THE NOISE HOUR
What is good with my nation? Our news channels don’t tell me this. They tell me, what is wrong with it… and, they tell me this relentlessly, remorselessly… every night, everyday. They install a dozen experts to tell me why everything is wrong with my nation and its government… Why we should grumble, complaint, protest, ask or revolt.
Turn to whichever channel you wish, you get the
same thing: half-a-dozen men and women arguing and going nowhere. Their
arguments are predictable, and the anchors impatience, too.
It is night time… Nine p.m. It is supposed to be
an hour of my night prayers or supper. Instead, it has become the ‘News Hour’…
No, it has become the ‘Noise Hour’!
They need something bad, something very, very
bad, everyday to happen in my country… so that they can ‘feed this into my
mind’, each night, before I go to sleep…
Just as, when I was small, my loving mother gave me a glass of warm milk
to drink before she put me to sleep, every night!
When there is nothing sinister or monstrous to
present, they know how to make a monster out of something so silly as a rat-hole
in Tihar jail!
Well, for last two nights, it is not, exactly, a rat-hole
in Tihar; instead, it is Ram Singh’s death in his cell. Suicide or murder? What
were other inmates doing? What were jail authorities doing? What was Home
Minister doing?
They are heatedly debating…
And, last night, when a particular anchor was
screaming - as he always does - I knew my nation had not gone to dogs,
certainly… even though he was screaming so hysterically as if to reach each
nook and corner of my nation!
Two Marines have gone back to Italy… They had
shot dead two fishermen in India.
So, why did our government and he Apex court allow them to go? Now, their
government is refusing to send them back…
So, my nation has gone to dogs!
I wonder, if
all these channels want, really – and sincerely – less problems and tension in
my country. What would they do, if everything was fine?
Just like, what would all our doctors and
hospitals do, if all were hale and hearty?
What would all our lawyers, judges and courts do,
if no one had any disputes with any one?
What would Police and jails do, if there were no offenders…
no cheats and criminals?
What would priests, high-priests and their vast
organizations do, if all souls walked on the scared path?
Yes, even I wasn’t required, here, if all my students
had done their studies on their own!
So, just as I want students and a doctor wants patients,
and just as lawyers want disputants and
priests want sinners… our news channels want all of us… so that they can scream
their throats out to tell us everyday – yes, 24 x 7 – ‘What is wrong with us’!
As an individual, if I carry in my heart
more good than
bad, more virtue than vice,
more hope than despair…
and more nectar than poison,
I have all the more reason to believe,
that my Nation, too, does…
After all, is it not true: “The glory or the ruin of a nation begins in the home of
its people?”
Where is the ‘home’?...
And, where are its ‘people’?
GERALD D’CUNHA
Pic.: Malabika Ganguly
P.S. : I still have a choice at 9 pm every night: to say my prayers... to savor my supper... or to stay glued to the 'Noise Hour'!
Comments