Category Archives: Media

Move Over, Heer-Ranjha

To get a glimpse of the future of Indian television, consider these two news items:

1. Rakhi Sawant has announced a new reality show on NDTV Imagine in which she will begin “a nationwide search for her perfect husband along with the support of the audiences.” Fifteen dudes will be shortlisted, and at the end of the season, she will marry one of them. (If the marriage doesn’t last and the show is a success, she could do it again next year.)

2. A study has revealed that Varun Gandhi has “emerged as the new favourite of prime time TV news in the past two weeks.” After his controversial comments against Muslims, he “managed to achieve 22.57 hours of prime time coverage across six prominent channels,” about 9 hours more than the IPL, which was the second-most talked about topic.

You know where all this is going, don’t you? Yes, I hereby propose that Varun Gandhi be enticed to take part in the NDTV Imagine show, Rakhi Ka Swayamvar. He is eligible and from a noted family, she is voluptuous and hunting for a groom, and they both generate TRPs like cows generate milk. (Don’t ask why that image came to mind.) Also, it will keep the man out of politics, and the country needs that.

And will he win? Well, duh! I mean, imagine the Q&A round:

Rakhi: If someone attacks me, what will you do?

Varun: If someone raises his hand against you, I will cut his hand off.

Rakhi: If someone forcibly kisses me, what will you do?

Varun: If someone kisses you, I will cut his head off.

Now, in this context, she is totally going to find his comments romantic, not repulsive. And even if Varun doesn’t cut off Mika’s head, he could certainly take a leaf out of his father’s book and get forcible nasbandi done on Mika. Imagine the TRPs if that happens live.

Also imagine if, while walking to the mandap, Rakhi and Varun fall into a well and are trapped inside. Oh, the news, the viewers, the ratings, the media planners swirling in ecstasy! I have seen the future, and it is this, it is this, it is this…

(Rakhi link via email from Kind Friend. More Rakhi on IU: 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.)

Throwing The Shoe

We all know what it means to throw the book at someone, and now it seems that dictionaries will soon have to make space for a new phrase—‘throwing the shoe.’ The origin would be the journalist who threw a shoe at George W Bush a few months ago, and it seems to be becoming a trend now that a journalist in a press conference has hurled a shoe at P Chidambaram. (In a PC, at PC, as it happens.)

The Home Minister was referring to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots when the journalist, Jarnail Singh, asked him a question regarding the CBI clean-chit to Congress leader Jagdish Tytler.

When Chidambaram averted the question, Jarnail Singh - who works with Hindi daily Dainik Jagaran - threw a shoe at him.

In case you were curious, the shoe missed, which might well lead to informal courses in shoe throwing being conducted in the canteens of journalism schools. Now, what would the phrase ‘throwing the shoe’ actually mean? One possibility: ‘An over-the-top act of protest born out of the frustration of the futility of other forms of protest.’ It could, thus encompass acts that don’t involve shoes at all—though if it involves throwing other things, it could lead to confusion. Like, imagine if a protester throws a TV at a politician, and a journalist reporting it files a report beginning, “In Hazratganj this morning, an irate protester threw the shoe at politician Jagdish Tytler.” And his editor hauls him up.

Editor: Your report begins by saying that some dude threw a shoe. But it turns out that he threw a TV.

Reporter: Yes, sir, that’s a figure of speech.

Editor: Figure of speech, my ass. Which idiot says it is a figure of speech?

Reporter: Sir, I read it on my favourite blog: India Uncut.

Editor: Well, now you will have more time to read your favourite blog. Much more time.

Reporter: [Worried that he’ll be sacked] Sir, please don’t throw the shoe at me!

(Link via email from Gautam.)

Update: I didn’t realize that throwing shoes at politicians has already become a trend, and Wen Jiabao and an Israeli ambassador have had shoes thrown at them recently. I hope this practice doesn’t spread to book launches.

Churidars And Leggings

One of the things I hate about the Indian literary scene is the writers who set their stories in India but write for a foreign audience. So instead of ‘dal’ they write ‘lentil soup’, and instead of ‘silk kurta’ they write ‘loose-fitting silk shirt’, and so on. I call them ‘tourist-guide writers’, more concerned with catering to Western demand for exotica than to the authenticity that would be true to their subject matter. Whatever. At least there is some rationale to their approach.

But why would an Indian publication, catering to Indian readers who know what Indian words mean, adopt the same approach? My readers know how very fashionable I am when it comes to clothes—except those who have met me personally—and I’ve been following the local coverage of the fashion weeks pretty closely. And time and again, I see Indian clothes being referred to in Western terms. For example, churidars are constantly being described as ‘leggings’. This is understandable if someone is writing for the US edition of Vogue, but all the local newspapers, as well as Rediff, which caters to an Indian and NRI readership, have taken to this.

I find this inexplicable for two reasons: One, ‘churidar’ is a lovely, sonorous word, and all Indians know what it means. Two, leggings tend to be form-fitting all the way from the waist to the ankle, while churidars are generally looser at the thighs. Besides being unnecessary, the substitution is also wrong.

There is similar confusion over salwars. Consider the outfit Shah Rukh Khan wore at the Manish Malhotra show a couple of days ago, which has been described variously as ‘pathialas’ [sic], ‘an Afghani salwar’ and ‘black harem pants’. Now, folks over in Patiala and Afghanistan can argue over the first two, but how is that thing he’s wearing ‘harem pants’? Why do we need to make our writing Western-friendly even when writing for Indian audiences?

Is it because the correspondents in question are so enthralled by coverage of Western fashion in foreign magazines that they find it necessary to stick to their glossary of terms? Or that Indian words, somehow, have become infra dig?

Also, does this attitude reflect something broader around us?

IQ And Alphabet Soup

Here’s a headline today on CNN-IBN:

Six-year-old has IQ higher than Einstein

Leave aside the dubiousness of the concept of IQ and the measurement of it—two thoughts strike me here:

1. Given that IQ, such as it is, is something that we’re more or less born with, a luck of the draw, why is this a matter of pride for anyone? It doesn’t represent an achievement of any sort, and if anything, the parents of that kid should be humbled by the good fortune they’ve got, and determined to make something out of it and then boast.

2. Why does that article tell us that the kid “loves alphabets” and “recite[s] alphabets backwards”? A, B, C all the way to Z are letters of the alphabet, not alphabets. Indeed, A to Z is one alphabet. Now, it is entirely possible that the kid, being so terribly smart, can actually recite alphabets like the Hanunó’o, Aramaic, Ge’ez, Abakada and even Roman backwards. But somehow, I doubt that’s what the writer meant.

(Link via email from Deepak.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 16 March, 2009 in Journalism | Media | News | WTF

Defecation Statistics

In an article about sanitation in India, Jason Gale describes how a lady named Meera Devi rose before dawn each day, went to a patch outside her village, “pulled up her sari and defecated with the Taj Mahal in plain view.” Gale writes:

With that act, she added to the estimated 100,000 tons of human excrement that Indians leave each day in fields of potatoes, carrots and spinach, on banks that line rivers used for drinking and bathing and along roads jammed with scooters, trucks and pedestrians.

That is quite a sentence there, and I have two questions about it.

One, how was that estimate of “100,000 tons of human excrement” arrived at? What was it extrapolated from? How was the research to arrive at that figure done?

Two, given how specific Gale is about this, does that figure then not include excrement left in fields of rice or maize? Only “fields of potatoes, carrots and spinach”? Or is that detail thrown in only so that the prose seems descriptive?

I have no problems with the piece, mind you. Just in a quibbling mood, that’s all.

(HT: Nimai Mehta, who has a paper on the subject here—pdf link.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 09 March, 2009 in India | Journalism | Media

Are You Straight Or Gay?

No, I’m not asking you that, it’s none of my business. But in the WTF quiz of the year, Rediff invites you to find out your sexual orientation by answering a few questions. As if, duh, you have no idea of it, but taking the survey will reveal all. Who thinks of these things?

Now, like there are films within some films, there can often be WTFness contained inside WTFness. This question from the quiz blew me away:

3. Which profession would you prefer?

* Fashion designing
* Automobile mechanic
* Nurse
* Electrician

Needless to say, I clicked on fashion designing. Wouldn’t you? I mean, no disrespect to any of the other three professions, but what kind of choices are these? Who would pick ‘electrician’ over ‘fashion designer’, that’s what I want to know.

Despite this obviously gay answer, the quiz concluded that I was straight, which is no doubt a relief to women across the world. Meanwhile, a gay electrician somewhere is wondering if he was wrong all along.

Posted by Amit Varma on 05 March, 2009 in Media | WTF

“Like Dogs Being Thrown A Bone”

Aakar Patel writes:

It is quite easy to manipulate India’s television news channels, because they are open to being used.

Imagine a criminal telephoning India’s television editors. He tells them of a violent crime he’s about to commit, where his gang intends to harm people. He tells them the location and the time of the crime and asks them to send their crews to cover it. His motive for calling them is publicity. What would the journalists do? Warn the victims and call the police, one would think. And stop it when they saw a crime happening before them.

Here’s what India’s TV editors actually did on January 24. A Hindu group named Shri Ram Sene told the editors they would attack a pub in the southern city of Mangalore, and that they could get the footage. The news channels scrambled their camera crews and went with the attackers.

At the pub, called Amnesia, the men manhandled the youngsters inside. The group said it was doing this because of moral reasons; that going to pubs was not Indian culture. The attack was savage and it was filmed in vivid detail. Girls and boys were slapped about, thrown to the floor, hit on their head, kicked as they fled. Their helplessness and their shock was deeply disturbing. Just as disturbing was the animal frenzy of the men attacking them.

The cowering girls in particular were humiliated as the men hunted them, with the camera crews following the men to get the right angle.

“Like dogs being thrown a bone,” writes Patel, “the television journalists have chased the stories that Muthalik has tossed in the air after that day.”

Now, I don’t really blame a dog for chasing a bone. (Or for being a dog.) The media chases sensational stories, and Muthalik gives them just that, as do the likes of Raj Thackeray. What really gets my goat here is the apathy of the police. If Mangalore’s cops were to beat up Muthalik’s goons just as the goons beat up the girls in the pub, and called the TV channels over to film that, the TV journos would be there as well, tongues hanging out, jostling to get the right frame. If the police arrested Muthalik, the channels would do anything to get footage of the man being taken away in handcuffs. But the problem is that when mobs go on the rampage with political backing, the rule of law ceases to exist. Blaming the media for covering that, then, amounts to shooting the messenger.

But do read Patel’s full piece, he makes some excellent points, and I fully agree with his diagnoses of what ails Indian journalism: “The quality of their journalists” and “internal integrity.” Such it goes.

Posted by Amit Varma on 01 March, 2009 in India | Journalism | Media | Politics

The Goody Show

IANS reports:

British reality TV star Jade Goody says she may allow her death to be filmed for a reality show.

“I’ve lived my whole adult life talking about my life. The only difference is that I’m talking about my death now. It’s OK,” she told the News Of The World in an interview published Sunday.

“I’ve lived in front of the cameras. And maybe I’ll die in front of them. And I know some people don’t like what I’m doing but at this point I really don’t care what other people think. Now, it’s about what I want,” said Goody, who has cancer and been given only months to live.

My fondness for reality shows is known to you—but I don’t quite think I’ll be watching this. It’s icky and disturbing.

That said, if art aims to reveal the human condition, then this is all reality shows had left to do. You’re only really taking on life after you come to terms with death. Mostly, we ignore it—and now it’ll be on reality TV. I predict millions will watch, fascinated, unable to switch the TV off, seeing themselves in the sad, pathetic figure of Jade Goody—as sad and pathetic as our species itself.

Posted by Amit Varma on 16 February, 2009 in Arts and entertainment | Media | Small thoughts

Indians and Indians

The Times of India reports:

Police in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest are investigating three native Indians suspected of murdering and eating a 21-year-old handicapped man in a rare case of cannibalism, local authorities said on Tuesday.

The Indians of the Kulina tribe near the Peruvian border are accused of having killed and eaten the insides of Ocelio Alves de Carvalho, a 21 year-old student in the town of Envira in Amazonas state.

What surprises me about this news is not the cannibalism or suchlike, but that The Times of India is carrying this news in its ‘Indians Abroad’ section. Yes, there is a really a website editor there who does not understand that native Brazilian Indians are not from India. (In Portugese, native Indians are called Indios and people from India are called Indianos, but the English language using the same word for these two is no excuse for such confusion.)

In my view, there is only one apt punishment for the editor who made this error: he should be eaten.

(HT: Nikhil Apte.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 12 February, 2009 in India | Journalism | Media | News | WTF

Yes, No, Can’t Say

Check out the screenshot below of a remarkable poll on the Mumbai Mirror website that is still running as I type these words:

The options at the end make you feel sort of powerless, no? That’s how it is in the real world also.

(HT: Swapnil.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 11 February, 2009 in India | Media | WTF

The Offing Offence

Binand Sethumadhavan writes in:

Re ToI’s proofreading practices: Today’s (5/2/09) Hyderabad print edition of ToI has an article on page 16 titled “Google’s latest offing: Mobile tracking system”. Is it that they really didn’t know the difference between “offing” and “offering”?

The question, for me, is not whether they know the difference, but whether they care that there is one. If the editor in charge of that edition is reading this, is he feeling bad because the mistake was made, or because the mistake was caught? That’s the question.

Posted by Amit Varma on 06 February, 2009 in Journalism | Media | WTF

Dalit Child

Here’s an interesting headline:

Policeman sacked for beating up Dalit child

If you read the piece, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that those cops deserved to be sacked. No one should beat up a kid in that manner. But I’m curious about one thing: Nothing in the story indicates that the girl’s caste had anything to do with the beating she got. So why does the headline find it important to specify that she is Dalit?

Family Matters And Noodle Straps

In the WTF news of the day, The Times of India reports:

In a brazen act of violence, remniscient of the Shri Ram Sene goons in Mangalore, a man kicked and stamped his wife because she was dressed “as a man”.

Adding insult to injury, the police promptly dispatched the battered woman, who suffered the ignominy in full public glare, to her in-laws house, terming it as a “family matter”. No case was filed.

I have three reasons for outrage here.

One, at the dude, who presumably thought he was behaving like a man by beating up a woman.

Two, at the cops, for denying the woman her rights, and treating her as if she was the property of her husband and in-laws. This attitude, by the way, is actually enshrined in some of our laws.

Three, at ToI, which printed “remniscient” instead of “reminiscent”. All hail India’s No. 1 English newspaper.

Elsewhere, women are being warned not to wear noodle straps.

Can’t dress like a man, can’t dress like a woman, what’s a chica to do?

Manmohan Singh = Lord Buddha?

These have to be the WTF opening lines of the day:

Prince Siddhartha took sanyas to eventually become Lord Buddha when he confronted misery due to old age, sickness and death. Even as the Congress party plays down Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cardiac bypass surgery on Saturday, his absence from the Prime Minister’s office cannot be ignored.

This is from Sheela Bhatt’s piece on Rediff, Why the Congress will miss Dr Singh. The rest of the piece is political analysis, and Buddha makes a reappearance only in the last paragraph, in an equally tenuous way. Many writers often try too hard to find clever ways to begin and end their pieces, and this is a great example of that. The piece is strong enough to stand on its own, and the reader is looking for substance, not cleverness. A simple beginning would have sufficed. Bringing Buddha into it was most unnecessary.

Maybe I should take sanyas from reading Indian publications…

Vir Sanghvi Exercises His Free Speech

Who doesn’t love a good media brawl? Vir Sanghvi’s just put up a blog post explaining why he won’t write for Mint any more. An excerpt:

I will not write for a publication that censors its columnists and denies them the right to free speech while writing long, impassioned pieces about the freedom to criticize others from the Prime Minister downwards. All of us exhibit double standards to some degree. But Mint’s hypocrisy takes my breath away.

Notice what is curious about that excerpt? While Sanghvi is accusing Mint of denying him the right to free speech, he is exercising that very right on his own blog. The very fact that he is able to make the accusation, thus, invalidates the accusation itself.

From what I can make of the controversy, Mint refused to carry Sanghvi’s piece criticizing them. It is their paper, their space, and they were within their rights to do this. They did not stop Sanghvi from publishing the piece himself—as indeed he has. They exercised their right to their property—he exercised his right to free speech. For him to claim that they censored him is just factually incorrect.

Imagine, for example, if Raj Thackeray was to come to your house and demand that he make a speech from your living room window. Obviously you’d say, “This is my house, get the hell outta here!” Would you then be censoring Thackeray, and denying him his right to free speech?

I am not defending Mint here, merely quibbling with Sanghvi’s careless choice of words. If Mint portrays itself as being open to criticism, and denied its star columnist freedom over what he writes, then Sanghvi’s allegation of hypocrisy might well be justified. But I don’t know the details of this case, and will withhold judgment.

Disclosure: I used to be a columnist with Mint until last year.

Also read:

1] Anant Rangaswami’s rejoinder to Sanghvi’s criticism of his publication, (Not) learning from Vir Sanghvi. The semantics at the end of his post are much fun.

2] For more of my thoughts on the basis of the right to free speech, as well as all other rights, check out these three pieces:

a] The Origin of Human Rights.

b] Shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre

c] The Flying Spaghetti Monster v Private Property

(Sanghvi and Rangaswamy links via emails from Rahul and Salil respectively.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 24 January, 2009 in Freedom | India | Journalism | Media

The Call Of Conscience

Lasantha Wickramatunga, the chief editor of The Sunday Leader, a Sri Lankan newspaper, was shot dead last week near Colombo. He had survived earlier attempts at murder, and had known that further attempts were likely. So he wrote an editorial with the instructions that it be published in case he was killed. Here it is.

All of the essay is remarkable, and it seems unjust to quote just a bit of it, but this excerpt seemed particularly relevant:

The free media serve as a mirror in which the public can see itself sans mascara and styling gel. From us you learn the state of your nation, and especially its management by the people you elected to give your children a better future. Sometimes the image you see in that mirror is not a pleasant one. But while you may grumble in the privacy of your armchair, the journalists who hold the mirror up to you do so publicly and at great risk to themselves. That is our calling, and we do not shirk it.

Contrast this with The Times of India, whose editors, according to a memo from their boss that I got to see recently, were instructed last month not to focus too much on depressing news. Do you think anyone there would lay down his life for you?

(Link via separate emails from Rishab, Arun and Kevin.)

LK Advani Starts A Blog

One of the many grand old men of India politics, LK Advani, has started blogging. In his first post, he says that his “young colleagues” have convinced him that “a political portal without a blog is like a letter without a signature.” He also tells us this wonderful story:

In the first general election, when as a 25-year-old political activist I campaigned in Rajasthan for the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which had been founded in the previous year by Dr. Syama Prasad Mukherjee, even printing a rudimentary handbill was a novelty. Let me recount an interesting incident here. My party had entrusted me with the responsibility of managing the campaign in Kotputli. After studying the problems of the region, I prepared some literature explaining how the Jana Sangh would try to solve these problems if the people elected our candidate. I had also brought copies of the party’s manifesto for Rajasthan.

I reached the constituency about a month before the polling and resolved to remain there until the elections were over. As I began unloading the poll literature that I had brought from Jaipur, I saw our candidate standing at a distance and watching me bemusedly. I was half his age at the time, but he addressed me very respectfully and said, “Advaniji, would you like me and my workers to distribute this literature in the constituency? But where is the need for it? This manifesto and these pamphlets are totally useless in our election strategy. We would have to spend a lot of time and energy in distributing them. If you insist, we will do it. But that will not fetch us even a single additional vote.”

He then added: “Let me tell you one thing, Advaniji. No one can defeat me in this election. This is a predominantly Gujar constituency. And I am the only Gujar in the contest.” His next statement opened my eyes even further regarding the reality of elections in India. “Firstly, every single Gujar who goes to the polling booth is going to vote for me simply because I am a Gujar. Secondly, a majority of non-Gujars will also cast their votes for me because they know that in this constituency I am the most likely winner. They would not like to waste their vote by giving it to a losing candidate!”

I’m no fan of Advani or the BJP, but I think it’s an excellent sign that he’s blogging—I hope his posts are honest, and true to himself, and not exercises in public relations. All blogs by public figures reveal a lot about them, sometimes even in what they choose not to write about, and I hope that some of our younger politicians get online as well.

That said, I really don’t want to see Narendra Modi’s Flickr account. Can you imagine that?

Posted by Amit Varma on 10 January, 2009 in Blogging | India | Media | News | Politics

Style Tips For Satyam Employees

Rahul Tamaskar sends me the screenshot below of Rediff’s headlines a couple of hours ago. Such juxtaposition!

Imagine Ramalinga Raju in one of these.

Meanwhile, Hari Shenoy blogs that Raju should go to Pakistan, “for they would be more than glad to grant asylum to anyone we want to hunt down.” Quite.

Posted by Amit Varma on 08 January, 2009 in India | Journalism | Media | News | WTF

“Daddy, Are You Supporting Hindus?

Nadeem F Paracha has a difficult conversation with his son. Superb satire.

(Link via email from Chandni Parekh.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 08 January, 2009 in Media | Politics

Dog Bites Judge, Dies

Now that we’ve been jaded by “Man Bites Dog” stories, what’s a newspaper to do? Well, here’s what The Times of India gets up to:

Reader Mihir Modi was kind enough to send me the image. As for the story itself, if you’re wondering whether the dog died or the judge, well, you can find out here.

Posted by Amit Varma on 07 January, 2009 in India | Journalism | Media | News | WTF

Raj Thackeray vs Lashkar-e-Taiba

My good friend Prem Panicker puts it superbly on Twitter:

Oh wow. DNA meanwhile tells me Thackeray’s outfit has told city outlets not to sell music by Pak singers. That’s really getting tough.

We can’t touch Hafeez Saeed and Lakhwi and such so let’s put the screws on Ghulam Ali! I so love Raj Thackeray’s thought process.

The MNS’ bollywood wing boss Ameya Khopkar says shops who sell such music will be dealt with in the MNS way. For those who don’t know how:

Hide when the city is attacked. Wait a month, till you are sure all is safe. Then beat up people for selling books and music.

Twitter forces one to be concise, and you’d think that might be a problem for someone like Prem, who is famous for his detailed cricket reports, running on to many thousands of words. But those fed a certain need (of the far-off NRI hungry for every scrap of information); and these feed another. Prem’s Twitter updates are marvellous: always precise, always hard-hitting. He makes blogs seem so outdated—so 2008.

Posted by Amit Varma on 05 January, 2009 in India | Media | News | Politics

The Pundit (And Desi Pundit)

Two quick plugs:

1] Girish Shahane, who used to write a column for Time Out Mumbai, was one of my favourite Indian columnists, for his crisp insights and analysis of contemporary culture. I always wondered what kind of blog he would write—and now we’re going to find out. Girish has ended his column and begun a blog, Shoot First, Mumble Later, that I have very high expectations from. Watch that space.

2] Four years ago, I had the pleasure of welcoming Desi Pundit to life. It has now been reborn in a new avatar, which young Patrix elaborates on here. Once again, I wish them all the best. May a thousand blog posts bloom.

Posted by Amit Varma on 05 January, 2009 in Blogging | India | Media

Where It’s At

This headline sums up these times so well:

MBA students lose crores in share market, kidnap boy

I love the new economy—every day, alternative revenue streams emerge.

Posted by Amit Varma on 24 November, 2008 in India | Journalism | Media | News | WTF

Vidarbha Strikes Back

Check out the WTF juxtaposition of the day:

On the day Citigroup announced 52,000 job cuts it emerged that Bipasha Basu will be making Rs 1.5 crore for her star turn at Sahara Star on 31st night.

The moral of the story: If you’re a banker, get yourself a boob job.

And what better time to write a sequel to my poem, “Farmers Are Dying in Vidarbha”?

Vidarbha Strikes Back
by Amit Varma

I write this ditty from an AC mall
I’ve got money and will burn it all
While farmers are dying in Vidarbha.

Today at work they set me free
So I came on this shopping spree
While farmers are dying in Vidarbha.

I’ve got loans to pay, EMIs and such
I can’t afford to splurge too much
While farmers are dying in Vidarbha.

Farmers are dying, Oh farmers are dying
Farmers are dying in Vidarbha.

I’m buying left, and I’m buying right
I spend at day and I shop at night
While farmers are dying in Vidarbha.

I’ve gone nuts, I’m sure you think
The economy’s in the kitchen sink
And farmers are dying in Vidarbha.

I cannot help this spending urge
It’s like sex, I’m driven to splurge
While farmers are dying in Vidarbha.

Farmers are dying, Oh farmers are dying
Farmers are dying in Vidarbha.

But hey, what d’ya say, look at it this way
Farmers are passe, we need something new today
What about bankers dying in Vidarbha?

Bankers are dying, Oh bankers are dying
Bankers are dying in Vidarbha.

Posted by Amit Varma on 24 November, 2008 in Arts and entertainment | Journalism | Media | WTF

All The News That’s Fit To Dream

If you’re already tired of 2008, take a look at the New York Times edition of July 4, 2009. This is the online version of a fake edition of the paper, of which thousands of copies were distributed free across New York in a fantastic hoax. I don’t know why the NYT itself is calling this a spoof—this doesn’t make fun of the paper, but instead uses it to present the vision the authors have of America under Barack Obama. I’m sure they’ll end up disappointed—and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

But it’s very funny. Someone should do one for the Times of India…

(Links via separate emails from Gautam, Udhay and Gaspode.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 14 November, 2008 in Journalism | Media | Miscellaneous | Politics

‘At The End Of The Day…’

Vinjk points me to a list compiled by The Telegraph of the top ten irritating phrases in the English language. Some of them, I am ashamed to say, I find myself using in everyday speech—though I try to avoid them in my writing. Nevertheless, when I am lazily blogging in the middle of the night, a careless phrase or two may slip through.

In an old essay, The Dialect of a Cricket Writer, I’d written about how cricket writing in India is full of clichés, and how it is every writer’s duty to avoid them. When I wrote about cricket, I tried to do just that. But I hadn’t, at the time of writing that piece, done any live commentary.

A few months after that essay came out, I covered India’s tour to Pakistan for the Guardian, during which I also gave hourly radio updates for the BBC. Those updates were 60 seconds each, and a dude who ran a local Pakistani radio station heard me at work and invited me to do a stint of live radio commentary for him. When we are young, we are foolish, and I agreed.

What a disaster I was! Whenever I needed to say something, only clichés would pop into my head—and being live on air, I had no time to think of alternatives. A batsman french-cut a ball for two, and after describing the shot, I said, “it doesn’t matter how they come, as long as they come.” The game reached its final stages and I said, “Every run is crucial now.” By the time the game was over—I forget who won that one—I was more despondent than the losing side. Amit Varma the writer witnessed Amit Varma the radio commentator in action and unleashed a series of angry WTFs. Amit Varma the radio commentator, duly chastised, resolved never to do live commentary again.

That doesn’t mean that I will go easy on cliché-mongers—professionals have a duty to work at their craft till they get it right, and you will never hear a tired phrase from Harsha Bhogle when he does radio commentary. But it did make me empathetic towards writers who use clichés in their writing. That said, just as I never did radio commentary again, they too should give up writing and find some other work.

Posted by Amit Varma on 11 November, 2008 in Journalism | Media | Personal | Sport

Guilty By Association?

Just yesterday the Indian media was jumping up and down in celebration because they had discovered an Indian name among Barack Obama’s advisors—that of Sonal Shah of Google.org. Well, now they’re all jumping up and down in righteous indignation because she was once allegedly linked to the VHP. My friend Reuben Abraham knows Shah well, and delivers an impassioned defense:

As a friend of mine said at the time, these people are doing to Sonal exactly what the right-wing loonies tried to do to Barack Obama with the Bill Ayers story, i.e., guilt by association. If you have made the mistake of being somewhere near Bill Ayers, by definition, you’re “palling with the terrorists.” This is vile. This is wrong. This is destructive. This is disgusting. And this is precisely the sort of vile politics that the United States needs a break from; the sort of politics the average person is tired of, if Obama’s mandate is anything to go by.

More than Reuben’s personal testimony, Shah’s record speaks for itself:

While she was at Clinton’s treasury department, she worked actively in Kosovo and Bosnia in setting up the central banking system and refloating the currency, both measures vital to the stability of the new states, and especially in preventing hyper-inflation. She also worked in Indonesia during the Asian financial crisis with Robert Rubin’s team. Lest the irony be lost, all three countries are predominantly muslim, not exactly the natural home of the anti-muslim fundamentalist some of these news reports imply Sonal is.

Fawzia Naqvi, a Pakistani Muslim, also pitches in for Shah in Reuben’s post.

If the elections were still on, poor Obama would no doubt be accused of “palling around with Hindu fundamentalists”.

Imagine this: You die, get to Heaven, and God greets you at the door. “Let me in,” you say. “I’ve been good all my life, I’ve helped old ladies cross the road, administered first aid to a fly, procreated for the grace of God, I mean You. Now let me into Heaven.”

“Aha,” says God. “You didn’t read the small print. The large print in the contract says that you don’t get into heaven if you have sinned. The small print says that you don’t get into heaven if anyone you know has sinned.”

“Anyone I know?” you protest. “But that’s absurd.”

“That’s the way it is,” says God. “And if no one you know has sinned, I might just invoke the six-degrees clause. You thought Earth had global warming. You ain’t seen Hell yet.”

Posted by Amit Varma on 10 November, 2008 in Dialogue | India | Journalism | Media | Politics

All The News That’s Fit To Print

If anthropologists from 300 years later see the screenshot below, of the Times of India’s headlines right now, I wonder what conclusions they will draw:

Posted by Amit Varma on 07 November, 2008 in India | Journalism | Media

Dear Times Of India

Dear Times of India

In light of this post by Jyothsna of The Cooks Cottage, I’d like to inform you of a couple of things:

1. Everything on the internet is copyrighted by default. Blog posts and articles posted online cannot just be picked up and used without permission. This is especially true if your reporters put their own byline on it.

2. This applies to photos as well. (On that note, well done Twilight Fairy.)

I assume that your repeated infractions of copyright result from ignorance, not malice or apathy. Thus, it would be nice if you could educate all your staffers and editors on the points mentioned above.

And no, I am not implying that you are the only newspaper that treats the internet as a free resource. But you’re the biggest, and should lead the way by addressing this issue in your code of conduct. If you have one, that is.

Regards

Amit

The hall of shame: 1, 2.

More open letters here.

Posted by Amit Varma on 04 November, 2008 in Journalism | Media

My Congratulations…

... to Barton Hinkle, the winner of the 2008 Bastiat Prize. And also to Swaminathan Aiyar and Fraser Nelson, who came second and third respectively. Their shortlisted articles are here (pdf link). I particularly loved the first of Barton’s pieces—it’s satire that Bastiat would have been proud of.

Barton was also shortlisted last year, and his pieces then were also exceptional—you can read them here (pdf link).

Posted by Amit Varma on 30 October, 2008 in Freedom | Journalism | Media | Personal

Finally, A Reason To Buy The Times Of India

Devangshu Datta, in a wonderful tribute to RK Laxman, comes up with a good reason to buy The Times of India:

Unfortunately, even Laxman’s presence wasn’t enough for me to continue with my daily ritual of passing the paper onto the raddi-wallah after that one brief moment of homage. For a while, I continued to take it because I was rearing kittens — it was absorbent and useful for little misunderstandings during the house-breaking phase. Once the cats became civilised, I stepped aside from that value-chain.

So if you have kittens at home, you’re excused. Otherwise, why do you read ToI?

Posted by Amit Varma on 28 October, 2008 in India | Journalism | Media

The World’s Greatest Democracy…

... has simply got to have polls like this one:

Vote! Which celeb has the worst smile?

Knowing our country’s celebs, most of them would want to win this thing. Anything for the limelight.

Posted by Amit Varma on 16 October, 2008 in India | Journalism | Media | WTF

Needless And Redundant

I’m bewildered and confused by Abu Salem’s legal notice to Monica Bedi, which seems to be written by his lawyer, for its inclination and tendency to use two words where one would do. From the three news reports about it (1, 2, 3), I find that:

1] Salem is “deeply hurt and distressed” by Monica’s denial of their marriage. He is unable to “comprehend or fathom” why she would do such a thing.

2] He had “actively encouraged and supported” Bedi’s acting career.

3] He finds “peace, solace and comfort” from reading the letters she sends him.

4] His love for her shall never “diminish or fade away” even if she wants to “split up or sever their marital ties”.

5] If their marriage is an “obstruction, hardship or obstacle” to her acting career, he is ready to divorce her so that she is “free, happy and at liberty.”

Phew, whew. If I was a judge reading this, I would book Salem and his lawyer for contempt of court for wasting my time in such a manner, in this way.

Many of our journalists are no better, of course.

Posted by Amit Varma on 08 October, 2008 in India | Journalism | Media | Miscellaneous | News

More Than A Blog

Jacob of Mutiny.in informs me about Mutiny, the national print magazine born from a blog. It takes gumption and commitment to take a bold step like that, and I wish them all the best. Do check out their site and, if you like what you see, subscribe.

Posted by Amit Varma on 04 October, 2008 in Media

Sarah Palin. Bikini. Dev Anand

I just saw this box on The Times of India homepage:

Fantastic juxtaposition, no?

Posted by Amit Varma on 27 September, 2008 in India | Journalism | Media | WTF

A Crushed Big Toe

Prem Panicker writes in:

There’s a Neo Sports ad out just now that might interest you.

Big hoarding, dominated by an image of a foot with a crushed big toe, and blood leaking out.

The tag line reads: Last year, Brett Lee’s Yorkers didn’t always hit the wicket. Our turn to return the favour.

That’s the best they can do to promote what could be an intriguing Test series?

Well, I suppose juvenile bluster is an improvement on ‘Pakraman’-style warfare metaphors. But does anyone really need to promote this series?

Also, how will our fast bowlers bear the weight of such expectation? The most famous attempted yorker in India’s history turned out to be quite a disaster…

Previous posts about toes: 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Posted by Amit Varma on 25 September, 2008 in India | Media | Sport | WTF

‘New Age Virgins’

Here’s the WTF headline of the day:

Confessions of new age virgins

I’ve read many bizarre trend stories in the Indian media, but this is particularly befuddling. New age virgins?

Posted by Amit Varma on 16 September, 2008 in Journalism | Media | WTF

Mahatma Gandhi At A Barbeque

Does this advertisement offend you?

I like the ad, and the campaign that it is part of. (Check out the Jyllands-Posten ads with Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama.) But I suspect that if the Gandhi ad was seen in India, there would certainly be so-called Gandhians getting upset by such a portrayal and demanding an apology from Jyllands-Posten—thereby missing the point entirely.

(Link via email from Ambuj Saxena.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 15 September, 2008 in Freedom | Media

The End Of The World

Rediff reports:

A 16-year-old girl in Madhya Pradesh allegedly committed suicide after watching news about the possibility of the end of earth, following the atom-smasher experiment in Geneva that began on Wednesday.

Chhaya, a resident of Sarangpur town in Rajgarh district, consumed sulphos tablets (an insecticide) on Tuesday, her parents said.

[...]

Her parents told reporters that she had been watching reports about the world’s biggest atom-smasher experiment in Geneva on news channels since the last two days, following which she got restless and ended her life.

It’s a horribly sad story, and I wonder what went through her mind as she made her decision, and what other factors contributed to it. I’m guessing she wasn’t particularly happy otherwise, and there were other black holes in her life besides the notional ones in the news. (Speaking of which, read this.)

And see the irony—I read this story shortly after getting an email from Nitin that today is World Suicide Prevention Day. I’ve been keeping a close watch on myself ever since.

(Link via email from Gautam.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 10 September, 2008 in India | Journalism | Media | News | Science and Technology

India Loves Billionaires

One week ago, in an article in Mint titled ‘Jet global expansion put on hold from November’, the following sentences appeared:

On international routes, Jet, run by billionaire non-resident Indian Naresh Goyal faces fresh competition. Kingfisher Airlines, promoted by billionaire Vijay Mallya, starts its international operations in September with a Bangalore-London flight.

A Mint reader named Harish Jagtiani sensibly wondered why the article needed to point out that Goyal and Mallya were billionaires, and posed that question to the editor of Mint, Raju Narisetti. Narisetti, in his blog, examined how many times the word ‘billionaire’ had appeared in India’s newspapers, and replied:

Clearly, business journalists love to point out someone’s billionaire status and I suspect if the B-word wasn’t so long, it would end up in more headlines as well! Is it our admiration for the relatively newly minted Indian billionaires that makes reporters go ga-ga? Actually, it turns out that being a billionaire is a good way to end up in many other newspapers. While the word appeared some 942 times in Indian newspapers in the past year, it appeared 4,102 times in Australian newspapers and 7,190 times in UK’s newspapers. I do think Harish has a point in that dropping the B-word has become a bit of a lazy crutch, whether the reference makes sense in the story or not. In a profile of Vijay Mallya it sure seems to make sense. In a story about Jet pulling back on international flights, does it really matter whether Naresh Goyal is a billionaire or not?

Narisetti’s blog The Romantic Realist works best when Narisetti writes about journalism: unlike the other journalist-bloggers I have read, he is honest, insightful and self-critical. Bloggers love criticising the mainstream media, and this blog is the first I’ve seen that gives an unflinching inside view of MSM from the top. Here are some other posts on journalism that he’s written:

Headllines Above (and Below) The Rest
Should Indian journalists cover up the truth?
Why this shouldn’t be called a foray into blogging
How bad writing (and no editing) can bias readers

Promising stuff, even if the design and user interface is appallingly bad. Why do newspaper websites in India try to reinvent the freaking wheel?

Disclosure: I wrote a weekly column and created a daily crossword for Mint for about a year, and we parted ways acrimoniously in January. I have never met Narisetti.

Posted by Amit Varma on 04 September, 2008 in India | Journalism | Media

Red Lace Bra vs Black Thong

Red Lace Bra wins, according to a poll run by Mid Day. I wonder if the details matter here, and if Black Bra wouldn’t beat Red Lace Thong by exactly the same margin.

The WTF quote of the day comes from the same article, where someone called Harshad K is quoted as saying:

I think women look great in knee-high, black leather boots. A woman who sports boots, is in touch with her own desires.

That would certainly be true if she wore nothing else, I suppose. And why that ugly comma after ‘boots’? Does it indicate that the copy editor who made the page also likes women in boots, and had to pause in the middle of that sentence to catch his breath?

Posted by Amit Varma on 01 September, 2008 in Journalism | Media | Miscellaneous | WTF

Madam’s Permission

Govinda, the member of parliament from the North Mumbai constituency, explains to DNA why he has focussed on his acting career over his constituency:

Maine Soniyaji se do saal pehle anumati maangi thi (two years ago I had sought permission from Soniaji). I had told her that mujhe acting ke taraf dhyan dena padega kyunki I had some debts to repay. I told her I might not be able to concentrate as much on my constituency (North Mumbai) as I would like to. I had Madam’s permission…

What about his constituency’s permission? I hope the voters there duly show him who’s in charge in the next elections.

Also, why has DNA written Sonia’s name as Soniya in that Hindi sentence? Why the ‘y’?

Shooting Dead People

Shooting living people has an ethical cost; shooting dead people may not. HT reports:

For a few weeks starting last April, Bunty and his gang riding bikes went on a killing spree shooting dead people at random…

This happened in Delhi, where there are presumably enough dead people on the streets to shoot at randomly. There’s no such fun in Mumbai, where everyone I see on the streets and in the malls is boringly alive. It’s so predictable. Pfaw.

Posted by Amit Varma on 26 August, 2008 in Journalism | Media | News | WTF

Lion Govind Is A Spammer?

Rediff has a slideshow up on the top ten spamming countries in the world. India comes in at No. 9, and the page on that has a picture of a lion that looks like it has drunk one shot of tequila too many, with the caption:

Lion Govind relaxes after receiving treatment at the Kamala Nehru Zoological Garden in Ahmedabad.

I think I’ll need a few tequilas myself to get the connection. I did google “Lion Govind” to try and find out, and I found this article, with the following utterly delightful sentence:

Lion Govind and lioness Ekta have been provided air coolers to beat the heat.

I demand a comic book on Lion Govind, the Air-Conditioned Spamming Kingpin. Any other tribute would be inadequate.

Posted by Amit Varma on 22 August, 2008 in Journalism | Media | News | WTF

Patriotism In China

The quote of the day comes from June Shih, who compares CCTV, a Chinese broadcaster, to NBC, and observes:

NBC is patriotic because patriotism sells; CCTV is patriotic because patriotism is the law.

And surely you’ve heard about the 900 Chinese soldiers who had to wear nappies during the opening ceremonies. Of such things are great nations made.

(Slate link via email from Abhishek. Nappy link via No. 3.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 18 August, 2008 in Media | News | Sport | WTF

Reality Television

I bet the TV chaps involved in this incident got a hollering from their boss. “I can’t believe you didn’t manage to shoot that guy falling to his death,” he probably said. “Just imagine what the TRPs would have been.”

(Link via email from Sandeep.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 13 August, 2008 in India | Media | News | WTF

DD’s Olympic Coverage

Note to Shailaja Bajpai: They don’t just call it “O-lump-ics”, they also call it “A-limp-ics.” What to do: English is an Indian language now. No?

Posted by Amit Varma on 12 August, 2008 in Journalism | Media | Small thoughts

The Journalistic Integrity Of The Hindu

Aadisht Khanna has a piece in The New Indian Express today that praises The Hindu as a great Chinese institution:

Every other media outlet outside China supports the cause of the Dalai Lama, but only The Hindu has the journalistic integrity to expose him as a puppet of so-called Western democracy, and the wealthy beneficiary of a superstitious and feudal system.

So pronounced is The Hindu’s courage and integrity that it maintained its criticism of the vicious and savage Tibetans when they went on a violent rampage earlier this year.

It did this despite criticism from readers (those imbeciles!), its own readers editor, and a number of reactionary, pro-imperialist “human rights” organisations determined to malign China’s peaceful rise. India should be proud that it has a newspaper which is able to stand up for the viewpoint of a great and powerful nation.

I wonder if the management of the The Hindu will even realise that this is satire. Hmmm…

Posted by Amit Varma on 08 August, 2008 in India | Journalism | Media | Politics

The Bastiat Prize Shortlist For 2008…

... has been announced. The finalists are:

Swaminathan Aiyar
Tyler Cowen
A Barton Hinkle
Fraser Nelson
Ashutosh Tiwari
Daniel Weintraub

This is a formidable line-up, and I’m even more convinced now that I was an unworthy winner last year. Swami and Tyler, especially, are writers I admire immensely, and I can’t wait to read the nominated articles of all six dudes. My congratulations to all of them.

Posted by Amit Varma on 07 August, 2008 in Journalism | Media | Personal

Chodenge Or Chhodenge?

The difference a missing ‘h’ can make is enormous. This is why I read the Times of India.

In other news, young Aadisht points us to this well-intentioned (and undoubtedly wise) owl:

Reminds me of that classic CSNY song, “Broil Your Children.” Or s’thing like that.

Posted by Amit Varma on 04 August, 2008 in Journalism | Media | Miscellaneous

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