"The Week That Was"
Remember this TV programme? As a kid, if you needed information about current events occurring across the country and globe, this was the programme every teacher and parent would swear by. A no non-sense programme conveyed brilliantly by Mr.Prannoy Roy.
That was then..the simpler times. Today, well, that's an entirely a different story. Journalism as we know it is more focussed on dirt, scandals and partisan views. Today, what underwear Katrina Kaif favours or what how many milligrams of mass Shilpa Shetty has developed on her belly is of more concern than Maoist insurgency or the Financial Budget. News agencies have forgotten to focus on state of affairs of national importance as fulcrum and treat these as and when they arise and forget all about it. One thing that stays on is bloody entertainment news, if one dares to call it that! Unfortunately, as a reader I am to blame as well. If titillating images are displayed to me right next to matters of home security, your guess is as good as mine as to where the little mouse pointer would go. As a two-way street, efforts from both ends needs to come. If given an option of pure, unadulterated news, I will very gladly soak it up.
This post will be mostly a medley of coherent and tangential thoughts. Bear with me...
Social Networking:
That's what everyone is apparently doing these days. Ever since the advent of Facebook, people are wanting to put themselves out there....literally!
Oh my God, I just farted...Status update
Oh my God, I just took a shit....Status update
Oh my God, I have a fucking bad head-ache...Need some coffee..like now!!...Status update
This is what we have come to being. Vanity is an inherent quality man possesses but keeps under check (well, most at least)! Now we have a medium to expose it. What is worse is hundred -million people replying to all status messages. Lots of constructive time and bandwidth into super productive use, really.
Tweet...Tweet...No no no..it's not Tweety, that cute little bird that kept us glued to TV sets. Twitter is here. I think everyone from Obama to Tharoor...from sexygirl765 to cooldude99..from the guy next to me to Batman, "tweets" (yes, another one to the Lexicon).Apparently, micro-news is macro-news today. Assimilation of text more than 140 characters is too much for the brain today. Looks like micro rather than macro brain is here to stay!
An interesting afterthought to this is the desire of man to submerge/indulge in what someone else is "up-to". Good point for discussion, that!
IPL:
Picture a scene where thirteen men dressed in whites occupy a ground playing cricket. Well, of course you can't! I'm a fool to paint this illusion. Today, what you see is thirteen men in snazzy outfits trying to play a power game. Of course, please let your mind wander to some girls clad in clothes that'll rip your fly apart.
The gentleman's game is dying. I am actually part of this revolution and it's not a good feeling. I probably will be part of the last generation of people talking about deft flicks, unimaginable late cuts, the art of loop and flight. More importantly, I will be one of the last people to watch Sachin Tendulkar or Rahul Dravid play test match cricket. Men, whose on-field revelry has scripted many a life!
Even with the cloud of controversy engulfing IPL, people will stick to it..Not for the game but for the celebrities frequenting matches and late night parties. Players are enticed with moolah never seen before..will the arrogance and cavalier attitudes be far behind? With players being fought over, used and abused like condoms, honour, pride, hard work, spirit of the game will be left far behind. Men of honour will be just merely photos on the wall and with them will die my memories and comfort zone.....
Legends of the past and present are crying out to save the unadulterated form but all I can hear is the "TWEET" of Mr.Franchisee and Mr. Politician....
Spirituality:
Ah, the tangent topic! I have been thinking about this for a bit and came up with this...
- A woman who travels 80 KM a day to wash dishes
- An old man who can't hear well chauffeuring and getting people home safe
- A man whose presence makes you feel secure
- A man who drives a van to feed the poor and homeless relinquishing a fat paycheck
- A social worker working with old neglected people, orphans and abandoned children
- A man who unites an entire nation each time he steps on the cricket ground
- The same man who takes the effort to meet with and seek the blessings of an elderly lady
- A man who raised an unimaginable amount of money purely on trust when up against the wall
- A mother who bestows altruistic love on her kid
This to me is spirituality and I have made my peace with that.
Water:
The most precious reserve. Dwindling away fast....Man's materialistic desires into foray once again in depleting water. I shall reserve my thoughts on this and instead request you to read the April 2010 issue of the National Geographic magazine.
I have rambled on for a bit here. A feeling of self-righteousness has engulfed every Indian away from his motherland. I am no exception. I liked being part of the system within the failure rather than wander away to point fingers at it, good or bad. I liked being in a comfort zone no matter how ruthless it appeared to be. I liked being part of a system where order and method was not a daily dose. I liked not to be faced with an identity crisis everyday.
Maybe, if I still were in India.....
Remember this TV programme? As a kid, if you needed information about current events occurring across the country and globe, this was the programme every teacher and parent would swear by. A no non-sense programme conveyed brilliantly by Mr.Prannoy Roy.
That was then..the simpler times. Today, well, that's an entirely a different story. Journalism as we know it is more focussed on dirt, scandals and partisan views. Today, what underwear Katrina Kaif favours or what how many milligrams of mass Shilpa Shetty has developed on her belly is of more concern than Maoist insurgency or the Financial Budget. News agencies have forgotten to focus on state of affairs of national importance as fulcrum and treat these as and when they arise and forget all about it. One thing that stays on is bloody entertainment news, if one dares to call it that! Unfortunately, as a reader I am to blame as well. If titillating images are displayed to me right next to matters of home security, your guess is as good as mine as to where the little mouse pointer would go. As a two-way street, efforts from both ends needs to come. If given an option of pure, unadulterated news, I will very gladly soak it up.
This post will be mostly a medley of coherent and tangential thoughts. Bear with me...
Social Networking:
That's what everyone is apparently doing these days. Ever since the advent of Facebook, people are wanting to put themselves out there....literally!
Oh my God, I just farted...Status update
Oh my God, I just took a shit....Status update
Oh my God, I have a fucking bad head-ache...Need some coffee..like now!!...Status update
This is what we have come to being. Vanity is an inherent quality man possesses but keeps under check (well, most at least)! Now we have a medium to expose it. What is worse is hundred -million people replying to all status messages. Lots of constructive time and bandwidth into super productive use, really.
Tweet...Tweet...No no no..it's not Tweety, that cute little bird that kept us glued to TV sets. Twitter is here. I think everyone from Obama to Tharoor...from sexygirl765 to cooldude99..from the guy next to me to Batman, "tweets" (yes, another one to the Lexicon).Apparently, micro-news is macro-news today. Assimilation of text more than 140 characters is too much for the brain today. Looks like micro rather than macro brain is here to stay!
An interesting afterthought to this is the desire of man to submerge/indulge in what someone else is "up-to". Good point for discussion, that!
IPL:
Picture a scene where thirteen men dressed in whites occupy a ground playing cricket. Well, of course you can't! I'm a fool to paint this illusion. Today, what you see is thirteen men in snazzy outfits trying to play a power game. Of course, please let your mind wander to some girls clad in clothes that'll rip your fly apart.
The gentleman's game is dying. I am actually part of this revolution and it's not a good feeling. I probably will be part of the last generation of people talking about deft flicks, unimaginable late cuts, the art of loop and flight. More importantly, I will be one of the last people to watch Sachin Tendulkar or Rahul Dravid play test match cricket. Men, whose on-field revelry has scripted many a life!
Even with the cloud of controversy engulfing IPL, people will stick to it..Not for the game but for the celebrities frequenting matches and late night parties. Players are enticed with moolah never seen before..will the arrogance and cavalier attitudes be far behind? With players being fought over, used and abused like condoms, honour, pride, hard work, spirit of the game will be left far behind. Men of honour will be just merely photos on the wall and with them will die my memories and comfort zone.....
Legends of the past and present are crying out to save the unadulterated form but all I can hear is the "TWEET" of Mr.Franchisee and Mr. Politician....
Spirituality:
Ah, the tangent topic! I have been thinking about this for a bit and came up with this...
- A woman who travels 80 KM a day to wash dishes
- An old man who can't hear well chauffeuring and getting people home safe
- A man whose presence makes you feel secure
- A man who drives a van to feed the poor and homeless relinquishing a fat paycheck
- A social worker working with old neglected people, orphans and abandoned children
- A man who unites an entire nation each time he steps on the cricket ground
- The same man who takes the effort to meet with and seek the blessings of an elderly lady
- A man who raised an unimaginable amount of money purely on trust when up against the wall
- A mother who bestows altruistic love on her kid
This to me is spirituality and I have made my peace with that.
Water:
The most precious reserve. Dwindling away fast....Man's materialistic desires into foray once again in depleting water. I shall reserve my thoughts on this and instead request you to read the April 2010 issue of the National Geographic magazine.
I have rambled on for a bit here. A feeling of self-righteousness has engulfed every Indian away from his motherland. I am no exception. I liked being part of the system within the failure rather than wander away to point fingers at it, good or bad. I liked being in a comfort zone no matter how ruthless it appeared to be. I liked being part of a system where order and method was not a daily dose. I liked not to be faced with an identity crisis everyday.
Maybe, if I still were in India.....
4 comments:
Dont judge me..or dont think i judge u coz i say this
the news channel is not someones personal encyclopedia about something.. it is a business unit that has a role of effectively getting profits..which will happen through ads.. which will come because of viewership .. which will come if u have viewership beyond the normal urban uber chic..uber educated mass..step into a tier 2 city which doesnt wanna know what the naxals are doing.. because they have enough shit to deal with anyway.. fo them a 5 min exclusive of Katrina does the trick..
u see its all a perception that news channels have no content filters.. ( im strictly talking about English Channels) there are specific hours when shit rolls out.. there are more number of good hours that are pouring out better news than what u could hear Mr. Pranoy Roy do then..and now too..( i think hes boring when doing news)
I think we judge too soon.. there have been days and days and days spent on the naxal attacks.. so much so that they actually went on to do a trial by media..its that way dude.. there is news.. they have to do it..coz some one else who is doin it will get the viewership.. which they cant lose.. ( forget regional channels.. Aaj Tak is the most popular channel in tier-3 and rural places.. thats the way it is.. their content and delivery is designed around that mindset)
Social Networks..hahahahaha... u have a funny take.. but it is the most common one.. so nothin new that someone might have it and thus reason enought to shy away from it.. People when they were born..were and still are vouyeristic by nature.. and will always be till they die...and all of us dont know we also are exhibishioists of the higest order...
that apart.. its more about crowd sourcing dude.. its weird that u see social media as some place where u blabber shit..if u need it u can use it for a whole lotta other shit that u can do with it.. i dont wanna get into a real facts and ways of things.. but yeah still judgemental..:
twiiter doesnt cut on ur potential to write read or understand more than 140 characters.. it tells u that u dont need more than that to say anything u want...
chill dude the world is a global village...dont hate the world for how fast it is changing..
IPL.. the average man doesnt get to see the celbs..nor does he go to the after parties.. so thats not what keeps him glued.. the gentlemans game is still being played by the smae gentleman..
what IPL has done to cricket is to bring out a 100 more Indian players who never got a shot.. u would see the same playing 11 all through the playing 11's tenure.. same with the test team.. ull always see the smae 11 play for years and years.. there are a million people wasting their lives trying to make it somewhere in cricket..and would never have if not for IPL..give them the credit..
Test will still be played..it never depended on Audiences.. the last decade never saw an in stadium audience for test matches.. except for a holiday season.. or last days of last test series that we might win. or a double ton day by sachin. or a triple ton day by sehwag
Spirituality...NOT MY GAME..Ill Leave u at it
Hey! Thanks for a detailed reply. Yes, as you mentioned, it is as long as the post itself!
My aim was not opinionate on these topics. My quarrel is only with the way an entity has been changed and modified with time. Journalism may be "hard-hitting" today. But it can do without the fuss. But, like you mentioned, there were days and days spent on one story..that's exactly my point. News is all over the news when an "incident" occurs but fails to convey much information when there isn't any!
As far as IPL is concerned, my only quarrel with it is that the original form of cricket is slowly loosing ground. I spoke on this from a purist point of view. Perhaps this is how our fathers would have felt when Kerry Packer introduced the World Series and with it ODIs (which we have come to love so much).
But yeah, you hit it right. I am facing an issue with hating the world for the pace with which it is moving! But am working on it...
"A medley of coherent and tangential thoughts", couldn't have been more aptly worded!!
Amazing dude...
I think one of the reasons Aditya's comment is almost as long as your post is simply the amount of TIME he has on his hands ;)
It's harder for some of us to come to terms with the effects of time, but the rate of change is practically exponential and everyone is going to go through this phase in their lifetime, when they are on the verge of being overtaken by evolution.
I get your point completely, because I too am quite aware of the people and things that may be lost or forgotten with the passing of our generation, but adaptation is the only way to cope, otherwise we get overwhelmed by the tide and get left behind in the past.
Fond memories are not for clinging to, but instead should be passed on to those who were not fortunate enough to have those experiences.
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