‘When in doubt, ask the reader’, goes a popular journalistic mantra. Over six weeks have elapsed since we asked and many readers have already wondered aloud whatever happened to all their inputs. Really, the volume and variety were overwhelming, warranting enormous time and toil, albeit pleasurable, for the Talk team to sift, sort and study the feedback. Still we could have saved two weeks had it not been for my insistence to read every one of the letters.
Browsing: COLUMNS
‘History in the making’ is how most have described the passage of the Women’s Quota Bill in the Rajya Sabha. The bill no doubt is a legislative landmark and will have definitive impact on the Constitution of the Lok Sabha and possibly influence some of its decisions too. But the chivalrous euphoria of the ‘aye’sters and the unprecedented rowdiyism resorted to by the ‘nay’-sayers have only joined hands to kill a great debate that needs to be held and heard beyond the circular confines of the rulers’ citadel.
‘I a m a bit confused here. How does one deal with offensive art? But then is it art at all if it is offensive? And who is the arbiter when what is offensive to one set of eyes seems a creative masterpiece to another? Does artistic freedom come with an uninhibited right to offend? And how should the offended lot react?
Dear Pranab da,
(not the disrespectful Tamil da, but the reverential Bengali da)
You will get this missive just as you are readying to present the budget and so may not have the time to read it. Not that it matters, for even if I had sent it earlier, you wouldn’t have had the mind. For I am not one of those elite Bombay Business Club wallah nor a member of any big industry association or a pushy moneybag or part of any other powerful lobby all of whom have the ear of the FM anytime they want.
‘In the long run, we are all dead’, quipped John Maynard Keynes, the legendary economist. The provocation must have been quite dire for a man used to spouting hardcore monetary theories to come under such a philosophical spell. It is also possible that the economist was just displaying some dry humour out of sheer frustration; again the retort could be an angry reaction to a zealous student or a persistent critic seeking out a clarification beyond the confines of a typical cyclical graph and ideally falling in the domain of an astrologer.
Once upon a time, Bal Thackeray began his career as a cartoonist. Decades later, today, his comic capers have made him a caricature of sorts. One does not remember if his drawings drew laughter from anyone at that time, but the nation is certainly not humoured by his antics currently. The only ray of hope is that despite consistently hogging national headlines, T’ray has so far remained strictly a Maharashtra Manoos!
The overwhelming response to our ‘Talk to us, please’ request is indeed quite heartwarming. Kindly keep the flow going because it is turning out to be a one-of-the-kind mass feedback exercises that is most educative and enlightening, not just to us in Talk but to the media profession itself.
Jyoti Basu’s passing at the age of 96 is not exactly a tragedy. Nor was it unexpected as he was ailing for quite some time. In fact, he quit as CM in 2001 at the age of 88 on health grounds, after reigning for 23 years. Working backwards, he had become the CM at age-65, when the rest of the proletariat would have been well into retirement.
I have always wondered why we should be packing off grandmas, often non-existent ones, or distant uncles to the heavens so that we can scoot work for a day or two. The ease with which we ‘kill’ our disposable kith and kin actually exposes the nation’s collective addiction to the idea of keeping off work on some pretext or other!