Idiots in the Box

One train rushed into another. The aftermath looked exactly borrowed from a child’s imagination when two of his toy trains are made to collide with each other. I remember having created many macabre mass catastrophes as a child with my arsenal of aeroplanes, cars, trucks and trains. One wagon is flattened; the other is thrown twenty five feet in the air, crashing onto an overhead bridge; the rest of the wagons jerked out of the tracks tilted in agony. ‘If God were a child, this is one hell of a tantrum’, I thought as I looked on aghast at the images of Uttarbanga Express crashed onto the Vananchal Express on the news.

I came to know of this accident after I returned home from office. My mother usually develops a dramatic touch the moment she has gathered all the facts and figures with regard to a piece of news; so her depiction is usually replete with pauses, gesticulations, adjectives, conspiracy theories and opinions. And she would say all of it, calmly seated on the sofa; relating the story in a piece meal fashion, as if blurting out all the information in one go would demean her reputation as an effective raconteur.

To expedite the entire process, I switched on the news. Consider some of the options that the Indian press gave me in lieu of my mother’s ace reporting. A Hindi news channel. Their reporters somehow feel that a salt and pepper beard helps lend them a Clint Eastwood charm and makes the issue at hand look as grave as a Clint Eastwood movie. So this reporter ventures into one of the smashed compartments, raises his left hand towards the ceiling of the train and says (in Hindi), “So as you can see, this compartment has been completely destroyed. All the seats and windows have been smashed. The scene looks terrible......”, looking around briefly wondering what else evident things he could extract out of that debris. “Imagine you were sitting in this compartment”, he suddenly said as if a brainwave had just struck him “Imagine what would have happened to you!”

I actually took a moment to reflect what the reporter had just suggested me to think. What would have indeed happened if I were in a compartment that was reduced to pulp? ‘I don’t know, let me see...I think I would have died, you ass’! I screamed internally.

Click, next channel. I get an animation movie here. The entire catastrophe is now presented like a case study, with one cartoon train rushing into another cartoon train. And a red flash and bang! One bogey flies up and hits an overbridge above. The sequence is then again repeated for the people who missed any particular second of this self-explanatory analysis. Meanwhile a person in the background is busy dissecting the one sentence statement issued by the rail minister; discussing with gusto the minister’s career plans henceforth.

Click, next channel. ‘Ah, NDTV’, I think relieved. ‘Atlast some decent stuff to look forward to.’ A senior reporter is on the scene with her fashionably faded kurta and distraught look. She spoke in a condolence filled tone, “What has happened here is truly tragic. People are frantically searching for their loved ones. I have with me one of the villagers..... ‘ Kya aapka koi kho chuka hai’ (have you lost anyone)?”, she asked switching from English to affected Hindi.

“Humra bhateeja huspataal mein hai. Taang tut gaya. Baanki to log honge andar.” (My nephew is in the hospital with a broken leg. There must obviously be others inside still)

Not satisfied with the nature of this villager’s personal calamity, she again tried. "Aur aap”, thrusting the mike before another bemused villager. Before he could complete his sentence (which did not seem to be having much potential for sensational grief), the reporter nodded her head vigorously and snatched the mike back. “As you can see, people here are frantically searching for their relatives. This is a very painful situation indeed. How long will this ordeal last? This is..... reporting. Thank you (pause, glance, pause) very much.” she finished as if she was on stage. And then suddenly turning to the villagers, added hastily; “Asha hai aap logon ko sab mil jaata hai” (Hope you all manage to find everything); as if they were out there searching for lost marbles.

And finally came my personal favourite- Arnab Goswami, and his media circus on Times Now where he invites every night half a dozen guests as audience to listen to him talk. As a viewer, it looks a bit confusing with seven passport size photos all talking at one go, and from the centre Arnab Goswami bellowing like a raging bull. “What happened to the anti-collision devices? What is wrong with Mamata? Are you trying to tell me that the rail minister has nothing to do with this? No, no, no...this is not done...” Ultimately one or two of the guests have to take the onus to calm down the moderator to prevent him from suffering a mini stroke on the sets. On one of the windows, Suhel Seth with his grey dishevelled hair gives company to Arnab in his Mad Hatter’s Party. Pronouncing his English words with an erudition that suggested that he had ultimately fallen in love with his own voice, Suhel Seth went on and on in an orgasm born out of eloquence; not realising that with every passing sentence he was making even lesser sense. By the time Mr Seth stopped to take a breath, it sounded like unadulterated nonsense to me. Why Times Now was making me listen to an adman’s commentary on accidents, politics and safety devices....remained entirely lost on me.

In this cacophony of the irrelevant and the ridiculous, my mother brought me my dinner and in my mind I quietly awarded her the best journalist award. Going to the TV in search of crispier news was perhaps too ambitious of me to expect. Indeed if we were on the look out for the best way to desensitise any disaster in India, I strong believe that the press owns very capable hands. The only channel that could be exempt from this dubious reputation is perhaps ‘Lok Sabha News’, which in pursuit of its own sensibility; was showing a snapshot of Delhi’s Commonwealth plans while other news channels had their cameras trained on the mangled steel remains at Sainthia.

Moral of the story – mom’s always the best. Well, usually atleast!