Lovey lovely article... so nice to wake up to sense on a Sunday morning :)” wrote Swati, a 22-year-old.
I sometimes get a friendly dose from my editor that while I am doing a great job, I am on occasions going overboard and straying from the Sunday ethos, which is, to my mind at the least, a lazy, gossipy, laid-back languor, where people wake up late and take a crack at the potty with 32 crisp pages. In the Sunday edition, jokes, innuendos and lighter stuff is allowed. Dreams can be spun, desires can be garnished and plated, but there is no room for deadly serious thought-provoking material. Well my dear readers, I am glad you proved me wrong time and again.
Swati prefers “sense on a Sunday morning”. She is not alone. I have thousands upon thousands of mails to show for it. Powered by your support, I continue to write this column. “Sense” — on Sunday or Monday’s — is something that eludes most of us. Many a time, our lives, our goals and our achievements don’t seem to make sense. We get the feeling that we are drifting with no idea of where we are going. At such times, reading up on who bitched about what and to whom doesn’t help us much. Society at large is great at creating desires, urging us to go for an all-or-nothing-plunge, and when we fall short, show us fake smiles and regale us with gossip in a bid to heal our wounded souls. That to my mind is what most Sunday papers (DC and The Asian Age are true exceptions) are all about. It’s a pulp and paper version of Vietnam or Iraq, where photos of body bags were deleted, where sleazy rhetoric-ruled bombed out minds of inexperienced soldiers, unprepared for the mayhem that awaited them on front lines was news.
In fact, it’s the rank and bloody insensitivity of the media that is responsible for the huge angst and anger in millions of young minds. The media used to be about conscience, now it is about the market. The media will try and create “excitement” about anything that will get them more readers, more money or more goodwill. Not a half paisa’s time or attention is given to those who have been bruised by the system. The media is now a fine-tuned marketing machine that is geared to sell commercial dreams, urge people to change their lifestyles — earn, borrow or beg to buy that car or home or whatever. The fact is, there are millions who have chased the dream and have woken up to a nightmare. The media isn’t interested in them. The only guys who show interest are the bulky foul-mouthed collectors who will barge into their homes — the real nightmares.
The debt crisis of the middle class is just one of the thousand injuries that the media has inflicted on young India. If it had a conscience, it would provide for real choice. It would guide as much as tempt. It would counsel as much as conjure. I don’t see anything of that kind happening, except in this paper. My senior colleague Anupam Kher, and to a lesser extent, me — we have been healing, helping, holding fallen fighters and getting them back on their feet — hopefully wiser, more cautious and better prepared on the battle that lies ahead. There’s still so much to do. Everyday new fault lines open up and millions of youth get tangled in thorny mental-emotional traps — some laid out by the media, others by the system itself.
While we writers struggle though, it’s heartening to know our fight isn’t in vain, to know that a bit of “sense” on a Sunday morning is welcome, along with all the entertainment and laughter, of course. Thanks again Swati, and to all my readers, I thank each one of you by name. You guys just made my day.