Don't trust the Indian Media!

Ice, Fire, Smoke and Water

2009-12-08T16:30:00.004+05:30

Makes no sense, does it? Nor did the massive amount of rumours concerning the leading business daily, but then again as a friend of mine over there told me, “something must be up, otherwise why would we be hearing all this.” Here is the thing, there are ways of keeping rumours in check, very good ways, namely not telling too many people and when things start to spread you could clamp down on the rumours. From one end, the palliative side at least, we have heard a flat-out denial. But from the other end, nothing at all, no denials, no messages, nothing. The more radio silence there is (like the Japanese fleet that attacked Pearl Harbour) the more phone calls others have to field. And the more suspicion is aroused (ref: Tiger Woods).
It would be a bit difficult to deny that the television channel has been a tad disappointing. It is also by now no secret that people at the very top want the horses out and models in, the opposite of Tiger Woods’ philosophy of women (other than the Jamie Jungers chick, but she does look a bit like his almost ex-wife) and that isn’t really surprising. It is also by now no secret that the ‘integrated newsroom’ concept has been a colossal failure, but then again how did they expect to maintain an integrated newsroom with differential salaries. Seems a bit too much like ‘want Cake, for free, will eat too’. Ugsters on the telly minus the reporters, something had to give, no?
Such is life. On another note, one heck of a lot of carbon is being spent on sending reporters to Copenhagen (at last count, UndieTV is sending at least four people) but some parts of the media have been giving the event the coverage it deserves from India’s perspective rather than only buying into what the West wants. I’m no environmental guru, but any agreement that India agrees to must balance India’s developmental needs along with environmental concerns. Above all else, the government should instead of ramming down environmentalism down people’s throats teach them a bit about the problems – get the guys who write the Hindi soap operas to incorporate green messages maybe.
And then there is the ‘Paid News’ brouhaha. Usually most people specify what is an advertorial in print, and people have used the paid news club to batter BCCL again, and if you read the first two paras, they have their own problems (EDIT: though the Maharashtra Times did carry the same Chavan electoral advert). The funniest however was UndieTV which did a few shows, but it would have been better if they did some soul-searching themselves. A good half (well, estimates of over 60 per cent usually) the content on Undie Profit is paid for by advertisers. In fact, every business TV channel is guilty of this in India, and there is nary an indication of this before, during or after the show.
There will very few posts until the end of next week though as I’m caught up in a horrible mixture of work, wedding season (including travel to Lucknow), Single Malts and a bad cold. Well, there has been far too little single malt, but you get the picture.

PS: Oh, and I must thank Joji and Saad for giving all us twitter users a magnificently entertaining time yesterday evening. Yes, it got a bit out of hand, but that was primarily because Chetan Bhagat was finally exposed as the arrogant twat that he is. Surprising that bad authors can be so arrogant! Actually, wait a second....

Aag Ka Chirag

2009-12-04T17:34:00.000+05:30

I know the rumour, I know that I am extremely close to the person named in the rumour, but I honestly have no friggin' clue right now.

Everyone else is an unwashed dog!

2009-11-29T01:59:00.004+05:30

Despite the fact that the New York Times syndication service is subscribed to by several large newspapers in India, including Mint, I doubt this article will ever see the printed page in India. The relevant passage is highlighted below.

“Some very simple practices that you often take for granted, such as being ethical in day to day situations, or believing in the rule of law in everyday behavior, are surprisingly absent in many situations,” said Raju Narisetti, who was born in Hyderabad and returned to India in 2006 to found a business newspaper called Mint, which is now the country’s second-biggest business paper by readership.
He said he left earlier than he expected because of a “troubling nexus” of business, politics and publishing that he called “draining on body and soul.” He returned to the United States this year to join The Washington Post.

All I can say is - Ouch! But then again, why am I not surprised. Expect a lot of bitching about Raju emanating from KG Marg very shortly.

Due thanks to Mr AR! And the post headline is from an 'anonymous' commenter.

Tuesday Tunes

2009-11-24T16:15:00.002+05:30

A senior Editor who was exhorting me to change jobs recently told me something strange, “More people read your blog than read you.” Of course I defended myself vainly, but there was a slight iota of truth about that. My claim to media notoriety is not through halfway-decent stories but through halfway-shitty blog which is usually badly written, almost always an un-subbed first draft but somehow quite a few people like it. So much so that at a wedding reception last night, someone commented how my post frequency has come down. I mean this is not a blog being written by a high-class escort girl, so sometimes the blog’s popularity seriously befuddles me occasionally. Times like right now, downtime between stories and meetings and before I open my Amazon Kindle review unit to come face-to-face with Jeff Bezos’ idea of the future of the media.

Maybe I need to do a big-ass story again, though it has only been a couple of months. And the urgency to do giganormous epics of government failings or corporate skullduggery isn’t as urgent as that of having regular sex. Honestly, I would rather drive a fast car right now and then drown in a barrel of 17-year old Malt. You know that the smaller A-roads are absolutely wonderful in the Scottish Highlands. I’m sorry but I’m feeling bored and this is what I would rather be doing right now than hearing my fingers not-so-gentle maul my HP keyboard.

Come to think of it I do type extremely loudly.

Sorry, but I genuinely feeling extremely bored right now, I have finished reading all the webcomics I follow and short of suddenly attempting to finish all the unread posts over on my RSS reader – which I can’t because accessing Fleshbot in office is a total ‘No-No’ and there is only so much of gadgets and electronics I can take (no, really) before I want to take a soldering iron to my head. And our kindly office IT admins have banned YouTube in office, not that the craptastic internet connention they have here could serve up too many pointless videos of people trying to be Jedi’s anyway. There is something wrong with the world when your home connection is faster than the office connection.

Anyway, I’m close to expending 400 words on this post. If I was in a daily I would consider my job done and go home, and if I had a box 360 I would play some Forza 3. But nope, the lure of big-ass story is strong!

Even though, there is a special joy in staying home on a working day.

PS: In response to a couple of 'friends' - I am not, repeat not, a high-class escort. I am pretty sure that they have a lot more fun than I do, and I am not going to be one to judge, but if someone (anyone) was to pay to have sex with me, they would need to be brain-dead, blind coot. Then again, if you have trawled the internet as long as I have you will know that you can find people with any sort of perversion online. Even so...

PPS: It isn't as if I don't 'believe' in what I write, other than the occasional load of boredom and being stuck in something patently unenjoyable, I genuinely have fun on the job most of the time. Which is why I've not been a 'bouncer'.

Results

2009-11-23T15:53:00.001+05:30

I know people will forget about it in the noise about the ‘leak’ of the Liberhan Report, henceforth known as the Liberhan Leak which got Advani more agitated than he has been in years. In fact, it made the BJP forget that they had given in to the demands of a bunch of environment destroying Mafiosi in Karnataka. And are depending on the Congress to strike back at them. But the results of the second round of the Indian Readership Survey came out earlier today.
Simple conclusion, HT has been trashed by ToI in Delhi on the one survey where usually they weren’t trashed. This means that the number of adverts offering ‘Russians, Afghani’s and Air-Hostesses’ in HT will only increase. But then again after the collective amnesia that happened when it came to Manu Sharma, I’m genuinely not surprised. In fact, the paper that surprises me is Mail Today. I have no idea of their readership numbers, but they do tend to have a couple of interesting stories, in fact they were the only paper that kept up on Manu Sharma from the time he was given parole. Even NDTV which feigned moral outrage once Manu was caught clubbing didn’t seem to care. Or given that much of that network sits in ivory towers, never knew what was going on to care.
That brings me to a rather interesting trend which is in place in some television channels – that of ‘paid’ internships. I find the concept slightly bizarre, and can’t quite explain it. The amount of money involved is usually minimal, but someone it seems to go against the concept of internship. This isn’t a course, or even an excuse of a course, and much like air-hostess training institutes, many media colleges have also gone AWOL. But paid internships? I find the concept to out of whack that I can’t even write what I’m thinking right now. Or maybe I’m rushing through because I have the shits.
A couple of things, there is no need for me to react to attacks by misguided sexually frustrated followers of a demented twit. Enough said. But before you accuse me of getting on a another bandwagon, imagine you are Sachin Tendulkar, and make a lot of money from endorsements, would you have said anything other than what you said? That said, I would like to see how Sunny Gavaskar reacts now that he has been anointed a savior of Marathi’s by the senile one.

Weeks End

2009-11-20T19:39:00.003+05:30

Short, quick post. I had an interesting morning meeting today with an independent MP who dabbles a bit in the media. The money quote, "A channel can break even, they can spend a lot of money for eyeballs, but it takes a special kind of genius to lose 200 crores quarter after quarter and still stay in business." Of course, this was interspersed in between comments about the media's lack of credibility, but that was like a preacher talking to the choir.
But I will write a post tomorrow about more interesting things, but this weekend I really do plan to watch Liefenstahl's Triumph of the Wills, one of the most revolutionary movies of all time but also a masterpiece of propaganda. Then again, the Congress does not need to pay for propaganda here.

Passion

2009-11-13T12:37:00.003+05:30

Honestly, there are times that I wish I can piss people off to the extent that they write angry yet erudite mails explaining their anger to me. Usually all I get are some silly comments (and some nice ones too) but while my articles have generated a lot of anger in some readers, usually people in PR, I've never seen such a passionate letter. And a bloody good one too!
And there is a very interesting report out by ICICI Securities on the state of teh Indian Media, including the televised news media. Which will not make for good reading for the folks at ET Now. I can't post it because of copyright issues, but try and get your hands on it.

Remembrance Day

2009-11-11T13:28:00.005+05:30

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, World war 1, 'The Great War' came to an end. Every year since, most former British and Britain itself colonies which lost their young men on the battlefields of Europe, and subsequently in battlefields across the world in World War 2 have always marked this day as 'Remembrance Day'. I say 'most' former British colonies because there is one former colony that in a perverse display on supposed anti-imperialism, which is the way I can possibly excuse it does not give this day the honour it deserves. That colony was the erstwhile 'Jewel in the Crown', a former colony that is yet to live up to its potential 62 years after it stopped being ruled from Westminister. That colony is India.
Four years ago, a very close friend who happens to be a prominent anchor on TV and a war-buff dragged me to the graveyards at Monte Cassino. This monastery town a hundred clicks or so south of Rome was the site of one of the most ferocious battles of the Italian campaign as the resolute Nazi and Facist defenders of Rome. Hundreds of young Indian men died. On a field in Italy. In 1943. Fighting for a foreign King. The names are unmistakably South Asian on the memorials. I went to Monte Casino unwillingly, I returned chastened and respectful.
The sad thing is that while we do remember the dead of World War 1 in one of the nicest war memorials anywhere in the world - India Gate - many people and children forget this fact. That on the Somme and Gallipoli, 93 years ago (1916 was the first battle of the Somme, Gallipoli was 1915 if I remember correctly) thousands of Indians died. But we forget even the dead of our recent wars - Kargil for example. And some wars we choose to forget ever existed - 1962. Weirdly enough the Chinese do have a point, we as a collective have wiped out that war from our collective memory and only when China rumbles about Arunachal Pradesh do some remember.
I am no fan of war, yes like many other people I am fascinated by the technology of military-industrial complex, because much of this tech, such as the internet itself, will have some civilian application someday. I am just disgusted at the ability of our forgetfulness. There might be a billion of us today, but we should always remember the millions who died so that we could be here. I am not being a right-wing lackey, I am not being a nationalist, I am just being a respectful citizen and child of India.
And keep in mind, while your civics and history textbooks would like you to think that it was Mahatma Gandhi's non-violence movement that won us freedom, do not forget the impact of either the devastated British economy or the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny - a mutiny which showed the British that they had lost control of the only thing that had made the empire possible - The Indian military. That, and not 1942, was the final nail in the Empire's coffin.
Remember those who died for you and salute them.

PS: I am not saying that we should also observe 11th November as 'Remembrance Day', but any day - 16th December perhaps, the day the 1971 war ended. If we mark the birth and death anniversaries of our political leaders who led us astray, why can't we mark one day for the millions who fought for us? Of course, the TV channels today will be talking about the impending deluge in Mumbai, or why Sheila Dixit felt it fit to let a cold-blooded murderer out on parole. That said, why was Manu Sharma out of parole? And Manu, we are not biased. You ARE a murderer, you murdered a girl because you wanted a drink or wanted to get laid. You almost got away with it, and we didn't let you. So rot in jail.

Uncle M pulls a fast one

2009-11-10T18:10:00.001+05:30

You have to love Uncle M. Just because he could not convince Google to fork over more bribe money like they did with MySpace, he wants his newspapers to stop being indexed on Google. Now, I don’t quite buy into Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ philosophy. Any organization where people can have the food that Google offers along with unlimited Red Bull has to be doing something evil. I mean, I’m convinced Uncle M is fearful of them as The Emperor was of Luke, only this is a double-headed Luke. OK, this is going nowhere is it?
The problem is that Uncle M is treated as a God by several media moguls in India, even though he cannot understand why FDI isn’t allowed in newspapers. The future of the net and how content will be distributed online is an area where Indian media groups are hopelessly behind the West and they don’t have a frikkin’ clue either. The argument is not a easy one, there is a serious issue of ‘content stealing’ that happens in India. Citizen Journalism, other than the occasional lucky video is nothing more than wild opinions masquerading as journalism, or is that Times NOW? Most ‘Citizen Journalism’ is nothing more than second or third hand reporting. Anyone who followed Twitter during the events of last November in Mumbai would know that.
Listen I am not defending traditional journalism, I still maintain that most journalists in India are either dumb or lazy, sometimes a horrible mix of the two. I can’t honestly say that I do not fit into either category, even though chances are another editor will make a third category for people like me – ‘fat’. Back to the point, there have been far too few discussions on how the internet will change journalism in India. Do I know? Nope, I have no clue, but I can pretty much assure you that journalism will be drastically different even by the time my father retires (if he does), let alone ten years time.
I don’t know if I want to poll blog readers for opinions, because I’m afraid much of it as usual will be vitriol directed towards me. And I will give people more and more reason to hate me even more soon enough. Alongside my image of a seriously mentally disturbed potential psycho-killer, I am quite hatable! As for being a 'jealous hater', yes, I do not like certain people, but 'jealousy' is an attribute that I don't think I have unless it concerns women.
And for the record, why on earth would I want to suck up to (an evidently suit-hating) Suku? And the first comment on the last post mentioned, I genuinely enjoy where I currently work because I get to do things I love doing, I possibly have more fun on the job than any peer of mine. Sure, I’ve never worked for the money, but I can run a blog like this. Why would I want a strait-jacketed job which I would want to leave at the first opportunity I got to leave. I believe the secret to good journalism is a happy journalist. You might or might not agree with me, but I don’t give a flying eff!

Exodus

2009-11-09T16:49:00.001+05:30

Will someone please explain what the heck is going on in The Economic Times? For those of you not aware, in the past two weeks there has been an exodus of sorts from the country’s largest business newspaper. And the exodus is limited to overpaid editors but some of the papers best reporters, who would rather commit what some of us consider career suicide rather than continue in ET. I can see the grin on Sukumar’s face!
By career suicide, I mean FE – I know some of the guys joining FE are loyalists of the new FE Editor MK Venu, but honestly that paper only exists for the tender adverts, it is not bad or anything but ask yourself (if you are not in PR or in the Indian Express group) when was the last time you read FE for a sustained period of time. I just about manage to glance through it in office. That said, I wish the new team in FE all the best towards achieving the ‘high profile’ that Shekhar Gupta wants, but Mint won the ‘profile’ wars long ago. That said, I just wonder how many people are ‘parking’ themselves to break the ridiculous and anti-employee ‘no-poaching’ pact between BCCl and HTMedia.
Some of the seeds of chaos were sown by the concept of an integrated newsroom but differential pay structures for print and TV. My reporter friends in ET have expressed their displeasure with this over and over and they were just waiting for an uptick in hiring to jump ship. But I laughed this away, a couple of people of people here and there, the scale of this desertion is mind-boggling. But then again, I have to admit a couple of Editors I have worked with saw this coming, along with the plunging ratings – which isn’t surprising when they send a vapid but pretty face to interview the CEO of a company that Robert Noyce founded.
Admittedly the business news space is more robust than general news, but the attendant chaos is limited to the second floor of 7, BSZ Marg and not the third floor. Puzzling, or maybe because ToI staffers aren’t jealous of Times NOW staffers as ET staffers seem to be of ET NOW staffers. Maybe people in ToI just take a look at Arnab’s zeal for war with China and/or Pakistan and thank their lucky stars!
Oh yes, and an apology for not writing over the past few days, I’ve acquired a new Editor and he has been flogging this slightly thinner reporter. And I’ve been enjoying myself quite a bit at work.

On another note.

2009-10-29T15:42:00.004+05:30

I just love this line.

At their heart, most pseudonymous identities are collaborations between the author, who provides the outline of a persona, and the audience, which fills in the blanks. The result is a sort of virtual superhero, an oracle more accurate than any mortal could hope to be. Compared to the elusive mastermind of the collective imagination, the real author inevitably disappoints.

From this month’s Wired.

Back to regular programming now. Which over here usually means clearing up masses of spam comments placed by guys who run Search Engine Optimisation firms. Other than that what news? Well, some Undies have been left out to dry as Undie is getting rid of Imagine – which should actually be known as the Sameer Nair family show (with Rakhi Sawant on the side). With Turner exiting Real, effectively the second flop channel after Peter and Indrani Mukerjea’s INX whatever, they’ve decided to get into used Undies. Not that I watch much of what are termed as General Entertainment Channels, though I must admit I did see a bit of Rakhi’s show and I will watch bits and pieces of ‘Who wants to be beaten up by an abusive husband?’ where Rahul Mahajan fritters away whatever little is left of his father’s legacy.
But good for him, everybody has the right to make money. And abuse substances. Even Andre Agassi. Listen the guy did drugs at a low-ebb of his life and I don’t know why the entire contrite moral brigade – hypocrites that they are – are condemning him. I actually found myself agreeing with Rick Reilly’s assessment of Agassi on his blog and I will buy the book. I liked Andre Agassi as a kid, his was a player with heart and not like a robot – both the one Agassi played against and the other one today. The robots are good but dull. And Agassi is the one that married Steffi Graf!
In other news, well it seems that the media’s horrible tradition of personal life destruction continues. And we stick with the same network, I’m not surprised at marriages breaking up and the fascination for older people, but the cast involved sometimes baffles me. To take a guess, there is a reason why some people call the evening prime time talking-head shows on NDTV (other than the 9PM news itself) the ‘boyfriend’ shows. I won’t be a hypocrite and pass comments on the lack of stability in people’s lives, but the sooner that both media bosses and HR inside the companies realize that, particularly their ace reporters/anchors, in both print and television do not have healthy and/or steady personal lives, that is a problem. This is worse than alcohol, well and in many cases it is pretty much responsible for alcohol abuse.
People can call journalists names, accuse us of biases and you know what, we all have biases. I try my utmost to not let my opinion of something affect something I’m working on, but any journalist, even the dumbest ones would be lying if they said that their biases did not impact them. The fact that some of us have been brought up the way we have comes through in the way we write or present. The fact remains that this is a job, and if you are good at what you do, and this is the sad part, you are usually asked to do more than you can handle simply because you are good.
The fact is that most journalists in most organizations would be what club football calls squad players, average for lack of a better word. If you are ‘an International’, and sorry for the football analogies here, you life is destined to be a horrible one. Yes, you will enjoy great professional success, meeting some really important people and your phone-book will bulge, or in some cases your mobile is so full of numbers that it pretty much stops functioning properly. It is a great feeling believe me, but man that completely screws up your sense of priorities and in many cases your life, because above all else it gives you a tremendously inflated opinion of yourself and sometimes you just can’t see clearly of who does matter. This is not about cracking a sale or becoming a General Manager, you really have access to power.
I should know, believe me. Thankfully, most of those closest to me in this profession, other than one notorious hold-out have managed to piece together their lives. Somewhat. But, honestly unless some action is taken, and taken soon things will only get worse. And the action should start from an organisation that needs it more than any other. The one in a disused cinema hall.

2009-10-23T16:16:00.003+05:30

So who would you rather win tonight? The soul cricketers from T&T or the cricket machines from NSW. I’m not biased against the Aussies, I think their ruthless efficiency and Simon Katich’s captaincy has to be learnt from. New South Wales is the winningest domestic team of all time and has always been the heart of Australian cricket. But I really do want Trinidad and Tobago to win. This has possibly been at the same time, the most interesting and most pointless cricket tournament of all time. Then again, it also proved that the IPL is a bit a blunderbuss tournament, and the sight of Lalit Modi waving the Trinidadian flag was quite a bizarre one.
Enough cricket, and for that matter enough sport for now. Some people would gleefully be looking at yesterday’s election results and feeling rather pleased with themselves. Other than ordinary Maharashtrians (and Bhupinder Hooda) I’m sure. The Maharashtrian voter might have rejected the Shiv Sena, but the fact remains that one of the most inept state governments in India outside the Communist ruled states has been re-elected.
Unlike Bengali’s who had a clear death-wish for their state (and still do, by backing the Whacky Mammy!), Maharashtrians I guess had to choose between the Devil and Deep Blue Sea, pardon the cliché. Some voters struck Faustian deals and gave Raj Thackeray quite a few seats, but I sincerely hope that one of India’s great states finally gets good government with good policies. And not suffer five more years of suicides and power-blackouts and what not. I’m not saying that the SS-BJP combine should have come to power in Maharashtra, they had no clear policies in place and did not deserve power. But, Maharashtrians just had to look at the other end of NH-6 to see what years of constant power does! Change if it must happen, has to start now and not a few months before the election and to give credit to Raj Thackeray, he did (aided by the Hindi channels in particular – who demonized him to the extent that he became the victim) build an organization.
OK, another weekend has come about and I’ve had a rather fruitful week I must admit. I’m feeling hungry right now, so I am leaving with a little-wittle link to a rather interesting blog. I have no idea who runs it, too much detail for a journalist, I think it is a money man of some sort. But extremely interesting nonetheless. Do read it.
Or you could read this. Only if you want. Don’t blame me, I warned you.
Have a great weekend.

And today...

2009-10-19T17:11:00.002+05:30

The funny thing was the sniggering I heard from some journalists when they heard about America’s ‘Balloon Boy’ story. How could, they claim, the American media be taken up by something so patently untrue and then harp on it for hours on end? Evidently they don’t either watch or read what passes for news in this country, though that said, India TV and IBN 7 do take some beating for their alien abduction stuff. Thankfully, we were not subjected to too much ‘Balloon Boy’ in India but the hype did ensure that our channels forgot the fact that there is a low-intensity civil war going on in parts of the country. Then again, between the Americans, us and the British, you wonder who is plumbing the depths of trenches the deepest.
This is a country where a large percentage of the population scrapes by at under a dollar a day, but the gossip pages see fit to show pictures of Delhi’s money-swirling card parties – ‘Ohhh! look at my black money’. OK, I won't be too much of a hipocrite, I also played some cards but I lost money. For the cause of entertainment. So there! Before angry commentors pour scorn on my stupidity/hipocrisy/ass-licking whatever. generally, for me personally this was a arather subdued Diwali as my brother wasn't around, being in a phoren-land. And after my adventures with an old girlfriend, whom we shall call Gin and Tonic on Friday, I really couldn't drink that much the rest of the weekend without feeling sick. Or possibly that was from eating the expired foods that get packed up into Diwali gift-packs. Or breathing the fumes from poisonous Chinese firecrackers.
The only thing that was good this weekend was the Trinidad and Tobago T20 team. Man, they rock!

Happy Diwali

2009-10-16T18:52:00.003+05:30

Yes, the festival has become crass, at least in the richer parts of Delhi - a celebration of money and sulphur dioxide, even though I have to admit I do like to blow up a few (just a few) crackers every year, but, say what you will, it one of those things that just so Indian. Like poverty and rampant police brutality. OK, enough of the depressing tone, but if you do make some money while gambling this Diwali, or even if you don't please do give some money or some time to those less fortunate. I've not become a softy, and nor will I advocate social causes like some a businessman who is building the world's most extravagant mansion. I'm just saying Happy Diwali. Enjoy it and keep the inhalers close by!

Down, down, down...

2009-10-15T19:11:00.003+05:30

Well, circulation figures are down and unlike the constantly changing readership numbers, circulation numbers are slightly better audited. But 'slightly better' means what it does, these numbers do not include 'free' copies, but newspaper companies have for a long time managed to pass off free copies as paid copies, usually by discounting them to the extent that they became free. Things like the papers distributed at the airport - something that has ended, at least in Delhi thanks to a combination of high newsprint prices and GMR-DIAL's greed.
That said, the first point is possibly the biggest reason for the large drop in circulation for most papers - notice teh sudden absence of schemes like free shoes or what not along with papers. So the drop in circulation must also have led to a decline in the sale of cheap Reebok shoes - must check on that one. And in a weird sort of way, a decline in circulation is a good thing for everyone - prices of raddi paper completely diverged from each other as more and more newspapers flooded the market. The loss of pages also meant fewer crap stories got printed, not that crap stories have stopped in any which way but they're fewer of them. The downside is that the ads that promise clean male-to-male massages have become more prominent - sometimes I wonder if HT and ToI will survive without those ads? eriously, even the sex sites don't have such brazen adverts. Talk about 'family' newspapers.
Anyway, back to the point, even though things are picking up and there are signs of people movement all over again, I think the high-water mark was reached last year and subsequent floods will never be the same.

Something black in the lentils

2009-10-14T19:07:00.003+05:30

We live in India, every second thing that happens has a degree of shadiness in it. But, this dude takes shadiness to the next level - all we know is that he is a dedicated Congressiya and a chela of Kamal Nath by his own admission and owns unspecified patents and might not even say the truth - his claim of Mongolian companies seems highly shady (Wikipedia is a wonderful thing - click on - ). I'm not going to a journalistic exercise, not even an armchair one, but some of the stuff he says sounds incredulous and a spin on existing technology - next generation networks with internet based access? That sounds like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to me. Spending Rs 45,000 crore to build a chip fab in Rajasthan, a state apparently with loads and loads of water. Don't you just love it when people expose themselves publicly?
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Since I'm not exactly Mr Human Rights, may I suggest a quick-fire solution to Delhi's driving woes. Humiliate the city's worst drivers. People caught doing the stupidest things - such as driving on the wrong side of the road to save a 100 meter drive, not using indicators, generally driving like a complete moron and all Bajaj Chetak owners should be given a large 20-point sticker that simply says Main Chu*iya Hoon. No need for fines or anything like that. That might not stop blueline and RTV drivers driving like complete dicks but it will be start.
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And while I understand that Sasha Baron Cohen's new movie Bruno is an amazing social satire and makes people face their prejudices, it did mentally scar me. The guy has some balls (literally - no seriously, there is a lot of cock and balls in this movie) but I'm going to have nightmares for a few months and will willingly run into the arms of Mr Wand Mr Chivas, old friends of mine I had forgotten for a while.

You kidding me?

2009-10-12T20:28:00.003+05:30

For f***'s sake there are people dying in Naxal attacks, fighting militants and from sheer poverty and this takes up two columns in the national pages. So I guess the serious stuff goes to 'Crest' and the rest of the paper suffers. I don't know whats worse, silly stories about Twitter in news-magazines and supplements that have suddenly woken up or this. God help us!
So, I watched this to cheer up.

Back to being a Cynical B

2009-10-12T14:59:00.005+05:30

You don’t suppose the Nobel Committee will award the Ambani brothers the Nobel Peace Prize next year, in case they just decide to kiss and make up. Giving blow-jobs to the brothers on the air-waves/in print will become so much easier then. Not that it is particularly difficult right now. Heck, maybe the ‘Holy Calf’ should be given a Nobel Peace Prize for ‘cuddling’, can you possibly find a more peaceful activity than ‘cuddling’? Not that I can think of, even though I would rather cuddle a naked woman. Talking of naked women, I take this website to show evidence either of Darwin’s theory at work or hormones in our food – (it’s got most Playmates of the Month from 1958-2008, so its quite unsafe for work, but… so is listening to Pearl Jam’s Backspacer at volume - even though it is a kick-ass album).
Does anyone else have my peculiar Wikipedia fascination? Not that I'm fascinated by Wikipedia, but where I can spend hours just randomly surfing Wikipedia finding out bizarre things - yesterday I spent hours reading how whales evolved (and related articles, some having nothing to do with anything in general). Don't ask me why or even how I got there. Maybe the copious amounts of Kingfisher Blue I had drunk while Veeru and Dinesh Kartik were batting had something to do with it. But, despite the fact that I support Delhi - no I am not going to fall prey to parochialism and support KR - methinks they're missing AB deVilliers. But it is always good to get in a few games at Feroze Shah Kotla.
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A couple of answers to the last post, I have no idea where my friends mom is, I don't even know if she is alive. Sure, it won't be that difficult to find out, I'll have reactivate some contacts, maybe even some I would rather not, but it can be done I guess. Dealing with death is never easy, no matter what age you you have to stare it in the face. I guess I had to deal with it so up close and personal when I was young that I lost a bit of my, I won't call it innocence, but, I lost something.
Both those times I never attended the funerals, the first one I attended was a few weeks after I finished my Class XII boards when another school friend died in Uphaar fire. I won't forget the chaos and the horror of a mass funeral. It isn't as if I had not seen death close up otherwise, as a kid on a drive back from Chittorgarh to Udaipur we saw an accident scene, which let me assure you wasn't pretty. But then again, that wasn't someone close to me. Maybe, all these things helped me acquire that crazy detatched demeanour they say journalists need, call it cynical or whatever, it has to come from experience. Which is why I could pull off assignments like this without getting caught up in the human tragedy of it all, and avoid, for better or for worse, bleeding heart syndrome.
Which is why I cannot become a Naxal apologist like Arundhati Roy. That said, seeing how the sugar lobby has bled Maharashtra dry and the immense poverty in some parts of the state. Weirdly enough, in my 16-odd months as a reporter in Bombay I saw more of interior Maharashtra than I should have - and that is where my antipathy towards Indica's comes from. Yes, there is a dichotomy in India (two India's, maybe not), the rich, even some of the apologists have never seen how poor the dispossed actually are and what the problems really are.
But the fact remains, violence doesn't solve anything - as the Communists have shown in West Bengal - the oppressed can become the oppresser within a generation. And one worse than the previous oppressor ever was. There are solutions to these problems - it is not as if the Naxals are 'anti-development' as some insane NGO's would have you believe. I've seen how ham-handed rehabilitation programs for the dispossed have been in Orissa. Heck, a majority of the Naxal's are nothing more than sexually-depraved extortion racketeers! Some more equal than others.
There are no attempts at trust building by successive governments in the state and centre. As well-meaning the 'Holy Calf' really is, and I won't be a cynic and say that he is a hipocritical bastard whose brother-in-law spends tens of thousands on drinks for him at Delhi's better bars. Because that leads to the rhetorical question - how many 'cuddles' could a bottle of Chivas buy?
OK, I take this post as a nother example of my tremendous ability of 'flow of consciousness' writing with no real aim in sight. But it is so much more fun that structured pieces about fat and balding farts! And then again, it is just the start of 'Swag' week. Yay!

Death

2009-10-09T19:26:00.001+05:30

This is a slightly personal post, it might make no sense to anyone, in fact there is only one person I could talk to about this. But writing out things is easier for me at times.
Last night I went to a cocktail reception somewhere in Central Delhi. Not bizarre in itself, other than the fact that I’ve severely cut down my alcohol intake. But big deal, the occasional ‘low-sugar’ Mojito never hurt anyone. Anyway, when I drove down I noticed something peculiar, I knew the lane where the party was happening very well.
A long, long time ago I had a friend who we’ll call A, who used to stay on that lane. Me and another friend of mine, we’ll re-introduce Doc here, used to go over to A’s house quite often. To do what kids did back then. Play video games – Double Dragon, Super Mario; watch cartoons on VHS – classic Transformers and Thundercats is what I can remember right now. Actually quite too many cartoons. These in the days before mobile phones which used to make my paranoid mother even more paranoid than usual when I didn’t land up home with the school bus.
Long story short, during the Class VIII summer holidays when I was summarily packed off to Calcutta to twiddle my thumbs and experiment with cigarettes, A died. I didn’t even know until I came back and called Doc. When A’s mom, who was an extremely sweet lady came to school on the first day, I remember crying and running away and then I never bothered to keep in touch. I don’t know why. I guess I tried to rationalize it – I was 13 at the time. I had barely experienced death, let alone death of someone close to you, someone your age and not some fogey.
Death is a funny thing at any age but when you face the concept in your face when you’re thirteen it does change your thinking in a way I guess. I never thought about it until someone accused me of having a casual attitude towards death. Firstly, I could not get what having a ‘serious’ attitude to death is, but I am horribly bad at comforting people. Because, while A died in the summer holidays, four months later just before the last exam of the second-term exams, Maths I think it was, the class heard that we had lost N, another classmate. Two deaths of guys who sat close to you when you’re 13 or 14? That screws your mind up rather bad.
It also taught me a couple of lessons, the first is to respect electricity and the second was never to want to kill myself. I’ve done plenty of stupid things, and inadvertently tried to kill myself more than once, coming very close to doing so in a car. But, inadvertently mind you. No matter how high I’ve been, or how sad, and believe me I’ve felt horribly sorry for myself every so often, I’ve never tried to slash my wrists or fill myself with Phenyl. If anything, as much as I have screwed up my life, at a level I have to live a full life, to the best of my ability because someone else could not.
And I have to go meet A’s mother sometime. I don’t know what I’ll do or say, but I can’t keep running away for ever. Even from something you would rather forget. Heck, I tell people all the time to suck it on and deal with it. Maybe I should do that too.

You know...

2009-10-09T16:18:00.005+05:30

I'm not so sure this is a collective, 'What were you thinking?' moment but a 'What were you smoking?' moment. I mean seriously? The Big O? The Nobel Peace Prize? I mean, I can say this funnily, but by that twisted logic, the 'Holy Calf' has more rights on an award that they never gave the world's most famous pacifist. A man, whose visage featured on lots of pieces of paper I lost night. Maybe they just wanted to resurrect the prise after they awarded it to a guy who made a great powerpoint and some other bearded guy. But anyway, who are we to question the Nobel Prize Committee. I mean, I'm a guy who bleeds cash while playing cards. Oh well...

I've been working on some pretty interesting stuff and the last few days I've been forced to do a lot of number crunching - probably explains why my card game has gone down the tube, my brain is math-ed out. Playing with numbers always opens your mind to some really interesting facts and figures. You know, sometimes you miss out on that when you start paying too much attention to the gory details of media and political gossip, such as 'Whose Gay?' (the gossip, if it were to be made public might surprise some of you).

In other news, EchTee has something called a 'Leadership Summit'. And this year they've decided to bring over the Dumb and Dumber act - George W.Bush (who will speak about non-alcoholic beer) and Nawaz Sharif (who will speak on why Mush and Zardari are evil). And you thought bringing Mush was bad, this is going to be a security disaster. It is bad enough that the capital is swarming with Naxal apoplogists (you can read all about it in the Naxal's paper - 'Jihad and Maoism Today'), but this might bring out the mad-fringe-leftie firepower. Just thinking.

Hoping to play a bit of cards in the next couple of days as I thrown myself wontonly into the hands of money-fuelled excess. I need a drink. But first, I'm hungry.

Hmmm...

2009-10-08T18:23:00.002+05:30

Minister L'Twitter condemned the attacks on Kabul today. But what else could you expect from the Taliban? Then again, a few weeks ago, L'Twitter's boss said that urged a 'settlement' with the 'good' Taliban. Sigh!
PS: Is it legal to want to kill someone because their ring-tone bugs you? Just asking. should go home and frag some aliens on the console, I'm building up dangerous levels of mad rage. And now I should get back to work.

News!

2009-10-07T16:18:00.007+05:30

A desi-born Tam Bram, educated in the good state of Gujarat is one of the winners of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (The Nobel Committee couldn't find his picture????). In the next few days, the media will claim him as our own, possibly the higher-caste hating politicians in TN will swallow pride and also claim him as their own. And in the process we'll forget about Pakistan and China (the only two countries Anchor Man is interested in declaring war on), the Maoists, the Champions Trophy and maybe even the awesome fraternal battle. Even though I doubt we will ever forget the last.
I guess we in the media feel a misplaced sense of patriotism and nationalism when it comes to anything 'Indian' or someone with even an iota of 'Indian-ness' (as long as they're not white, if you believe the desi media, all white people want to do, especially in Australia, is to beat Indians up*), it sometimes feels like "OMG, OMG, OMG" reporting. I'm not saying don't and the last thing I am is a hater, I just fail to make sense of of the brouhaha that follows. More so, because most of the people perpetuating the brouhaha seem to think exactly like me and wear their national pride on their sleeve, but exactly thump their breasts about it. But then again, sometimes I wonder if journalists really think while they're on the job...
In another piece of news, and this was just waiting to happen, the quaitting part at least. ST has quit Soiled Undie Profit and joined SR. I don't get the logic of the what and why, but this has happened. And another popular one doing the rounds nowadays is that Undie spoke to a couple of guys who sold an illusion to some Japanese company (the story is actually horribly old but has been recently discovered by some bloggers). That is old news, because as some of us know (yes, yes, I don't write everything nowadays I'm too lazy and this isn't really 'profitable' y'know) there was some issues regarding valuations. Now the guys who were being spoken to understood that the valuation demanded was an illusory one, since they're masters of the game, laughed at the demands and left. Not that the company isn't for sale (or so we har), but honestly, it would be cheaper to start a new TV channel nowadays instead of inheriting a crazy high-cost structure.
PS: In case you goils were wondering why you should not marry a Bong guy. Wonder no more, a bit boring in parts, but none the less.
PPS: This has to be best photograph I have ever seen. Well, OK I'm exaggerating, but anyhoo...
*Unless your name happens to be Brett Lee when all you want to do is act in Bollywood movies

Accha...

2009-10-06T18:34:00.002+05:30

Work never ebbs and flows, it comes in deluges and drowns you or you get singed by the drought. The former is usually when your boss loves you and the latter is usually due to a lack of love, or because you are a blithering idiot. Sometimes I think I fall into the latter part of the latter category, but then again sometimes I wonder if the Polar ice-caps have already melted and India is inundated with Bangladeshis and me by work.
We all know how ‘internet’ friendly our government has been of late, you know thanks to Minister de l’Twitter and all. But then you come across this flaming piece of internet junk. And realize to your horror that you’re not on the Wayback Machine. Sometimes I wonder if 'e-governance' has become just another buzzword that management consultants have taught our bereaucrats and politicians. talking about politicians, I vote to start a movement against 'vulgar bribes' and let us start with Desh Ka Jamaai. And then bureaucrats too, and even soft bribes like paying for the rent for a house in Mumbai. Stuff like that.
Anyway have a ton of stuff to work on, but in case you didn't know there are major changes afoot at Undie Profit, which hopefully will mean that they might actually start to reduce their 'paid content' percentage to under two-thirds. Or maybe not. Or they'll get Rakhi Sawant as their new lead anchor. Maybe that will lead to an asset bubble? Who knows, anything (even babies, and Undie TV knows a few things about sourcing babies) that would help Undie Profit will work. But in a weird sort of way, I'm glad they removed the cause of the rot, and it wasn't a guy.

Monday Morning Madness

2009-10-05T13:52:00.005+05:30

In times of doom and gloom, with newsprint prices headed north again but things looking slightly better on the lay-off front, there should be innovation in print advertising. However most innovation has been for publications to bend over and let advertisers hump their backsides. Alright, even that is, to an extent acceptable, after all, prostituting your bum when you have so many over-paid lazy children to feed might even pass the ‘moral decency’ test as thought up by Messrs Thackerey, Son & Nephew (even though the store front has split into two entrances now). But what really pisses me off are jacket adverts.
You know what I’m talking about, not the full front-page ads that like today in some papers, Yahoo India has taken out – note to yahoo India – If you are going to spend a bomb, spend money on a coked-out bimbette at least. I know ‘You’ means ordinariness, but I don’t wish to be reminded of that first thing in the morning. A half-dressed girl on the other hand, would have really brightened up a Monday morning.
OK, as usual, I digress, my issue is with those painful quarter page adverts. Not to say the full-page ones are by any means acceptable, and for this I will always hate Indya.com (they were the first to make ToI sell out the front page, and before you knew it every second day HT carried a picture of a beaming Ponytail and family) but at least with a full page advert you can hold the paper the way it is meant to be held. With the quarter-page ‘jacket’ advert, you can’t hold jackshit, the paper literally falls apart. You know what I’m talking about. A ‘jacket’ advert is like agreeing to have scat sex.
Seriously. And if you don’t know what scat sex is, please don’t look it up on Google Image Search (with SafeSearch Off) at work (no I won't link it), because as liberal as your office might be to you viewing porn at work, this won’t please anyone. Nor will seeing the fat aunties on India’s top ‘user-generated’ sex video site (no, I won't link to this either), I feel like puking when ‘hot chachis’ like that invade a computer screen (though, the site shows that UGC does work on the Indian web). The popularity of mobile phone video cameras is leading to insanity in Indian bedroom. Bad porn, that is my other problem with the world this Monday morning.
I think I should really see a shrink.
PS: I personally did not exactly fall in love with the first issue of ToI Crest (they have a epaper but not a separate website as yet), but the second issue was a marked improvement (more timely story I guess). My only problem is that the amount of time I have every weekend is finite, and there is far too much to read. I do believe that Crest is going to hammer sales of weekly newsmagazines that have over the years lost the plot (annual sex surveys usually filled with fiction, like that one that claimed that 1 in 3 men ‘did not mastrubate’). It seems that Crest has a pretty high print order right now (estimated at close to 3 lakhs) in only Delhi and Bombay (sorry, Mr.T, Mumbai), and with editions launching in Pune and Bangalore before the end of October, the newsmagazines should be really worried because if this weeks covers are any indication, ToI Crest has already won the battle. That is not to say that ToI Crest might not go wayward very soon.

Shubho Bijoya

2009-09-30T13:58:00.001+05:30

Well, it was that time of year all over again, when the unwashed masses or rather masses who don’t understand what a deodorant is, despite the television telling them that applying said deo, usually with an extremely silly name will get them laid, came near my house. And have now left, for which I am eternally grateful – Shubho Bijoya to me means the end of the crowds – which is why it is a good day. The masses generally honked their horns a lot, groped the occasional other person (this, as someone tried to explain to me isn’t sexual it just is well, Indian, because we like ‘feeling’ other people. Really now?) and picked the odd wallet. The Puja being a curious side-show run by middle-aged Bengali women who don’t work giving them their one chance in a year to act important.
It isn’t as if I’m not religious, but the rampant commercialization of the Puja – four pandals I saw were lead sponsored by – a betting company (bwin, the guys who sponsor Real Madrid); Coca-Cola; some random deodorant company with a skimpily clad woman on the poster (we are worshipping ‘Ma’ here, remember) and some other random mutual-fund company, maybe the guys who call me up five times a day trying to sell me a plan.
Surprising isn’t it, but at a level we actually celebrate misogyny in this country or at least under the ‘modern’ anti-imperialistic religion that we follow, which kind of dilutes the ‘maryada’ and ‘sabhyata’ arguments that are thrown at you by whackos sometimes. Of course, you can argue that I belong to whacko school as well, but the guys who belong to whacko school really are people who put stupid ring-tones and worse call-back tones. And of course people who defend a child-rapist on the grounds that he makes good movies.
Surprising isn’t it? The Americans all said and done, pursue a rapist for over thirty years and then spring a trap on him that has given many people across the world a massive moral dilemma. And we desperately try to bury a case so that a large pasta dinner can be enjoyed at 10 Janpath. Makes you wonder if Mayawati really does have a decent point. Even though, a college friend from Lucknow argues that the massive parks are great places to go for walks and get stoned every evening. I really didn’t know that UP politicians were chasing the stoner vote-bank. It is a bad idea to rely on stoners for votes, as successive college elections prove. The guys like sleeping. And I should know.
Anyway, the reason for my tardiness lately has been a Gym, I’m too tired to frikking think. Well, not quite, but I’ve been watching a bit of cricket on the side and really haven’t had the time. No wait, actually I’m just making excuses, I’ve been lazy. Period. That, and some other stuff.