The Fourth Pillar

“In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” - George Orwell

The role of media in a democracy can never be overstated. When the three pillars of governance – the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, fall prey to the trappings of corruption it is on this fourth pillar that democracy rests its chin. The print, visual and online media then becomes the forum where policies are questioned, critiqued, appreciated and public opinion is reflected and shaped.

The power of media is rooted in the human thirst for information and the desire to know what is going on around them. Even when the media has to play to a certain voyeuristic need of the public by reporting about celebrity marriages and royal babies, it also serves the purpose of pointing its fingers at the plagues of the society such a poverty, corruption, crime and injustice. In fact, often time media plays a role in getting the fundamental right to constitutional remedies delivered to hapless citizens by highlighting their case and drawing public attention. The recent proposal to amend the law regarding rape and enforce stricter punishment and the whole debate on juvenile law was singularly triggered by the attention that the media gave to the Delhi rape case. By reporting the gruesome details of the case and running the story 24*7 on television and backing this with statistical data showing the critical nature of the safety situation of women in the country, media in a way motivated the public to rise in protest.

In an ideal society media often serves this purpose of being an alarm bell. However we hardly live in an ideal society and the picture is most often tainted than rosy. Most media houses have become profit making enterprises. Even when this is not the case, any media needs money to run and advertisements are where they get it from. Political parties and large MNCs often take the role patrons and do the job of the editors. Many scams get unreported and even the ones that pop up now and then are often the result of political rivalries. Congress backed papers would write against BJP and CPI and vice versa. Take the Asaram Bapu rape charges for instance. It hardly got any attention till he decided to open his mouth and criticize the Congress Party. In the ideal scenario the wrong doings of political persons should be brought into light regardless of their allegiances. This bias is most evident when there is an election round the corner and the media is turned into a wagon for propaganda.

The fact that media has a huge hand in shaping public opinion is both its power and its responsibility. It can manufacture both consent and hate and make puppets out of people. And many times this is done subversively. In the Batla House case for example the accused where give Islamic headgear to cover their faces, photos were taken and most newspapers and channels ran the story with these images. Now such an image triggers subconscious associations in the minds of people and reminds them of say Bin Laden or any other Islamic terrorist who is usually dressed up that way. When media leaves its mind in the hands of the government it may inadvertently be lending a helping hand to paint the innocent guilty. In a diverse multi cultural, multi lingual country like India one careless word, one thoughtless instance of reporting can trigger violence and riots. And being a democracy the media like the citizens is given the right of free speech and expression with only little restrictions. It is for this precise reason that here in India, more than anywhere else the media needs to have a certain ethics, maturity and responsibility. We need to remember that in countries like China neither the media nor the people enjoy these privileges and the fourth pillar is reduced to a clown that lauds government policies and sing praises of the leaders reminding the public that if anything they need to be grateful towards the Big Brother.

However, hopefully there will always be Assanges and Snowdens who incarnate in this hour of need to save the world from corrupt governments and establish dharma. But their victory can only be guaranteed if they have an honest media and a politically aware public as their sidekicks.

So, is the media truly the fourth pillar of democracy? Yes. How strong is this pillar? Well, that depends on the country and its people. Very often in life, we settle for what we think we deserve. As citizens of this democracy we need to understand that an unbiased, honest media is our right and we deserve it. If we refuse to read biased newspapers and view biased channels, eventually when the ratings would come down they would have to give in and do decent reporting. But if we continue to stay politically numb with the social awareness of a potato, then god save this country!

Tree-Running

It has happened. I am going for a run today. Unbelievable, I know. I can see the look on your face, though I haven't seen you or that look in ages. It is a cold morning and before I curl back into my slumber I take a few minutes off and remember the trees and fog rolling over a black road.

And you. Exasperated. Just till that tree, and then you can rest you tell me. Hands on my knees, I see the road fractured between my hair. I see your impatient legs. I turn my neck to see your radiant self against the blue sky.

I loved to watch you run. Even when the air would run out of my lungs, and my own words would be inaudible to me between the pants , I would keep on just to see you flushed, your long hair against the wind. Thinking, god I'm not made for this. Perhaps for you, but not this. And drag myself on somehow.


You on your part, never ran ahead of me. Never disappeared round the corner. Trees from trees you would stay, spot jogging, running in circles. Lovingly letting me catch up with you.  Just till that tree, you would urge. One more tree. Just that one. No, no not this one. The one behind this one. And on and on. On cold mornings such as this.


                   * * *


Running on a dusty road with strangers and friends it's you I think of. There are no trees. Only buildings. Hoots and dust. I am surprised at myself. To see myself run at a running event under a full sun. There are no trees. There is no you. So I tell myself, just till that tree, imagining invisible trees on this lonely sidewalk. I run. I run. And I am running. Away from the one that ran ahead. Steadily. And disappeared into nothingness. I run. From memories of trees and of cold mornings. Of the impatient eyes and the circles of love. Someone thrusts a flag into my hands. I am leading the crowd now. I join the hooters and drown the sound of my fluttering heart. I raise my voice I stamp hard on the ground and I tell myself, this is where I am now. I am torn between places and timelines. Between old strangers and new friends. I am running. Every moment. From moment to moment. Chore to chore. Cycles of Mondays to Sundays and Mondays again.

There are no trees. Anymore. But there are days, there are things to be done, lessons to be studied, promises to be kept. There are hopes I can't crush, people counting on me. People who chose to stay, when you didn't. So I have to run.  I have to reach that tree before I give up. Stay alive one more day. One day at a time. Before I give up.

I am panting. I bend down and see my own shadow. I feel the blood run through me. The sun in my eyes. Sweat on my back. I think of you, you would have been so proud. I smile. The heart is flying. Mid fall the heart grows wings, the soul sings, the spirit soars. I run. As fast as I can. And this time, I know I am breaking free.

New Year In A Shoe Box

The world is celebrating the birth of another year. I stare above, I see the ceiling hardly 2 meters from my bed. The white washed walls of my perfectly rectangular room close in on me. I stretch my hands and silently thank my genes that they aren’t any longer than they are lest I touch the walls on both sides. I thank the 60 odd centimetres on either side of my finger tips for whatever is left of my sanity. I have been deprived of the right to complain, I chose this for myself.

A while ago, someone knocked at my door and informed about the impending celebrations downstairs. On the insistence of my angel of a roommate who shares the misery of this four walled jail with me I decided to shed off some of my socio-repellent tendencies and hopefully get contaminated with all the radioactive joy shooting sharply from all around me. Truth be told, a tiny part of me is clinging to 2014 as an obstinate child would cling to the hands of its mother dragging it from a playground. Sometimes I yearn for closure. I go down and see fire crackers, half torn Christmas stars hanging loosely from trees and as always these days, priests and nuns. I try to smear some happiness on to my face desperately, like a man in his 50s slapping a wig on his balding head, uncomfortable and keenly aware of the unnaturality and pointlessness of the whole exercise. I don’t want to be caught in my game. I don’t want people asking me why I wasn’t joyful or exuberant when that was what was expected of me. The fake concern and the unwanted curiosity about the small spaces inside my head has never failed to put me off. So instead I turn to my phone like a cripple to his crutch and pretend to be immersed in clicking oddly focused pictures of smog.

The strange thing is, perhaps I am indeed happier than most people at the other end of the wands of burning light. What is happiness anyway? A mellow but constant feeling of relief has found its way into my heart lately. Happiness to me now is less like laughter bursting out in every colour of light and more like a strange luminous afterglow of something that happened a long time ago. Around me, loud firecrackers go off. And disappear.  Like the year that is about to vanish into a whiff of smoke in a couple more of hours. Everything I see through the smog is hazy. Smog is much like time itself. Everything you remember through time is misty, soft around the edges. Silhouettes of memories on the other side of the smog call on to me. The last time I burst crackers was on a cold diwali night. I remember stars and myself, chronically ill with happiness. I look at people around me and feel more in touch with them. 

I realize perhaps, I need a New Year more than anyone around me at this moment. I don’t want to kick 2014 in its butt and show it the door. I am not dissatisfied or waiting for something new. I feel like a tired writer at end of a long convoluted sentence at the end of an even more long convoluted novel desperate for a full stop, fully aware than he/she could have done a much better job.  It is not the newness of the year you celebrate or the end of another one. It is perhaps the opportunity to say “this time I am not going to fuck up” that people desperately yearn for. 

The worst thing about saying goodbye to a year is that you cant say see you next time. You cant say hope you fare well. Saying goodbye to a year is like crumbling a paper and throwing it into a chute. Like the sanitary napkin disposers most hostels are equipped with now a days. The darkness of the chute tones down the overall ugliness of having to dispose of the bloody mess that only you and biology are responsible for. Throw it and in a second it is out of your head. A year that goes down into the throat of an ever burning incinerator. I am filled with an urge to say sorry 2014.  This is how it has to be. I feel better that I can actually hold a conversation with a year inside my head and actually convince myself it would hear me and feel less  bad about me disposing it off so unceremoniously. I have been kinder to you. You of all should know that. When people disappear at the press of a button, imaginary conversations are so much more happy. So much more loving and right.

I tell myself to be less existential. To enjoy the movie and not worry about the gigantic plot holes gnawing at my brain. I tell myself to give 2015 a fair chance. I wonder in what new box I will be in next year this time.  I want to be under a yellow street light on a deserted road. On New Years at 12.  Not today. Not this time. But some time in life. Perhaps. I make plans and hang it on a pole in front of me much like the proverbial carrot. Something to look forward to. To keep this show going.

Happy New Year.  Whatever that means.

Disconcerted Spectator

The train stops
Strangers flood the seats
Suddenly I am one of them
Weaving a web of silent ruminations
Blind eyes wide open


I like to think of my days
As stones piled across railway tracks
Disconcerted spectators
Impassively watching life's theatrics
Same journey different destinations
Knowing not all roads lead to Rome
Some lead to broken homes
Others to a warm meal and a smile


Indifferent eyes all around me
 running away,  returning
Everyone always in the pursuit of something
Powdering their miseries with electronics and literature,
Unmistakable desperation nesting in their eyes
Tapping their fingers,
Adjusting their wind blown hair,
Jealously guarding their  baggages from sight,
Disconcerted spectators,
Always all around me.

The Brown Leaves of Autumn

A brown leaf of autumn

Broke free in the wind,

Turned to see her home,

And the time when he was green

And still on the lonely boughs,

A very long time ago..

Before came the naughty kid,

And thrashed them with his stick

Perhaps for a flower,

Perhaps to pull down a nest,

In all his childhood cruelty,

In all his ignorant innocence,

Thrashed him down instead,

And how in the wind

he went down and down

In circles as she watched,

Green like sorrow, Green like joy,

Green like birth and death,

A leaf of autumn brown and broke,

Sailing on the wind,

Falling down, round and round

All she remembered was him…

Stranger in My Heart

I shut the door of our house, tight

You thrashed it with your wings

And flew away,

I laid the doors of my heart open

But in your eternal stubbornness

You ignored my pleas and

Chose to stay…

Firefly

And it was at night that you found me,

When winter had left me alone,

and the wind had swept the snow

into my missed fortune, you found me,

little bearer of light,

you danced in crazy circles,

hopped and hummed, like none other,

and then, like a flake of snow,

you rested on my arms,

I could say you were looking at me,

Luminous, your eyes,

You sought no laughter, no smile,

I closed my palms around you

Caging your light, all for mine,

All for mine,

Fly, I said,

You refused,

Fly, I will crush you,

You stayed,

And then with the snow swept wind

I pushed you to the skies,

In circles you turned back,

I ignored, I sighed,

A hundred winters hence,

And the lesser mortal I am,

I look up the skies,

You have become a star,

You shine,

And the world shines with you....