Becoming judges?

We are all armchair judges all the time, pronouncing people innocent or guilty of several acts because of our perception of that person. I mean, how many of you have called a girl names in school because she happened to be friends with a few guys. But to go out and pronounce someone innocent or guilty in a pending judicial matter is something else altogether. While I think that Manu Sharma is guilty and I thought that Santosh Singh was guilty as well and I'm pretty sure that Vikas Yadav will latko as most people think he should, subverting justice by emblazoning it across front pages or the nine o'clock news is a different matter. In a weird sort of way, while I think Ram Jethmalani tried to subvert justice (again) he does have a point, a person is entitled to a fair trial and the media must not hang him.
The media has a role to play in exposing a sham trial - like they did in the Jessica and Priyadarshini cases, and there was clearly a miscarriage of justice there, but I think some people did go overboard. There are very few of us in the profession who are constitutional or legal experts - heck, if I knew the law well, I would have been a lawyer, it is booming like any other profession you know. The problem I have with the media is clear double standards - I do not think Sanjay Dutt should have been acquitted - because people who 'helped' him have been sent to prison, but the media celebrated the man's acquittal, then again, this is my opinion not the law of the land.
Bombarded as we are with irrational and sometimes irresponsible journalism from all sides, it is difficult for a trial court judge to be objective, and judges fall prey to the lynch mob that is the media at times, but then again why is there this lynch mob in the first place?
I really believe that as usual, we are missing the point over here. There was a gross miscarriage of justice in both murders, I do not doubt that. But now that you have fixed that and now that we will end up hanging three men, no matter what people say - I'm a bit ambivalent about the death penalty - after all I've debated on either side during school and college level debates and that can explain a bit of it. It is the legal system here that needs prompt fixing - judges in this country - and I might be committing a crime by saying this - have ethical issues - I won't put it down in black or white what those ethical issues are, but once a judge, you become a judge for life. There is not system of checks and balances and judge can hold me in contempt just for writing this - but some very senior judges have said it too. The Jessica Lall, Priyadarshini Mattoo and Nitish Katara cases are clear indications that we need to fix the legal system. Otherwise, we will spawn many, many more 'trials by media'.

EDIT : Manu doesn't hang, he only gets life and this is before the appeal in the SC. Vikas Yadav, the man accused of murdering Nitish Katara is going to be in jail anyway, and he just got four more years. But the decision by the court to pull up 'hostile' witnesses is tremendous, while I feel for Shyan Munshi, I'm sure the lad came under tremendous pressure, but the habit of witnesses going 'hostile' is endemic and resolving it should be part of the judicial reform process.

Blessing a plane!

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Originally uploaded by Tripping in India.

No matter what people say about Indians being secular, the fact of the matter is that most of us are still quite happily Hindu and majority-ism rules. I mean, look at the picture, I took this picture, (which is actually quite a detailed shot of the front undercarriage of an Airbus aircraft) when Indian (formerly Indian Airlines) got their new Airbus plane from the $2 billion order. Praful Patel, the man I hold personally responsible whenever my flight is delayed, which is almost everytime I fly, came to perform this puja when the plane arrived fresh from Hamburg. Look at it - Tika, garland, coconut, flowers and there was the whole shindig! This plane is quite Hindu I guess now!
These are some of the silly things you notice on the job but never write about, after all who on earth will give you column centimeters for something as silly as this! Oh and before a bunch of ignorant Europeans come in and accuse me of being a 'Nazi' thanks to the swastik, the swastik is an ancient Hindu symbol which was appropriated (in a slightly altered form) by the German Nazi's, and we still use it out here!
EDIT : I guess this will be all over the papers tomorrow, and I've heard of some funny cases of slippage myself, but no wonder Indian men feel so inadequate! But seriously, if 'Regular' rubber is too big for so many men, I've got no clue what will happen to them if they went to certain parts of the world.

Publications I miss.

One of Dhirubhai Ambani's nicer experiments, or well rather one the times he let his younger son have his way with the loose change was The Sunday Observer. Now, I don't lament the passing of the Sunday Observer as a journalist, I was far too young to have worked there during the good days, but the paper, whatever you say about it - even call it the Ambani's propaganda rag - much like a certain television channel is today was usually - particularly during the time of the first two editors, very good Sunday reading. And for me, as a pre-teen kid those days, despite going through a fairly troubled part of life (my pre and early teen years were more screwed up than most peoples, thanks to my parents' marriage going haywire) was fairly good reading for children in the 12-16 age group in a regular newspaper. And that is something I do not see in ANY Sunday newspaper today.
None whatsoever, because they try to outcompete each other in being cerebral and lifting ideas from GQ. Talking about lifting from GQ, this month's UK edition has an article called 'Absolute Insanity' about chillies and 'hotness' (of the chillies not of the models in the Kingfisher Calendar), a few days after I read the article in my bosses cubicle, the country's self-proclaimed 'best' food writer does an article on chilles. Now, this gentleman is a great writer (no doubt about that) and no part of the aforementioned GQ piece was 'copied' per se, but information was copiously used. I was not the only person to notice the timing, at least three other people I know who read the UK edition of GQ mentioned this me, just finding the timing a bit ironic. Anyway, inspiration can come from anywhere and I am not making an accusation of plagarism - that is exclusively the terrain of two-bit and half-wit movie reviewers.
You might argue that DNA makes an attempt - but DNA is going after the Cartoon Network crowd, not 'TweenAgers'. A year or so ago, maybe less, a former colleague had done a story on this market in India and how it is booming, but somehow, despite the massive explosion in the media, there seems to be almost no reading material - rather daily or even weekly reading material targeting the 8-18 market, and that seems to baffle me.
I'm fairly sure that I am not alone when I say that the early years of India Today's Target magazine were brilliant. Of course, the magazine did lose it towards its later years and its second avataar as 'Teens Today' was one of the Group's more colossal publishing disasters - because it tried to go after both the early-teen and late-teen market. As any marketer with half a brain will tell you, the 13-14-15 age group is quite a different proposition from the 16-17 age group and the 18-19 age group is a different kettle of fish altogether. target actually had value propositions that appealed - thanks in no small part to Ajit Ninan's great cartoons and I hope that Times of India asks him to restart some of his strips - or maybe start something new altogether - to a wider variety of readers. However, in a fragmented market like today, such a scenario is not possible.
Now, the reason many magazines and newspapers don't start publications for this segment of the market is because they feel that the market is either too small or that they will not get advertising. The latter reason is more crucial - publishers will tell you that they're competing in the age of TV and the internet and people don't read. They don't? That is news to me, I read when I was young, and by the time I got to middle school, cable TV was in India in all its glory - I mean I had MTV with VJ Nonie and 24x7 of Rock n'Roll.
Yet, by the time I got to that stage I had finished most of Gerald Durrell and started out on Wodehouse and I was still buying Hardy Boys Casefiles books (I discovered much to my surprise I still have a lot of my Hardy Boys books along with their impossible and improbable plots - but they were fun, and in a cupboard in Calcutta I still have some old Target and Indrajaal comics lying about). Those were good days!
But young people read, maybe less nowadays because of blogs and the internet, but I've said this before, a well-produced and well-written newspaper or magazine will give you in half an hour what most people take half a day to find on the internet. I mean, the printed word or page, whichever way you look at it still has the ability to surprise. After all, I plonk down a significant amount of money to read GQ, even though I can find a lot of the content online, because I want to. I like Nerve, but Nerve would be cooler if I could hold it. And no matter what you say, a Playmate in a three-fold foldout in Playboy, looks a lot nicer than scrolling down on a monitor, even if you have a 19-inch LCD. Maybe I'm old-fashioned or maybe I'm like this because I get my genes from a journalist on one side and a publisher on the other, or maybe I'm environmentally callous and like the feel of paper.
Maybe I'm just growing too old! I have to drive a car at 200 ticks to put a smile on my face nowadays! But thats just me!

World AIDS Day!

But first - Even though I was in Bombay on Tuesday morning (I was too busy following the Sanjay Dutt mamla on TV and didn't read the papers other than the Mirror which I have been sorely missing in Delhi), I had no clue about this until a friend texted me saying that I was famous. Well, thanks to Kushalrani Gulab for the mention, I always appreciate any ego boost.
OK, it is World AIDS Day today and while I don't care two hoots about most this day or that day, almost everyday happens to be some shitty day or another, today is important, particularly since India happens to be in the midst of an epidemic whether we like it or not. Our honourable Health Minister is more concerned with governing AIIMS than even looking at the problem, and at least this guy mentions the word 'Condoms' without flinching, the last woman we had in the Health Ministry would say 'Chee' if you even said the word.
And it isn't just a lower class disease. Kids in call centres and news organisations are banging like there is no tomorrow, after all this is for many Indians the first generation of 'free' Indians where sons and daughters have been allowed to do their own thing and well, they're doing it. And sadly, many of them are not using condoms.
I recently had a fight with my friend Doc because he hates using rubber, "Feel nahin aati" he told me. Well, to be honest, I've only done it once without a condom and that was when I was 17 and even though I will not continue the story - it got very complicated afterwards - no there isn't K-spawn somewhere in the world, but lets leave the story for the novel, right! But, to carry on, an indescretion made over a decade ago, and that's it. There have been weird and dangerous sexual adventures since, and this is not the place to talk about them, but there has always been rubber at my disposal even when I had to spend one Euro buying one in Paris. Condoms are expensive out in the west!
There is no excuse for not using a condom, my friend Bob the Rockstar did a lot of wild things, but always used rubber. God, I remember walking into a pharmacy with him when he bought a box of 100 condoms, and since he is a Rockstar he had this insane swagger about it. I have never seen so many jaws drop at the same time! Bob was going to Spring Break in Daytona, and he did manage to finish them all in his four-week trip to the States. Or so he claims, we dodn't know if all he did was jerk off in them, but I'll grant him the benefit of doubt. The reason he bought them in India is because rubber is a lot cheaper here.
The anecdote is a bit weird, while it highlights sexual insanity, it also shows that people aren't completely reckless. Unlike Doc, who was doing two women at the same time, and only corrected his ways when one of them freaked. I got tested back then and have gotten tested every once in a while since - usually whenever I end up donating blood I tick off the optional AIDS test option, but I'll be honest I haven't had a test in a while. Talking about condoms Ultra-thins are a bit weird, but this isn't a post explaining condom performance, I'm no expert at that - read FHM or something like that. But please, don't take a chance, have sex, but use rubber. Life is too short to be that careless.
While I will admit that many of us in the media, particularly in India hate talking about sex, let alone AIDS, we should start. But, I hope some of you read blogs and hopefully not all of you are stupid. Now, I have to go get drunk.

Direct-To-Home TV rocks!

A few months ago, my editor suddenly asked me to change the type of gadget reviews that we had been doing, "They're too geeky and read like bloody press releases. You're cheating the user, why would he read a review if he can get everything online." Sadly, he was right. And of the first product shootouts in the updated column was a Tata-Sky vs Dish TV comparison. After a couple of months, I still have both systems, I bought Tata-Sky and the DishTV folks are dithering on taking back their system, and unlike other gadgets I can't just pack it up and return it because it does need to be manually dismantled.
If you want my honest opinion, my money spoke, I actually bought Tata-Sky, because it is the better albeit more expensive system. Why? Reason one - while I can play around with the settings on DishTV and the system also tells me signal strength and all that, the Tata-Sky user interface and remote is eons ahead in terms of sheer usability. Secondly, and I started noticing this after a while, is that the picture quality on Dish TV is inferior to that of Tata-Sky. When did I notice this? While watching soccer - to be more precise, the Champions League on Ten Sports when I started to notice obscene amounts of pixellation. The adverts promised DVD quality images, what I was getting was VCD quality images with great sound.
Then, I started to keep a sharper eye out during more mundane programming on AXN and Discovery Travel and Living and started to notice 'artefacts' like you see on a badly encoded DVD. To be fair, I noticed that even on Tata-Sky the picture quality leaves a bit to be desired, but I only noticed that on my friends brand-new 42-inch LCD TV. In addition, the program listing facility is also much better on Tata-Sky.
Somehow, I also have the funny feeling that Tata-Sky will also be the first to offer HDTV capabilities on their channel, but given what HDTV will do our news-anchors exposing their physical flaws (though not their false accents), I doubt I'll be seeing that anytime soon. And since Tata-Sky doesn't show CNN-IBN for some strange reason (not that I mind, very honestly but this means that I doubt TV18 can give Tata-Sky a 'honest' review on any of their shows) I don't really care. In fact, I don't really care for news channels anyway, they're quite boring.
At Rs 3,999, the Tata-Sky system is quite expensive, DishTV comes in far cheaper at Rs 3,190, so you basically get what you pay for, in addition the monthly charges aren't much off your cable bill if you subscribe to a 'premium' package - which if you're reading this you probably will - those will cost upwards of Rs 300 a month, but look at it this way, that is still under Rs 10 a day and really thats nothing much. Plus chances are you're already paying around Rs 300 for cable, so the only investment you're making is for the dish and the set-top box - but you get better picture (even on DishTV) and stereo sound. I mean, really!
So, and now let me use a line I used to in high school debating, in conclusion, if you can afford it, just go in for DTH. Conditional Access Systems (CAS) won't really change anything unless the stupid coaxial cable being used to bring TV to your house is changed. Put simply, this is very good and I like it and you only get the 'Active' systems on DTH. I'll tell you why I like DTH, it has made TV viewing fun again, and that in itself is reason enough to get it. And thae fact that you are finally free of the neighbourhood goon who runs your cable TV system.
A colleague and a fellow Stephanian warns me that Anil Wilson, Principal of that hallowed institution has a blog! Well, I'm linking it here. Enjoy!

Childhood fantasies...

When you are an adolescent teenager you have these wild fantasies. Like making about with the women in every issue of Playboy magazine, damn making out actually. Of course, to be more honest, it was Cindy Crawford in my case. That mole is all there was to it. The other thing I wanted to do was fly on a fighter plane, which is why I'm particularly jealous of my good friend 'JetBoy' who works in UndieTeeVee and recently flew a F/A-18F Super Hornet - damn bugger!
Anyway, the reason behind this post is that I'm finally being able to fulfill one of my myriad of fantasies next week (fingers crossed and hope I am not crushed to death by the mob at Rajiv Chowk and not run over by a bus at one of Delhi's roundabouts). What the fantasy is obviously I cannot mention, but it doesn't involve wicking candles here and there nor am I paying good ol' Hugh a courtesy call. But, it does involve a lot of testosterone and unburned petrol and smoking rubber on a airstrip. Yay! JetBoy of course, was not impressed, after all when you've held the control yoke on a Sukhoi and a Mirage, do you really care. But then again, I doubt I will exceed the 250k's I hit on the Audi A8 (on my secret stretch of road).
Talking about childhood fantasies, has anyone noticed the massive decline in that rag called Debonair? Not that it was anything major to talk of ever, but the women there look too big to even be in a Bhojpuri film. But that said, Bhojpuri films are getting quite risque, I saw one on cable the other day in which there was a song sequence reminiscent of Mandakini in THAT sequence, though the actress was not Mandakini-hawt!
Shwangy talks about how the Delhi Auto drivers are getting all weird.

What happens when drives hit media moguls!

While the Anant kidnap case was making all the headlines, HT came out with a flyer on a survey it had conducted which showed that 59 per cent of Delhi-ites were against 'sealings'. Quite against the usual pro-professionals and Delhi-improvement stand the paper has been on. Of course, while this possibly was because HT decided finally to pander its own readers but I just found it peculiar that barely a day earlier HT Media's VC's house in New Friends Colony had been sealed (not under the SC mandated residential area anti-commercialisation drive but under another Delhi HC mandated illegal construction sealing drive).
Lately ToI has been on the Delhi Traffic Police's case for bad traffic management but expect a mad rush of stories from tomorrow and even worse. BCCL's VC has actually filed a case against the Delhi Traffic Police because he was not able to leave his (completely legal, by the way) residence on SP Marg because of President Hu's visit. However, this move unlike the suffering in the above case, I fully support. And because the elder brother is one heck of a determined guy expect this to escalate to quite a level, maybe going all the way up the courts (till the SC) and I'll like to see how the Home Ministry and Foreign Ministry's react to this, because I doubt they'll get a very favourable ruling.
Why will I not be surprised if another media mogul soon starts railing against the new Delhi airport because the new runway the GMR consortia plans to build will send planes straight over his (not very legal) farmhouse in Ghittorni. Fun, ain't it! The things you can do if you own a newspaper or five and a couple of TV channels to boot!

Brilliant...

Investigative journalism isn't all about going with hidden microphone cameras and then pretending to uphold democracy while not thinking twice about mailing CD's with mobile phone conversations recorded on them 'anonymously'. It is all about the 'impact' after all.
The Philadelphia Inquirer is doing a fantastic series on how a 'Doctor' from Agra became one of the biggest internet drug pushers in the world. OK, the references to India seem very quaint, but my god these guys were running a multi-million dollar operation. Very well-written by the way. (via Turbanhead)
And by the way, democracy isn't about killing your daughter-in-law and your daughter and then feigning to be holier than thou while not thinking twice before ripping off your elder brother who lives off his army pension (I have the last bit from a colleague). And importantly, nor is democracy about religion-based quotas, I don't care what the Sachar committee report says, if this government allows religion-based quota's, I'll vote for Narendra Modi for Prime Minister no matter how much Mr Sardesai screams and shouts.
I might have reservations about the concept of reservations after seeing the way St Stephen's College put it into practice - because over there, the concept of a 'non-creamy' layer didn't seem to exist, reservations it seemed will go to only those who were 'privileged' enough to get them, so what if their fathers had made it without a quota. I don't like imposing views on anybody, but for crying out loud, if a Muslim-quota was implemented, the only way the BJP could lose is to put that idiotic wife-beater up for PM.
And then there is this wonderful article on 'Being Paris Hilton' - the wonders of technology I tell you. I mean, this woman has used a grainy night-vision self-made porn film to catapult herself to greatness!

More news/rumours

By now everybody knows the sad tale of the Express office at Qutab getting sealed, operations have moved to the (also illegal) building at Qutab and my friends at the Express lament that they will be moving to Noida - but even that building does not have space full up with Jansatta and Loksatta people. And Times and StanChart have taken over the Express uilding at BSZ - which is a NDMC certified fire hazard. Other media offices under the spotlight are Media Transasia who are also shifting out of their building in Safdarjung and also moving to Noida. Some smaller news channels which were operating out of houses - and even TV channels have also come under the scanner - these guys do not fit the profile of 'small traders'. Anyway, everybody has decided to move to the badlands of Noida because Mulayam needs all the help he can get.
What is up with EchTee? I really thought that a new editor would help the paper back on its feet, but the place is more confused than ever before. Anyway, on the Vir front it seems even more rumours have emerged. One of the projects that Peter Mukherjea is doing in his pruned-down role at Star is looking at the possibility of another English Variety channel alongside Star World (Star World 2, Star Boring, Star Let us run another series two seasons behind the US and hope the audience hasn't discovered BitTorrent) and this might mean a reprise for Vir's boring show from the TV production company that Vir has just started. Of course, Vir's boring show is nowhere half as awful as Simi Garewal, but at least that allowed MTV to make the spoof show - which is better than the original.
Anyway, I do have one small question from the political side, why are Express and Tehelka trying to promote reservations for minorities and why are our ministers talking their mouths off? I don't understand the 'Let us help the BJP get itself back on its feet' syndrome. Even though the BJP is a house divided today, at the rate things are going, these guys will be coming back to power before you know it.

Vir to quit EchTee?

Sorry, I've been so snowed in with work that I really haven't had the time to post anything here. Anyway, this little item of news has been doing the rounds for quite a while - but of late I get asked this question by the strangest people. My answer is that I have no freaking clue what Vir is doing. But why is this question doing the rounds so much?
Ever since Vir was bumped up in HT to Editorial Director there has been this constant rumour that he will leave. But then he headed EchTee's foray into Bombay, which was backed by the monies raised from the poor sods who bought HT Media stock and Kumar helping his aunt out a bit with lots of advertsing support. People who've seen EchTee Bombay would agree that it is a rather mediocre product, I won't call it bad - but business and entertainment coverage borders on the awfully unintelligent. And then there is the fact that Vir could not save Avirook from a maelstrom. We still don't know what exactly happened, but let us drop that.
Anyway, the earlier rumour was that EchTee and EyeTee would see a straight swap at the top - God took over the reins at EchTee House and Vir at F14/15. But EchTee just got a new Boss (and God is God-like as ever), for better or for worse. I still don't know what to make of the few bylined stories of CK - how is the trader in Karol Bagh worried about his shop being shut down care about the British Foreign Secy I do not know and even the lamest idiot will tell you that people have forgotten simple page layout skills - and crazy stories are being carried - the worst in the section run by my former bureau-mates - have you seen HT's Business Section - I hate to say it but Times' business section is possibly the best business section in a mainline - by a country mile or hundred.
Anyway, the latest rumour - and I must admit that this is fairly unconfirmed and comes from idle gossip at Dilli O'Dilli at the Habitat is that Vir is going Counterpoint and all to Times - where ToI will pay him not to be in HT. Since Bennett's new business model seems to be hiring journalists all over the place just to suck up the market - look at ET (where however competent journalists are rarely to be found) this would not be implausible. Pay Vir a huge amount of money (the rumours of Vir leaving 19-20 KG Marg stem from the fact that CK and RN have been brought in from abroad with gazillions of rupees every month, much more than the man and Vir doesn't get a SUV, which he wouldn't drive anyway).
Anyways, thats the rumour, now I'll go back into hiding for a few more days because I've got some amazingly insane deadlines to meet.