20120303

Media Magic (BH:D162)

January 13, 2012


The Prime Minister of Bangladesh is visiting Tripura. I did not know that the conspiracy that Mujibur Rahman was accused of, the one that ultimately led to the formation of Bangladesh, was called the Agartala conspiracy. Tripura had accommodated more refugees from Bangaldesh than its own population during the 1971 war. 
When I was looking up the identity of the black and white bird that mercilessly made a breakfast out of the lizard in our driveway couple of days ago, I learnt that the Oriental Magpie Robin was the national bird of Bangladesh where it is called Doel. 

'Explosives detonate in the city' screamed most of the local pages of Malayalam news websites yesterday afternoon. The short reports said that explosives in a thermocol box had been hung as a parcel outside a home near the airport. "Police consider it as a warning" the reports ended ominously. 
Turns out the "explosives" were harmless instruments and equipment that had dropped from a weather balloon launched from Thumba. By this morning, the metro supplements of the newspapers corrected the report with photographs showing top cops of the city examining the package. Still their sensation-hungry photographers had already made an album, so the inside pages carried photos of the worried crowd hanging around anxiously looking at "the bomb diffusion" squad (not in picture).

Sensational reporting catering to the upper classes of the society is the bread and butter of the current media. That means news like the video of half naked tribal women made to dance for money in Andaman or a dalit woman paraded naked through the village because her son eloped with a high caste girl, rarely make it to more than a quarter column of the fourth estate. Sunny Leone updates, however, are available by the minute.

Last year, the media had a riot reporting about something called Love Jihad. It was stated that terrorist outfits where trapping college girls through amorous affairs, luring them into marriage only to convert them religiously and then turn them into fundamentalist activists. Newspapers went on overdrive quoting and unquoting reports and "investigations" warning parents to save their daughters from this terrible snare. No prizes for guessing which community was being targeted. Even editorials were written about how unsafe Kerala had become: a hotbed for Islamic fundamentalism! 
A year later, the cyber forensic cell has submitted its investigation report and the judge has ordered punishment. The entire 'Love Jihad' meme, so to speak, was created by a right-wing Hindu website. The previously mentioned "reports" and "investigations" that had discovered the 'Love Jihad' had blossomed in their deeply saffron minds. I am sure they wouldn't have imagined this kind of success for an inflammatory campaign with ardent support from the mainstream media. Now that the truth is finally out, only Malayala Manorama bothered to publish about the truth. No apology or editorial this time, just a 3 column news in the last page. 

More recently, there was a report from Karnataka that Pakistan's national flag was raised in front some government building. Luckily, investigation was quick and common folks are less jumpy south of the Vindhyas compared to Modi-land. The flag hoisting was handiwork of Sri Ram Sene, another right wing Hindu outfit. I wonder what kind of twisted religious fundamentalism makes you raise the flag of your supposedly "enemy nation" in the hope that the hooplah will cause the bloodshed of some innocents! 
Even our central ministry's overseeing overlord of the internet was desperately trying recently to publicize the inflammatory content on social networking websites under the pretext of banning them. Despite such selfish apes, the irresponsible media and the time-consuming investigation and justice, there is solace that the common Indian man seems to have become far more patient and prudent. The long hours of waiting outside government offices for the mercy of powers-that-be to get his human rights "granted" might have something to do with it!

Amma started the day by issuing a challenge to my fear of the needles. She wanted me to use the glucometer. She had learnt all about the insertion of the needle and making the gun shoot it to take the blood sample. 
I sweated. I paced about. 
I attempted a couple of times. I gave up a couple of times. 
I protested that the morning coffee will skew the reading. 
I insisted on reading the glucometer manual again to buy time. 
I grew cold. 
She scolded. She taunted. She called me a sissy. 
Worse, we both had this unverified "medical knowledge" that stress and tension increased blood sugar levels. So all my drama was going to affect the reading. 
After about 10 minutes of her various psychological tactics, I gave in and pricked my left middle finger. It took some real squeezing to get a tiny drop out of the touch & go incision I had managed. 
Reading: 99! 
Smack in the normal range. 
The two and half month embargo on refined sugar coupled with the weight loss seems to have worked out. I did have pastries and payasams in the interim. So it has been a totally acceptable lifestyle. 
We had half a Ziploc container of cake (with icing) left in the refrigerator. Amma threw it out along with the glucometer strip. In my elevated state stemming from the depressed RBS value, that cake would have surely been inside me by noon. She knows me well!

Sprouts have appeared on all the sacks that had been installed on the terrace by Karshaka Karma Sena couple of days ago. It is pretty amazing how much they grow in the span of a day at this stage when it is noticeable. Tiny white specks that appeared above the dark fertilized soil in the morning have almost an inch of lift off by the evening. I had been worried about one sapling which was injured during watering on the day of arrival. Thankfully it has also assumed an erect posture today. 
Achan preferred to water the plants in the evening, I do it in the morning. A quick online research says morning is slightly better since evenings might lead to more pest problems as water stays on the leaves and stagnates around the plant. 

An enjoyable chunk of the day was spent in digesting "The Freewill Theorem" of Convay and Kochen (http://plus.maths.org/content/john-conway-discovering-free-will-part-i). It meant revisiting some of the concepts like Bell's theorem, EPR and hidden variables whose superficial awareness that I possessed had also gone down the memory drain.

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