'friend' did that to me or how I'll ever get to do something interesting at work. I don't give a damn anymore. I have more important things on my list now. Things that are good for me. Things that'll end life as I knew it.

I can barely wait for tommorrow to dawn. For a new day, a new beginning.

Should blogs be regulated?

Hmmm. Let's see. As a blogger, “I object”. As a student of journalism I say "Definitely not." And, as a citizen of a Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic, I say "F*** you!"

Why? For one reason and one reason only. Because I can!

That is what a blog is about. It’s about you. Being able to say what you please. You’re not claiming it’s factual. Or that it’s legit. You’re not persuading, forcing or coercing people into agreeing with you. You’re simply exercising your fundamental right to express a personal opinion.

In a public forum, yes. That changes things, sure. We need to be careful about what we say, Yoo Hoo. Responsible publishing, that’s what we need. Agreed. Here’s my question but – What is it and where can I find it? Books? I don’t think so. Newspapers? Chuckle. TV? Yeah, right. So what then? Nothing, that's what.

Okay. For a moment, let’s be imaginative and suppose that we do agree upon the regulations bit. Another of my annoying questions – How does one suggest we implement it? From what I read somewhere, there are more than forty thousand active bloggers in India. And about ten times that, have registered blog accounts. So, how then is content amounting to at least a million pages (and counting) in web space going to be regulated? More importantly, by whom is it going to be done? Who gets to decide what or what not to put on my blog? Finally and most importantly, what is objectionable content?

Will all of us bloggers be given a list of taboo topics we can’t post on? Here's another one. Have a censorship body that has their illiterate geniuses scour our blogs to “regulate” them? Or better. Send us to blog rehabs so that we are cured out of the very urge to blog? Dude, I have to admit. Sounds like a plan, it does.

So, I ask again, should blogs be regulated?

Sure. I'd like to see them try.

Dirty little secret.

When a realization dawns, it’s a funny feeling. Kinda like déjà vu. Suddenly, everything falls into place and begins to make sense. Self realizations are even more so. They just sort of hit you out of the blue and nothing’s ever the same again. I had something like that happen to me today.

So you know how All American Rejects' “Dirty Little Secret” uses the Post Secret projectg. It has me hooked. In a nut shell, it’s a forum where people from all walks of life send across self-made post cards with their inner most secrets etched on them. Most of these send anonymously while others don't. Either which way, a majority of them are honest-to- god confessions and there in lay the appeal of the whole thing.

The thing that particularly interested me about it all is that these cards don’t talk about actions. They are about thoughts. What it translates into is that most of us are not as afraid of the things we’ve done so much as we are of the thoughts that we have thought. A lot of the times we build walls in our heads to keep from having to acknowledge the vileness of our thoughts so that we can sleep soundly at night, pretending they didn’t exist. Few have the courage to face up to the truth of their thoughts.

So, for the past few days, I’ve been wondering about the effectiveness of the whole project. Today, it occurred to me out of nowhere that it doesn’t matter. I’m not one of these select few and that, I prefer the self- delusional version of everything that concerns me to the factual one. Also, I think that whether we face up to them or not, secrets and confessions are best left to brew in the confines of the mind. That way they’ll never need be judged by another.