KILLING, TIME WITH THE MEDIA

Follow us:WhatsappFacebookTwitterTelegram.cls-1{fill:#4d4d4d;}.cls-2{fill:#fff;}Google NewsMy first smoke of the day at 7am. It's a regular ritual, a ritual which will find many takers in this industry...being the first on assignment, it's the best companionship program we enroll in, if we have a predilection for the cancer stick. So I make my slightly groggy steps to the wooden, near-coffin like steps outside the IBN offices at Lower Parel...and chance upon this muse... its been a tough 40 hours for Mahajan and his bronchoscopy isnt exactly heartening news for his family...or the BJP for that matter. But we wait...like disciples of the great game, we wait. The urgency to "Break" is now paramount. Even mild humour laces the patient smiles that hang around at Hinduja or sulk at rooftops for weary LIVE's that will enlighten our masses on the CRITICAL YET STABLE condition, of the gen. secy of the has been BJP.

It's a matter of time...so insist the all knowing newswallahs...read ...on the field agents who have the humble ears and mouths of the doctors who are busy trying the magic potions on the injured man. I have had the chance of meeting Mr Mahajan in my slight yet ambitious years with the news services.. and an acquaintance not worthy of too hard a recollection...wasn't sufficiently impressed with the man I admit...but that's a personal thought...can't think too evil of an ailing man...so we leave it at that. But today at 7:22am, he is of critical importance to my scarce career, which hangs between a telephone and an email...signalling a change of guard at BJP headquarters and at Hinduja...

We bay for blood... do we like death??....sure we do. We love the colour red...our colour schemes on channels are an ode to this dedication. Albeit a covert love for the haemoglobin induced serum - but there it is...undeniably...laced with this vital fluid is our bread and butter...we kill with efficiency. A passion that will only be matched by the ghetto's of the great wars. But ours is a silent killing... a style cultivated out of boredom with the conventions of death mongering first world states.
So he fights on with the inconspicuous ventilator support and a carnival of prayers that feast on tales of miracles and near death recoveries. The party goes on... its headline news but its not the top story yet...vadodhra is killing more... our correspondent needs a unit...to capture life ebbing out once again...
This is not a social commentary on the right or wrong of it...it just is a commentary on how it is...and I am intricately embedded in this impartial dissemination of information. News of an end. In kandahar, in doda, in gujarat in Mumbai. Death is life to us.

Its been a while for all of us to understand just how vague yet comforting it has become to embrace it just hard enough to feel its pain...yet stay away from staining the white holy sheet that shrouds our profession. We manage somehow...people respect us...we respect that respect and honour the stories on the hour with different ways of dealing with it. Noble? Certainly. It's a dirty job... and in all likelihood I will have to borrow off the old clique ...someone has to do it!

But its not All deaths that are part of the frenzied tally... some are discounted deaths...deaths that die as quickly as they occur...the blip on the TV set deaths. They are gone with the blink of and eye...a scroll of a ticker... nameless and futile...as in the end.

Mass deaths...now that's big league. We have your attention. The thought repulses us in the most politically correct ways... we scowl ...almost manage a grimace despite the 6-16 years in the job...we don't like the looks of the footage...but we are who we are and must what we must. Beam me up scotty.

But lonely in each of these deaths...dies a part of us...a part that goes home exhausted with no news of death. The part that gets grumpy when a story must wait for someone or something to breathe its last. The part that almost wishes it would end. The part that waits for it to end and go home. Home where none of it really matters. A gory gossip over harmless drinks or a few malai tikkas perhaps...where everyone gets their turn to debate whether mahajan deserved to die the way he did...if he does that is. And if he pulls through, even better.

And so my cigarette breathes its last and I draw on its last dreg... the embers singe like the news that waits to exhale out of the tube...the break that could herald one of two things... A well orchestrated pandemonium which every newsman swears by..."BREAK IT...jaldi karo...Aaj Tak is flashing it...ND has it man... what are you waiting for?" Or a deep unsettling calm that descends on all of us as we claim to have it all covered.

Just another day...just another life...the assignment phone is ringing...my call...someone must have died.

first published:May 03, 2006, 17:10 ISTlast updated:May 03, 2006, 17:10 IST
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