An Eyeball for an Eyeball

One of the more incongruous and mildly amusing fallouts of the Mumbai events of 26/11 is the proxy war that the respective media of India and Pakistan have felt obliged to carry out on each other. A war of half-truths and ill-informed opinions, often bordering on uncivil discourse and seldom managing to rise above the level of nationalistic rabble rousing. Maybe I have got the blinders of patriotism tightly fastened on, but it seems to me that the media on this side is winning this particular exchange and it is doing so by simply not doing too much. God knows we have our own bunch of zealots on this side of the Wagha, but they don’t seem to find too much airtime. And that is possibly what is helping us appearing to win this particular war, at least by seeming to maintain relative sobriety and balance in comparison. Of course, this temperance and poise was not readily apparent during and immediately after the events in Mumbai, where for a brief period it appeared that anyone who was in Mumbai and who had a car to drive to the studio was on TV, articulating pop patriotism and inane chatter. Page 3 seemed to have transposed itself on the small screen and things got rather desperate when the otherwise lovely but hopelessly out of her depth Shoba De was expressing her views. They were amusing, if nothing else.

The Pakistan media, or at least the portion that we have access to, seems to be doing a fine act of attacking the Indian side for being parochial, but in the process it is coming out looking second best. An accusation of parochialism carries within it the inherent risk of painting the accuser with the same broad stroke. And the quality of the discourse (again what we have access to) is bordering on the ludicrous. Case in point is this on some Pakistani TV channel [ http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hotklix.com%2F%3Fref%3Dcontent%2F152704&h=764bd9e982301d1a8bad9445408485e3 ].

Having watched it, the line between a hate mongering mullah in Rawalpindi and an informed commentator on national TV gets slightly blurred. Except maybe that the commentator speaks in English and is slightly better looking, at least on the empirical evidence available.

By putting up such characters on TV, the media, be it Pakistani or otherwise, does itself or those characters no favors. Noam Chomsky, the writer/ thinker/ philosopher, had described this best when he opined on the format of television talk shows where “if you repeat conventional thoughts, you require zero evidence, like when saying Osama Bin Laden is a bad guy, no evidence is required. However, if you say something that is true, although not a conventional truth, like the United States attacked South Vietnam, people are going to rightfully want evidence, and a whole lot of it as they should”. The format of the shows does not allow this type of evidence. He's continued that the media should let dissidents on more because the time restraint would stop them properly explaining their radical views and they “would sound like they were from Neptune”!

So while Pakistan TV is happy entertaining oddball guests from distant planets, I think we are just happy to fall back on the mildly comical and desperately floundering opinions of the Shoba Des and Farookh Sheikhs. No one should have anything against a few chuckles now and then!

'Cry, My Beloved Country'

Ever since events in Mumbai have come to their bloody conclusion, a lot has been written, a lot has been said. A lot more will be left unwritten and a lot more will be left unsaid. On what happened and on what should happen. On the venality of politicians, on the bravery of soldiers and on how the 'people' should take charge. But I am weak and feel myself unable to draw up a suitable or even an acceptably adequate response. I feel puny in the face of audacious belief…held by 12 men who came in boats believing they could change something. I search for strong ideas, something suitably tangible and audibly concrete to capture and sufficiently explain. But I am unable to. Maybe it is because I see how much has changed...and how little really has. And like the enfeebled always do, I hide behind words. It is not my intention to add to the cacophony that has already passed, but, as I always do in times of need, I seek succor in the gentle grace of poetry. The following is an extract from a piece written by someone I once knew long back. The writer will have to remain unnamed:

‘The sun arises- a disk of startling light,
Comforting darkness flees in hasty flight.
And now exposed lies this barren land,
It waits in fear for the rapists’ hand.

And soon enough starts the bloody rape,
By shadows unseen- no form, no shape.
A child killed there- another killed here,
The rape is on- I shed a tear.

The bombs blast- the flow of blood,
A trickle, a murmur, now a roaring flood.
The man who was killed on this unnamed road,
Was he carrying belief or duty’s heavy load?’