Maya Jaal

As the air of uncertainty looms large, the winds of change are bound to throw up a few surprises. All this talk about Mayawati emerging as a Prime Ministerial candidate is evoking varied reaction from people around me.

The chain of reactions is shockingly similar to the one that follows a disastrous relationship. First you don't believe that such a thing could be a possibility let all asking how did it happen! Welcome to the state of denial. Once the initial shock settles down you tend to think that maybe it's not really happening and that your over-imaginative mind is just up to some trickery. This is a situation where you question what transpired. A few days into questioning when you see things changing you start believing that it's has really happened. This is stage where in acceptance sets in and the matter of moving on is just the thing that is around the corner. Once you start to move on then you start looking at other options and actually start thinking that this could be a good thing that happened. A few days into it and trust me it'll the best darn thing anyone could think of!

So what’s the problem with Mayawati being an option for PM? Of course, the resident geniuses of CNN-IBN might think this is fashion harakiri but the power of Bhenji will even strike out blogs that remotely suggest so! If we could reason with our brains and accept Mr. Gowda as a PM then what the hell is wrong with Madam Mayawati? Agreed that Gowda went berserk once he became the PM and Mayawati is already past berserk, what is the real problem with her as our next Prime Minister? Accept the fact that the assets she has amassed, of which the CBI is clueless, would further grow, she would continue to spend millions on her birthday parties, it might rain Ambedkar statues and officials of the central government irrespective of the portfolios might be transferred overnight, what could really go wrong?

Look at it this way. She has presumably done everything wrong that anyone can think of…once she becomes a resident of 7 Race Course Road perhaps she might just turn a new leaf. Or better still she would continue whatever-the-hell-she-is-doing-now and allow the people a free hand to work a la Lalu Prasad Yadav and the Great Indian Railway. And if the Great Indian Left (Behind) continues to support her, they better not mess around with this Madam for she ain't Mama Roma. I know it’s too much to leave to chance but the way things are going this could be the only chance we have.

As it is we, the poor hapless people of India, rarely have a choice in the ministers or the government we get. I mean we have a PM who has never fought an election in his life; the most vocal Sitaram Yechury threatens to go to the people for mandate whereas in reality the only contest the idiot ever stood for was a college election! People like Chandrababu Naidu might have wooed the Clintons and the F1 head honchos when it came to Andhra Pradesh but has no qualms of buttering his toast with brand Maya. The bloke of the TRS will sleep with the Devil if he promises to crave out the state of Telengana from Andhra Pradesh.

Let’s be happy that things aren’t really as bad as they could have been. Imagine choosing between a Mayawati and Narendra Modi!!! As of now we all are just like the father of the 20 something gal who says Charles ‘Bikini Killer’ Shobraj is just her kind of man…let’s pray that she never slips into a bikini.

Image courtesy: www.tribueindia.com

United Colors of Rajdeep Sardesai

Every time Mr. Raj Thackeray does something news worthy I think of Rajdeep Sardesai. I don't know the connect but somehow I end up thinking what'd the so-called intellectuals feel of Mr. Thackeray's Big Brother kind of attitude?

Few weeks ago when the whole North-Marathi thing flared up Rajdeep Sardesai never really said anything about the whole fiasco. Agreed that he wrote something in his weekly(?) column in Hindustan Times about how the history of Shiv Sena and MNS and Thackeray Sr. and Thackeray Jn. but he never really took a stand when it came to his news channel. I wasn't really surprised by his refusal to take a stand on any issue. This is a guy who, reportedly, left NDTV when he learnt that five people drew a bigger salary than him even though he was the ace after Dr. Pranoy Roy.

Rajdeep Sardesai is a strange fellow. I never thought highly of him but kind of changed my opinion to some extent when he started his own channel (read a previous post here). Why did I do this? Well, initially CNN-IBN tried reporting without really taking sides. There is some difference between taking a stand and taking sides. NDTV's take on Natwar Singh's daughter-in-laws suicide was what made me change my opinion about the way they report. The anchor (I forget her name) was apparently a close friend of the woman who died and this propelled her to cry on camera in addition to claiming how callous the media gets while reporting. She of course, accused everyone including herself for good effect.

Back to Rajdeep Sardesai and his Frankenstein. He is a smart guy. So smart that he can write a 2000 word article and yet refrain from making a point leave alone any sense. In case you don't believe me, read his take on 20-20 cricket and you'd know! I always wondered why did he never take a real stand on the whole Raj Thackeray thing...? Finally I got my answer when I saw CNN-IBN beaming a grinning Rajdeep Sardesai informing me that the world is change and so is Maharashtra. He did this in Marathi. This was a promo for his new Marathi news channel.

Eureka moment!

Now we know why he didn't really really have an opinion on Bhaiya Bashing in Mumbai. He didn't want MNS to come a calling! There is a bright side too. He might actually get a reticent Raj Thackeray to finally confess why he thinks that it's a great idea to pack north Indians out of Mumbai. The only hitch is that now that Rajdeep Sardesai promises to live up to his Marathiness and make IBN-Lokmat a stupendous success....what happens to the people who think of his as a Gujarati?

Confused?

Don't be. He wrote this while nursing his heart that was bleeding for Goa, 'Let me also debunk another stereotype: the ‘desai’ in my surname often leads people to presume I am Gujarati. The fact is that my father was a Goan, and I am proud to be one too.'

Next stop IBN-Susegado (Konkani which means take it easy)!

Breaking News

While flipping through our news channels you’d either hit upon an advertisement selling underwear or pens or catch the anchors begging people to SMS Yes or No in response to some no-brainer of a question. The other day Times Now updated me about the love blossoming between Yuvraj Singh and Deepika Padukone, as if I need to know that. The newscaster actually said, ‘the prince of Indian cricket and the IT (information Technology) girl’ instead of reading the copy as the ‘it’ gal considering Ms. Padukone is a hot favorite of everyone and their aunts!

The other usual suspects weren’t far off. CNN-IBN and it's Face The Nation, featuring an uber-hyper Sagarika Ghosh, actually had an entire show dedicated to Sachin Tendulkar and why shouldn't he be awarded the Bharat Ratna!!!??

What?

Why?!

Well some consider him the greatest cricketer ever and he has done India proud for 17 years and oh yeah he has finally managed to break the ‘jinx’ of getting out on 90 seven times? And this is a guy who refuses to pay taxes for a luxury car that he was gifted. This is the biggest thing a national news channel can come up with for a prime time show? Why can’t the editors exercise some discretion when it comes to deciding topics of discussion? Perhaps these guys are yet to recover from the shock that Narenda Modi actually won the Gujarat elections!

Don’t even ask about the Hindi news channels for they are a class apart. According to Star News nothing worthwhile happens in the world during the one hour they have a hideous show called Hasoge To Phasoge wherein some really strange looking people in the grab of stand-up comedy crack jokes. India TV has a mean Shani Baba resembling some photograph, infused with life, stolen from the most wanted board from your neighborhood police station. Aaj Tak (actually its English cousin, which is as bad if not worse) has one Mandeep Beivi who presents an hour-long take on showbiz called Entertainment News and only Salman Khan or her poodle can understand her accent. How do I know she has a poodle- one look at her hairstyle and you might mistake her for poodle!

There so many things that a news channel can change and it’s not as if they haven’t done their fair bit but is a little maturity too much to ask? I was watching BBC and got to know that by mid 2008 an Air Car, that’d use compressed air as fuel will soon hit the markets, Indian as well. The car will run at a top speed of 109 kms/hour and will run almost 200 kms on a single recharge. Though the price of the car isn’t confirmed refueling will cost less than 100 rupees!

I don’t recall any Indian news channel reporting this ever. Why am I talking about this? For one the car’s engineer, Guy Negre, has been researching for almost a decade now and had almost given up on the idea when someone bailed them out and funded the research. It was our own Tata Motors!

Why am I so angry? After all isn’t it that they sell what sells and perhaps we get what we want for if it wasn’t wanted why’d they sell it?

Yeah right!

I think we all love non-sense. As a matter of fact most of the times we go the extra mile to ensure we get non-sense. Where else can so much non-sense amalgamate? Flip through channels and you'd see the point I'm trying to make here.

White Noise

My resident psychologist, Groucho Marx is of the opinion that television is very educating for every time someone turns it on he’d go to the other room and read a book.

I couldn't agree with him more.

In addition to my radio blues, my TV was out of action for almost two weeks.

Life seemed nice for the two weeks my television was dead; I surfed the Internet more than ever before in addition to almost finishing ICon, the biography of Steve Jobs. But the best thing was, not having to mindlessly surf channels in the pursuit of something half way decent. These days I consider the news channels to be most entertaining.

News is real entertainment for where else can you watch Raju Srivastav's mindless stand up comedy on two channels simultaneously- Star News and Aaj Tak. The dude has his own show on Aaj Tak! Makes me wonder what ever happened to the Sabse Tez channel? Maybe they realized the they were a tad too fast and if they had to continue, they'd have ended up making up news; which they do most of the times- remember the driverless car story in December 2006! Most film channels have taken it upon themselves to recover money for the producers of films like Nayak, Aamdani Athani Kharcha Rupaiya and Lakeer by repeating them week after week either as 'Friday Fury' 'Sunday Mega Movie' or 'Tea Time Treat'!

My mother finally called the Samsung guys to fix the darn machine. The back panel of the TV was unscrewed to reveal five years worth of dirt giving stiff competition to the dirt on TV channels! Tata Sky threatens to make my life jhinga la-la once again!

But did I miss anything while the TV was comatose?

Not really.

After senselessly surfing the only thing that caught my attention were those teleshopping network advertisements featuring a pipe-puffing Sherlock Holmes look alike who insists that English ain’t a language but a lifestyle and convinced me that my lifestyle sucked!

After fifteen days of no TV what do I see when I finally get on- CNN-IBN's promo departments crowing glory proclaiming that they were the only guys who got it right when their exit polls predicted that Mayawati's BSP would sweep the Uttar Pradesh elections. Dream on dudes! You guys were way off the mark on every other prediction and one mistake being turned into a marketing gimmick ain't impressing me.

I like CNN-IBN; I couldn't stand Rajdeep Sardesai till he was with NDTV, why’d I see someone trying to Prannoy Roy when I can see the real McCoy!? But once Rajdeep Sardesai left NDTV and became his own man I started liking his style. When I see him now, I kind of believe what he says to be the ‘news!’ But that advertisement was a little too much to take. Actually with a slogan like theirs, "Whatever It Takes" (freak predictions coming true included!) nothing surprises me anymore.

All hail Bruce Springsteen, the prophet!

Man came by to hook up my cable TV
We settled in for the night my baby and me
We switched 'round and 'round 'til half-past dawn
There was fifty-seven channels and nothin' on…