Sunday, October 30, 2005

Something's rotting

Was at Pitampura yesterday when someone called up aunt and told her to switch on the news. It couldn't get more repulsive - somebody had planted bombs in crowded markets and a bus two days before Diwali.

NDTV's coverage was itself appalling: a particularly inept/nervous/sick cameraperson was zooming in and out on a pretty young female reporter's lips, eyes, hair. And she was asking someone with an injured son in the RML Hospital how many casualties there were in the ward inside.

I seem to have lost touch with the way the visual media has shaped up - was actually watching the news after months yesterday. (Ironically the HT Brunch cover story today gripes about growing sensationalism in the media.)

On some other benighted channel, things were being blamed on "intelligence failure". What kind of paranoid society are we helping come to life where our sense of security and well-being depend upon police pickets? Panic is cancerous - and we can't counteract it with more surveillance.

If you want to inform them about new tenants, I'm one too.

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