Def Leppard

No, the title is not supposed to make sense, the shuffle mode, and yes it is on shuffle, of the Nokia 5800 I'm using has suddenly decided that I need a massive dose of Def Leppard - era no bar. So I've had crazy early eighties Brit Pop - to the golden oldies from Hysteria and Adrenalize - two albums I genuinely liked when I was in school. Heck, I think I even became good at carving the pointy Def Leppard logo onto several school desks. Def Lep and Metallica to be honest.
But then again, since according to several of the people who read this blog I represent this blog, I symbolise all that is wrong with the 'elite', my music choices represent my 'moral corruption'. Would you believe it if I told I even liked Michael Jackson and some ALW musicals back then. Cool, since I've just got a new iPod Shuffle to try out and finally plan to load four gigs exclusively of rock from the eighties and nineties. No new age Brandon Flowers lyrical murder on this iPod (OK, I've lost count now), even though I like The Killers honestly. And Kings of Leon and well, I like a lot of new stuff. But if you are like me, in your late twenties or early thiries, the last generation of Indians who grew up knowing that there was TV, though only one-channel TV with Chitrahaar being family bonding time, and when mastering the air guitar became a rite of passage to go to Class VIII.
Anyway, all this misses the point of the Monday rant one of them being - if you don't know how Google Adsense or Adwords works stop leaving stupid comments. Thanks. And also I must add that with the elections and the IPL (and as the media grows a spine - even the genocide in Sri Lanka, though India's seemingly tacit approval of this is because I guess Madamji wants her husband's murderer dead before she loses power), Feroz Khan's death did not get enough air-play. No really. During my stint in Bombay I had the fortune (well, depends on which way you look at it) to bump into the man on a few occasions. Pity, he was a lot of things, much of that can't be written here, but also a fun guy to hang with. If you had similar interests.
PS: Wandering into The Chambers every once in a while is good fun. Just to see what is going on at other tables.

Robot Chicken

I don't know about you but India ODI's are losing their watchability - we're pulverizing Sri Lanka. Last matchViru and Yuvi and this time Dhoni and Gauti (great to see both the Delhi boys do well though - Go Daredevils)  Almost as badly as they're pulverizing their Tamilian citizens in the north.

Though their most famous Tamilian set another record today. We're treating their bowlers like their government treats their domestic press. I don't know about you, but cricket diplomacy as practiced by India is a bit strange - terminating the contracts of the Pakistani players even if they didn't do drugs. It will be sad to see Akmal and Tanvir go from Warne's team (they do have a loophole for those two and Misbah - but why Shilpa Shetty ugh!). Anyway, I spent a lot of time watching Robot Chicken of late and I'm pretty bugged that no network shows Adult Swim in India. Dang!

Overseas!

As much as we in the Indian media crib and cry about our lot, and some of us like who bitch and moan about the cribbing and the crying and the 'awesomeness' of our coverage in public, the fact of the matter is that we in the Indian media should thank our lucky stars every day of our lives. Thank our lucky stars that we are working here and not in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal or Pakistan. It is true that we can't choose our neighbours but the media across our borders ranges from the dysfunctional (Pakistan, but then again, Pakistan is dysfunctional and some might argue so are large swathes of the Indian media, and there are honourable exceptions across the border) to the brutally violent (Nepal and Sri Lanka) and the corrupt (Bangladesh). The sad fact is not that we don't know about this, (though beyond a point 'foreign affairs' for many North Indian homes would be anything south of the Vindhyas but the opposite is not quite true) but how our government tolerates it.
For a country that advertises its democratic credentials wherever it goes, and I guess this would be the tag-line: Look at us, a history-sheeter who has murdered people can now legislate matters of importance here - can they do that in your so-called 'developed democracies'? Huh? We do have a horrible history of propping up some rather unpleasant people - Sudan, Myanmar and Zimbabwe for example - the first two for oil and gas and the last so that M/s Pawar and Modi can carry on their diabolical gameplan with cricket. But with neighbours with whom we share cultural and historical bonds and with whom we haven't entered into a sixty-year long war that doesn't seem to end, we have made it a point to ignore what is going on across our borders.
A vibrant media is important for any country, sure, spreading occultism is not the job of the media and that must be controlled and note to the Broadcasting Association - stopping occultism is not censorship, it is common-sense, so please self-censor. Back to my point, I believe, and I'm no foreign affairs wonk here, that ensuring that the media remains free and fair across the border is in India's best interests. To allow governments or ideologies to muzzle their media - no matter how much we say that it is an internal matter will do nobody any good. And a note to the Indian media at large, I know this blog gets read, so there is no harm in writing about these things. I know that the readership surveys might indicate otherwise, but then again, didn't analysts say that the market would keep on going up!

Bad Humour

The last post was a bad attempt at humour, which is why I steer clear of writing humour.
Now you know.
I wanted to use this post to highlight just how fortunate most journalists sitting in Delhi really are today. You can afford to be lazy, call and email your contacts and sit in the luxury of an air-conditioned office or travel in air-conditioned cars all the time. The media is relatively free, yes some might argue that we are beholden to corporate interests and would bend over backwards for our advertisers - even if they are lying twats like the Ponytail. But there are parts of this country - Chattisgarh, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh come to mind where the media is caught in the crossfire of political interests. I'm no fan of Naxalism, but some of the means used by the government to combat the 'Red Terror' would make the Chinese seem humane.
But, from all that I have been reading, and I don't read anything about this in India's remarkably international-blind media (yesterday's Afghan attack aside) that reports on the madness that is taking place in Sri Lanka. Other than The Hindu, whose international focus is at the other extreme (an interview with Bashar Al-Assad on the front page a few weeks ago?) Indian papers and TV channels, even the mainstream ones have an extremely blinkered international opinion (the Hindi channel's India stops at the end of the cowbelt with Bombay being a distant enclave). The Indian government supports (and always has supported) some rather unpleasant regimes - Myanmar and Zimbabwe among them in its self interest - we want a permanent seat on the Security Council after all (the BCCI was loathe to lose a vote in the form of Zimbabwe, so...).
Anyway, coming to the point, the media has been under severe duress in Sri Lanka. There is not much someone can do sitting 2000kms away in New Delhi, but I can hyperlink. Visit the site, show your support, and if your publication or TV channel does look at the international scene beyond the PM's Hokkaido visit where he generally gets ignored and is told to reduce carbon emissions (lets shut off the generators that power the call centres - that would reduce our carbon profile who cares if the Americans crib) write about this sometime.