PERUMON TO SOUMYA: MURDERS MOST FOUL

Ever since Sage Parasurama with a flick of his able wrist propelled his divine battle axe from Gokarnam to Kanyakumari and magically reclaimed the strip of land called Kerala from the sea, it has been a balmy, temperate place. The Keralites, spoiled beyond measure by the idyllic climate, the natural beauty and the sedate pace of life in the Sage's own land, (now dubbed God's Own Country by the wiz kids of Stark Advertising who "sell the State" for Kerala Tourism) were the only people who stridently complained about the HOT summers and the BLUSTERY rainy season. If they had travelled around and discovered for themselves what heat meant, or for that matter cold, they wouldn't have dared to open their mouths again.

We had our share of the heat spells, and admittedly, a fair share of the windy monsoons. But more or less pleasant and balmy weather was the hallmark of the land all along, not only when the tough Sage had directly supervised the running of his pet country, but through the later centuries too when a string of kings and chieftains held sway over the land. Had it been otherwise, it would have found sure mention in that delectable "garland of legends" ('Aithihyamala') by Kottarathil Sankunni, raconteur par excellence. The Brits, for all their colonial faults, couldnt be said to have been lax when it came to documenting the climate and weather patterns of the sub-continent. Also, the Maharajah of Travancore, who took the initiative to establish an observatory, one of the oldest in the sub-continent, was an amateur weatherman himself. The long and short of it is that never was recorded in the history of this ribbon of land any typhoons or squalls or suchlike manifestations of the anger of the weather gods.

Until the fateful day of July 8, 1988.

According to the experts of the Indian Railways (whose main business we thought was running trains efficiently and on time--at least trying to-- and not weather-watching), Nemesis in the guise of a tornado stealthily and suddenly appeared and lifted ten coaches of the Bangalore-Kanyakumari express train off the Perumon bridge and plunged them into the depths of the Ashtamudi lake, killing about 105 people. That many in country boats were fishing nearby did not deter the tornado as it was confident it could do its dark deed with absolute stealth. Not a single palm frond nearby was shaken by the tornado --such was its stealth and focus! The eyes of the weather men and their weather radars were clouded over with stealth technology by the tornado while it struck, so that all over the country no unusual weather was observed or recorded.

It was usual right from the days of the British Raj for officials to devote considerable time to personal hobby interests, and more so when their jobs involved long periods of offficial inactivity. The railway Safety Commissioner's job was one such. In times of no breach of safety, he spent time idly like a chafing war horse. It was quite probable that he had in his spare time over the years cultivated an intimacy with the vagaries of Indian weather that had probably escaped the eyes of the harried regular weathermen. He knew the stealthy tornadoes intimately.

One look at the "mysterious" (the 'mystery' had to do with "how did it happen?" But to the layman without much imagination, it appeared that some flaw, probably in the rails, had caused the train to derail and plunge into the lake) accident site convinced the Safety Commissioner that the villain was a stealthy tornado! After due investigations and examinations of witnesses, most whom as typical Keralites were ignorant of what a tornado was, he submitted a detailed report. Suffice to say the report went to great lengths to ensure the safety of the railways and its minions in the post-tragedy scenario. As a wag pointed out at the time, the people were fools to think that he would act like the Public Safety Commissioner; his official designation amply clarified his duties, and he only did what he was supposed to do.

Whether the accident and the tragedy was the result of human error or oversight, his choice of an "Act of God" as the causal force had about it a stroke of genius and benevolence. In these days of Ahimsa, no scapegoats were needed to satisfy the bloodlust of the public. Probably what guided him was also the philosophical resignation that whatever you did could not bring back those who had found a watery grave on that tragic day; surely the plight of the living was supreme, whose lives could be made sheer hell by unpleasant and unnecessary questions that could be raised by all and sundry. The tornado upon whom the blame was fixed for the tragedy was sure not to protest the finding of the Commission, as it was unlikely that it would visit Kerala again for another Millennium or more. This is how public servants and Commissions of Inquiry should function. Find a generally acceptable and credible culprit and close the files after due legal process. Thanks largely to such practices, the railways could get back to their business of keeping the largest network of rolling stock in the world rolling steadily and smoothly.

Along with the Indian Posts & Telegraphs (now a doddering non-entity, thanks to Liberalization era reforms) the Indian Railways shared the distinction of being behemoths who were a law unto themselves. The disdain exhibited especially by the telephones department when a poor customer sought to raise a complaint of over-billing is only legion. They claimed, like the government of today does with the list of names of the black money kings, that they had immunity and they were not under obligation to make public "technical information" like the phone usage details of an individual. Finally that saviour of the "Aam aadmi", the Supreme Temple of Justice, ruled that so long as the department took money from the public in lieu of a service, it would be bound by the relevant rules. And the behemoth had to, unwillingly though, shelve its hauteur and behave.

The Indian Railways often is something like an empire with its own laws, and answerable to none. When sometime back a couple of lady academics whom I knew well undertook a journey from Trivandrum, Kerala, to Hyderabad, the most precious content of their baggage was their doctoral theses and related papers. Their "possessive behaviour" triggered the antennae of some among the legion of thugs and thieves ( I am not here meaning those in the employ of the railways and who practice the above trade), cut-purses and bag snatchers who, with impunity, make an excellent living off the many trains plying the length and breadth of this vast land of ours. That night their baggage was stolen. Luckily the ladies awoke in time to discover their loss and tried their best to get the Ticket Examiner do something about it. He, true to his official training and behaviour, brushed aside their plaints and pleadings and went off in a huff. Thanks to the initiative of co-passengers, the broken-open suitcases were discovered in the vestibule--where the chagrined thieves had dumped them. The papers were in disarray and thrown to the floor and the wind was doing its best to distribute it over the countryside. The duo, downcast and dispirited, got down at the next station and lodged a complaint with the Station Master and the police, who apparently believed that sympathetic behaviour did not go well with officialdom. With much hardship they attended their interviews and returned.

Months later the machinery of justice, turning ponderously, finally issued a summons to the professors to attend a hearing in some north Indian city court. As they were busy academics and as they had good legal advice, they were finally able to prevail upon the railways to shift the venue to within Kerala. At the hearing the tone adopted by the counsel for the railways made it appear that the two ladies had started from Kerala with a load of worthless papers with the express aim of defrauding the railways of a tidy sum of money! Fortunately this vein of questioning and argument did not 'gel' with the presiding Judge and, pulling up the railway's counsel for his frivolity and lack of civility, reminded him about the railways contractual obligations etc (buying a ticket entitles you to such, no less). In the end damages were awarded to the two lady academics, and all agreed that it was not the money but the spirit of the award that made the whole exercise worthwhile.

A young man who lost a couple of his fingers when a damaged window shutter fell on his hand was chastised by the railway counsel for not exercising caution and common sense and for trying to make an easy living by embezzling money from the railways. If you know the phrase "adding insult to injury", you will know exactly how the plaintiff felt. Fortunately some eagle-eyed youngsters discovered that the same coach was continuing in service without any repairs, and reconsideration of the case laid the blame squarely upon the railways, leading to a redressal of the original complaint.

Instances like the above are countless and they read like an enumeration of the railways' continuing criminal apathy towards the plight of passengers. They take your money and act as if they are doing you a favour. They act as if they are an unquestionable law unto themselves, and time and again they prove in the lawcourts  and in public that they cannot be "touched".

It is perhaps some sort of a tragic coincidence that on the 23rd anniversary of the Perumon tragedy, a 23 year old young girl's life was snuffed out, largely as a result of the continuing indifference of the Indian Railways.  Soumya, an ill-fated commuter in the Shoranur Passenger train, was the victim of attempted robbery and later cruel rape and cold-blooded murder by the miscreant who had pushed her out of the running train. The tragedy shook the conscience of Kerala in many subtle ways. But televised reports of the railway Divisional Manager's conference the next day presented "text book attempts" at discovering novel ways of shifting the blame. It was patently clear that the railways were culpable for the lack of any security arrangements for the passengers despite long-standing and vocal demands by the travelling public. Technicalities will always be found to explain away inconvenient truths and to brush the dirt under the carpet. Such is the inhumanity of officialdom, especially in post-independence India.

The railways have grown into a huge machinery of indifference and its minions are apparently strangers to what is commonly called conscience. Its responses are, to put it another way, typical corporate behaviour. Wash your hands of all inconvenient truths and distance yourself from all that could be troublesome to you. Money-minded corporates could get away with such behaviour. But in a national service like the railways, funded by public money and meant as a service to the tax-paying public, and NOT as a profit-making mechanism, this sort of anti-people behaviour can no longer be tolerated. The concept of the Welfare State might be anathema to liberal economic pundits like Mr Singh or his cohorts, but India has a set of Constitutional guiding principles that are distinctly different from the personal preferences of people who come and go, or people who somehow get in and refuse to go.

Ours is an elected democracy and public instititutions must fulfil their public obligations, and accountability is not something that can be shifted to "the other man". This should be insisted upon with the clout of the laws of the land. We recall with gratitude how the Supreme Court once made the telephones Goliath bow to the little David, the "aam aadmi". Once again the powerful gavel of the Justices should hammer into indifferent giants like the railways the need to displace their arrogance and impunity with social commitment, civic sense and a pro-active approach. Officials should realize that they are nothing if not the servants of the millions whom they serve every day. This is the right time for the railways to augur in some changes. They have a sensitive woman heading the ministry, and perhaps a woman's touch could prove to be the magic element to restore what was lacking till now.

It is so sad that on the 23rd anniversary of the Perumon tragedy when a child born back then was sacrificed again for no crime of hers upon the altar of the indifference of the railways. Govinda Samy's hands are literally stained with the blood of Soumya. We witnessed the railways, like Pontius Pilate after the sentencing of Jesus, ritually washing their hands of all liability and culpability. But anybody could see that the water has turned a deep crimson red...with the blood of the innocent young girl.

QUO VADIS, railways???

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THE GREAT INDIAN HOPE TRICK

Legend has it that it is the greatest of the Indian conjuring tricks. And till now none has been able to decipher fully the secret of the great magic trick.

The Great Indian Rope Trick is the ultimate illusion, the conjuror's magnum opus.

In the simpler version, the magician, playing on his pipe like a snakecharmer does, 'charms' a stout rope to rise into the air , and when it is high in the air,  a little boy climbs it. In other fancier versions the rope is thrown into the air and then it is persuaded to rise and rise until it disappears into the clouds. The little boy climbing the rope soon vanishes from sight. Soon the magician would climb after him with a sword and he too vanishes. Then dismembered organs start raining upon the ground. Moments later the magician reappears and with an "abracadabra" or equally powerful incantations, "re-assembles" the little boy. And all ends well. Applause. Clink of money.

Within the last hundred years or so only a couple of people have managed staging the simpler version of the rope trick before audiences. But hurry not dear, gentle reader if you were on the verge of mourning the passing of our position as masters of illusions. The stage is now set for perhaps the greatest magic 'trick' of the century. And like every good conjuring trick, this too is more 'trick' than treat.

It is The Great Indian Hope Trick.

To the Indian languishing in the doldrums of helplessness and hopelessness in the "Kali kaal" of mega-scams, serious diversions like the GIHT offer a much-needed relief, and perhaps a safety valve for their pent up tensions. After the great Parliamentary Kururkshetra battles, the hard-won 'JPC victory' is indeed heady wine that fills one with equally heady hope.

Enter the illusionist, doing his best to look dapper in the customary blue turban, mumbling mumbo-jumbo, and throws the 2G JPC hope/rope into the air. The people are charged with hope. Yes, this is going to be the real thing, and they jostle for ringside seats. This JPC stuff will go all the way into the rarefied regions of corruption and reveal everything. Surely magicians, we forget easily, are adroit entertainers with their fingers on the pulse of the audience. The "abracadabra" and the mumbo-jumbo and other loud incantations fill the air, all the while many climb up and down, appear and disappear. Then the fun part will begin with swords being brandished left and right, and body parts raining down and making the whole scene bloodier than an abattoir on Christmas eve or the guillottine platform at the peak of the French Revolution. The audience, brought up in the grand traditions of Bollywood and the Indian television, loves all that gore and the loudmouthed dialogue, and go ga-ga over the whole tamasha. After the requisite number of 'scenes' to classify it as "serious entertainment", the show will come to a close and the magician will put everything/everyone back together again, to great applause. All would have forgotten what the whole tamasha was about and go their respective ways --happily entertained. None knows this better than the conjuror and his cronies.

I dont think one needs to be an astrologer of repute with a laser vision to pierce the darkness of the murky future and make such a prediction. It is the natural outcome of any conjuring trick. All ends well and the magician goes home pocketing your money. How does every magic trick work? There is nothing great about it. While your attention is focussed on the trivial and you are hoping for something 'miraculous' to happen, the magician is pulling his strings behind the scarf, and with sleight of hand, deceiving you. Illusion? Deceit? Yes Sir!

Simply put, it is grand deceit! And very convincingly and entertainingly done too! The Great Indian Hope Trick is not going to be any different ... hand on heart!

If you are keen, you can dig a bit deeper into the history of all the earlier JPC 'hope tricks'. How many were there? I would rather emulate our PM and say, I dont know because I was not told. Bliss!! (Gautama Buddha was in all probability not familiar with the bliss of ignorance; else he wouldn't have searched long for the ultimate bliss.) How many JPCs were boycotted "for political reasons"? As if politicians need any a-political reasons! Every reason they come up with is political! What were the findings of the various JPCs constituted since the first R-day? Has a single politician been punished or at least inconvenienced upon the findings of any JPC? Forget about the culprits being decapitated or their limbs cut into pieces--though that would have been their fate if our Founding Fathers had the wisdom to borrow the strict Sharia laws instead of implementing a tame civil code in our country! Ask away any more JPC questions that come into your mind. The answer, I can assure you in every case, would be that nothing 'untoward' happened and that it ALL ended well.

What more do you need? You had your JPC, your high hopes, and you were entertained grandly at your own expense for quite a while, when you had been in a state of "willing suspension of disbelief". Now you can all go home; the trick is over. The conjuror is confident of the outcome. Otherwise how could he still harp on the fact that he is putting on the show as a result of the strong persuasion/coersion of the opposition, and not because he feels there is a real need for one! What more indication do we need for concluding that this is going to be another stage-managed show? If the recent well-rehearsed "media interaction" is any pointer, surely the man with the bag of tricks knows how to pull off the "hope trick" too!

So the conjuror is all set and he is playing the pipe and coaxing the rope, and along with it the hopes of the public, his audience, into the blue yonder. As we stand transfixed at the sleight of hand that would bring us entertainment of a rare nature (for which we have already paid in advance with hefty taxes), remember to administer a strategic pinch to one's own person once in a while and maybe one to your immediate neighbour too, if only to prove to yourself that you are awake and not under any spell.

Remember how fond we are all of magic tricks. Forgotten those days in school when the street magician put in an appearance? The child in us still loves those tricks. But let us also not forget that this is not the time for frivolous entertainment. Hope is a serious state of mind and it is perhaps the only thing that propels you along through a life of vexations. And guess what, hope is ALWAYS positive. Tricks have no place where hope reigns.

And be sure to the tell the conjuror that if he knows the rope trick, to get on with it--fast. And make no mistake about it, the one trick we would ALL love to see would be the one where the guy "charms" the heavy rope into a magical noose that would fly to the necks of the guilty.

No less --if he is serious about the applause at the end, and his 'salarium'.

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THE NEO JOURNALISM SCAM

Another 'great' scam broke the surface right beneath our noses last week. But most of us missed the 'tip of the scamberg' for various reasons.

This is the great Neo-journalism Scam. No newspaper has yet come out with investigative disclosures about it, nor have the omnipresent/omniscient channels aired any secret footage, though the whole thing had happened “right in their backyard”, so to speak.

Journalism was, in the good old days, confined to print and the average Indian still could recall names like The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Indian Express, The Hindu and a few more, not to forget those stout fourth pillars built in the vernacular. Those with long memories and a fondness for the heyday of journalism in India would surely recall the names of many stalwarts, adoration for whose iconic status made many a young man take up journalism as a career, and either make good (a rare event)  or, mostly, sink in a sea of drink. Today perhaps the only survivors from the army of old warhorses are people like Kuldip Nayar, S Gurumurthy and T V R Shenoy, the grand old men of upright journalism.

Journalism was mostly reportage, and reportage was largely about bringing before the common man things that he ought to care about and which affected his life and existence, and which he could easily understand once a capable journalist who 'knew his marbles' had spent some time analyzing the issue. Once in a while, once in "an exciting while", journalism was about digging muck, and bringing up murky issues and goings on and shining the light of disclosure upon them. This the general public enjoyed with glee, though mostly they were the victims of these scams the journalists dug up.  Politicians and corporates might borrow the phrase "who is afraid of (V) Woolf" to indicate their disdain for the pen-pushers, but they took care to wine and dine them and to be on the "right side" of these powerful scribes, largely from a fear of their ability to upset the apple cart with one flick of their pens, and secretly from the conviction that it was not easy to influence the true journalist beyond a point.

This comfortable state of affairs was upset with the arrival of private TV channels in the middle of the last century. With the proliferation of the 'visual media', a bevy of high-voltage, 'eye-candy' types replaced those who had studied the ropes of journalism. And who owned the channels? With the more than a crore of rupees a day hire for the satellite transponders and the other astronomical costs for equipment and studios, not to speak of the salaries of skilled technical and other staff, it was an expensive ball game. Result? Only the very well heeled could dabble with this new medium, the darling of the masses. And corporate money, black and white, found its way into the ‘channels’ and as everyone knows, (or should know) corporate cheques  comes with a lot of attached strings, visible and otherwise.

It is ironic to note the upsetting of journalistic values with the coming of visual entertainment. What once got the reader's respect was the journalist's perspicacity, his/her perseverance, and his upright reportage. With even the day’s news putting on the garb of high entertainment on television, the poor journalist who slogged in the background was forgotten and the limelight was upon the 'anchor' or the newsreader--whose journalistic acumen was virtually zero, but whose 'eye-candy' factor was near 100 per cent.

I am not for an instant forgetting stalwarts like Tim Sebastian of the BBC, who made watching an interview a uniquely cathartic experience. Nor am I insinuating that the Indian subcontinent and its television had spawned only duds. But that is all in the past...and passe. I am basing my take on the current crop of the “cream of Indian television journalism”. I had thought that people like Vir Sanghvi, Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt et al were charged with the active blood of young go-getters who would stop at nothing when it came to bringing good TV journalism to the masses. But no more after their recent self-indictment -- in full view of the entire nation.

INDIAN TV JOURNALISM IS DEAD. What appears to wear its clothes and lip-syncs to an 'approved' script is the ghost of an accepted Indian practice--Paid Journalism. This then is the Neo-journalism Scam. Are there any more journalists of the old school left in India who could take up the Herculean task of digging up the truth behind this unsavoury transformation? No, the question is not WHETHER they were paid or not. They were, to judge from their 'convenient' silence and the adroitness with which they avoided all kinds of questions that would have occurred to a rookie journalist on a petty two-penny assignment. What would tax the investigative journalist's brains is --WHO paid the money and HOW MUCH was paid in order to buy their silence and their complicity.

I am, of course, referring to last week's nationally televised TAMASHA OF THE YEAR--the PM's "coming out party" on television before the cream of the media.

Interviews are about asking the right questions, beginning with the most innocuous perhaps, drawing the interviewee out with more related questions and then popping the quarter-million, the half-million and then the million-rupee questions that leave little squirming space for the person on the hot seat. Those who have watched Mr Tim Sebastian’s interviews would instantly know what I mean. But one thing has to be admitted--to the honest man who has nothing to hide, no interviewer can conjure up an instant nightmare, try as he might. It is sheer nonsense to believe that a 'clever' interviewer can 'trap' anybody. No, and NO. ONLY IF you are fond of dark corners to hide, then that is a possibility, where you will feel trapped by the spotlight of intelligent questioning.

If you watch a recording of the whole apparently well-rehearsed 'tamasha' with 'Singh as King', you would discover that not even a single worthwhile question was put to the PM. Nobody in this country is naive enough to believe that spirited youngsters like Mr Sardesai and others of his ilk have forgotten all that they had learned in the schools of journalism. Their apparent amnesia is the surest sign of their having taken "favours" to limit the interview to nothing but an exchange of sweet nothings.

Like the clarion cry of "physician, heal thyself", it is time for another loud exhortation to reverberate in the Indian media firmament now-- "Journalists, investigate thyself". Are we to believe that the whole thing was "spontaneous"? C'mon... How many meetings were there between the "powers that be" and at least some of the journalists (and their corporate cronies and bosses) which laid the foundations for the “interview”?? Back in the good old days when sages like Vinoba Bhave observed a vow of silence, people would throng to the prayer meetings at which he would finally break the silence to listen to his words of wisdom. Mr Singh after his long vow of silence, given to whom we dont know, needed to 'break his silence'. And the entire nation rallied before the TV sets to witness the great man wilt before the machine gun fire of questions and  spill the beans. But like every well-compered program, this too went to the complete satisfaction of the “backroom boys”. (A word of apology is in order—the gender distinction is out of place after Ms Radia and her adroit PR capers!)

The million rupee question...oops! the lakh-crore rupee question is, WHO PLANNED THE MEDIA DRAMA? What was the "quid" promised for the quid pro quo? Will we ever get answers to that and other related questions?

SHAME on you, the greats of Indian television, for not exhibiting the common sense of even a semi-literate man in the street, let alone that of an average journalist.

SHAME on you for lacking the courage to at least politely call a spade a spade.

SHAME on you for not knowing the difference between 'dharma' and 'adharma'.

SHAME on you for not doing your minimum to speak in defence of the poor millions of this nation at whom a pittance is thrown as subsidies.

SHAME on you for having willingly sold your integrity and HUMANITY, God knows for how many pieces of silver.

What shall serve to wash away from Indian journalism this limitless stigma? No “Ganga jal” for you, not so gentle men; your touch shall pollute the divine river beyond redemption. Perhaps the only choice before you now is "sati" --a jump into the purifying flames of the pyre of journalism that you chose to light on that day, unashamedly and with false unction.

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