It was a bright, sunny day. Birds were chirping, rivers flooding, a tree had been lopped down, all was well. Then this friend called; a guy I’ve known for years. Nice chap, the type that reads books and stuff. Non-fiction tomes on history, science, anthropology. Our teachers tried talking him out of it, but back then there was nothing actually built into the syllabus that could prevent kids from reading. Now, of course, one can remove entire chapters on evolution or federalism or human rights.
In fact, we can slowly remove learning altogether and ensure that kids focus on mechanics or plumbing or coding, get a move on you know. Imagine being 30 and still studying, like the JNU types — unbelievable. I am told Charles Darwin voyaged five years on the HMS Beagle just collecting natural history specimens. What a colossal waste of time!
But I digress. I was telling you about, well, let’s call him Samar. So Samar called and he was miserable. ‘Plane crash in Calicut; Bombay and Assam are drowning; virus on a rampage. What a ghastly year!’
I was puzzled. Bad news yes, but why get so gloomy? ‘Calm down Samar. Lots of good stuff happening too,’ I said.
‘Are you kidding? Name one!’
‘Well, duh! We’re going to have a grand temple soon,’ I said. ’Don’t you watch TV? The flowers, songs, posters? We’re almost there.’
‘Where is there?’
That’s Samar — nice but not always bright. So I explained. ‘Ram Rajya, Samar. We’re almost there. Once the temple is up, that’s pretty much it.’
Samar accused me of being sloshed, getting booze when nobody else in Chennai could get a drop. He went on such a rant I had to hang up.
It makes me sad when people get things all wrong. Samar was raving about India having the most infections this month and emerging as a global hotspot. Now this can’t be. The Union Health Minister has himself announced that “the spread of Covid-19 has been contained”. The problem with Samar is he still believes data even though ministers and TV channels tell him every day what to believe.
Why, for instance, does Samar think Saifuddin Soz is under house arrest in J&K? Sure, a video shows Soz straining over his home’s boundary wall before being dragged away by cops, but the government has declared he is free and that’s good enough for me.
It’s like those videos that showed Delhi cops calmly standing by as people made incendiary speeches, hurled stones or opened fire. Does this make them culpable? Never. Learn from the courts, Samar, I said. Believe what cops and government officers say. They never lie. And when they put it in a sealed envelope, it pretty much reaches Satyameva Jayate levels.
It’s in this spirit, I told him, that professors and poets are bunged in jail when the police claim they are terror suspects or violence abettors. Remember, it’s the claim that matters. If you are actually in a car with a terrorist, like Davinder Singh was, you will get bail. If you are a proven rapist, the judge will ask the victim to tie you a rakhi before releasing you. If you defraud thousands of people of their savings, you will be hospitalised as soon as you clutch your stomach. But the absence of hard proof? That’s the clincher — you can be jailed for years without bail or even medical help, never mind dementia or diabetes.
This is the zeitgeist that TV channels have understood so well. Focus on claims and planes. On every pit-stop of the Rafael journey; every theory on a filmstar’s demise; every kilometre of territory the Chinese have not intruded into. The important thing is to keep viewers calm and clueless. Be positive, Samar, I said. Learn from TV.
Very soon, thank god, we won’t have too many people with my pal’s mental deficiency. Schools will step in and prepare our kids to receive the delightful bromides that Prime Time provides. Remember that old Tom Paxton song from the 60s?
‘What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?
I learned our government must be strong,
It’s always right and never wrong,
Our leaders are the finest men,
And we elect them again and again,
And that’s what I learned in school today.’
Where the writer tries to make sense of society with seven hundred words and a bit of snark
