Because Nobody is Buying Your Story
Dear Reader,
Read this carefully!
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 21-gun salute, oops! 21-Day Lockdown, has claimed its first casualty.
Starting Wednesday, ‘The Newspaper’ has disappeared from my doorstep. And unlike the vegetables, and grocery, and soap bars, and real estate that the broadsheet colourfully advertised and emulated, nobody (rpt nobody) is queueing up at the neighborhood news-stand, six feet apart, to get their hands on whatever happened yesterday.
News, served to you, dear reader, the morning after, they say, is forever stale.
There is no newsstand ... in town... to serve fresh tomorrow’s essentials.
And life is so much better for that!
By the time we get our ‘azadi’, the world around us would have changed forever.
I am telling you this when I have been a journalist myself ... three decades in all.
I claim I understand.
No, I insist I KNOW!
For, I did not miss out the irony of the day before yesterday, long before the Prime Minister stood his ground inside the idiot box coming down on the nation with his heaviest hand yet.
That morning’s broadsheet at my doorstep, from the larger than the largest that can be... the world’s largest, but not the mightiest, English daily... stared at me from the doorstep... one last time, making a ‘meek appeal of FIGHTING FACTS WITH FACTS: ... ‘our newspapers are untouched by human hands during the printing process,’ it claimed.
Frankly, nobody cares.
For far too long, newspaper barons prided themselves for turning their broadsheet into ‘compendiums for advertisers.’
‘News is what appears on the margins,’ they ordained.
No JOURNALIST is of USE, proclaimed the noblest of the noble barons, little realising that EVEN THE WORM HAS ITS USE one day!
Well, now it’s the worm inside our lungs doing all the talking Milord, eliminating headline chatter, as we go around stocking vegetables, and grocery, and soaps, within our measly real estate, turned catacombs of the living ... too walled in for this vast beautiful world we inherited, and the one you turned one day into the advertiser’s dream soap opera!
Suddenly, THE KING is WEARING... well, NO ROBE...
As WE ALL STAND NAKED.
So, is this really The End of Story?
Not really, if you really believe: ‘TRUTH PREVAILS’!
As we lock ourselves in, in a desperate stance of social distancing, and take to social media with vengeance, not knowing if we will get to meet our near and dear ones in blood and flesh ever again, we are also rediscovering news Milord.
NEWS that we can really USE this TIME!
And we are discovering that news in NYT, WSJ, Guardian, Bloomberg, Reuters, BBC, CNN, and in the world’s greatest academic journals. And we are reading aloud each other’s stories … at the swipe of our index finger. ‘Untouched by human hand.’.
And we are educating ourselves with our most important lessons of LIFE from some of THE FINEST MINDS in the world without having to pay from our hard-earned income for a handcrafted photograph of a soap bar in your hand...
Or the cloud kissing Mansions OF THE gods where YOU dwell and drive us to dream forever!
Suddenly, our world has been flattened by the invisible hand of God!
Most important, we are getting to understand how to make do without you.
TIME, they say, always comes full circle.
That’s how we unravel the secret of The Times!
I write this with a heavy heart, without rancour ... and without an axe in hand to grind ... having worked and breathed for well over a decade -- of my three long and endearing ones -- with some of the finest minds of My Times, above which all prevailed the most wonderfully exalted Mind of Yours!
Thank You Milord, But No Thank You!
I AM DOING JUST FINE!
PS: There are hundreds of thousands of newspaper hawkers and delivery persons who provide the last mile connect with their soiled hands to help newspapers sell dreams.
I haven’t seen my delivery person in the last two days. I am sure he’s facing income deprivation.
I hope to share my love and meagre resources once he’s back, should he need to rebuild his life, if he comes out of this turmoil unscathed.
Dear Baron,
I hope that you too will share a piffling sum out of your billions so that he can arrange for his morsels.
Mr Johnnie-come-lately, if you really care for me, Adam, as you say you do, just take a short walk from your living room door to your kitchen and leave some food in a tidy sealed packet at your gate for me... with a silent prayer.
And no doggy bags this time around. Please...
It will come handy (no pun intended) while I walk.
And it will nourish my soul ... for, I will begin to believe that someone really cares.
And then, when you go back to your solitary confinement in THE AGE OF QUARANTINE, take a good look at the bottle you have stocked up in your bar before you hurl curses at one and all, once more.
All it says is: Keep Walking!
Take care!
Adam!
.............
And while you are at it, watch this flick.
It’s about, well, #Walking!