In your head

Dolores was right. It’s in your head. 

Being on TV gives you a high, and makes you do things that are out of character. Former US President Jimmy Carter was caught on the kiss cam during a game recently. And the 92 year old man, much to the initial discomfort of his wife, smooched her on live TV. That’s the pressure that a camera puts on you. 

Now imagine that if you have to point a camera at people for 24 hours a day. Essentially your business is to sell FMCG products, television etc, and sometimes political propaganda to your viewers. What would you do to keep the attention on you? What if in the intervening period between the commercials, you had to pack news into it? What you get is a sweet reminder of why the opening monologue of Jeff Daniels’ character Will Macavoy in The Newsroom, when he reboots his 9 o’ clock news show into something respectable, is so apt for all of television news media today. Watch the YouTube video. 

But today, it’s apt in a very ironic way. 

“Another mother's breaking 

Heart is taking over 

When the violence causes silence 

We must be mistaken” 

The war-mongering by some of the television news channels, in the past week after the Pulwama terrorist attack on the CRPF motorcade, is unbelievable. People who should know better, are fanning the flames that can’t be doused before the monsoon sets into large parts of India by July. In the intervening period there is a small matter of a general election that over 800 million people will have to plough through. 

These people who should know better are the heads of some of the media houses, and their owners. Commercialisation of media at some level has completely blinded these people, that in the end they are just mouthing or writing words that float through the cyberspace, through airwaves, or onto the newspapers that still come to some people’s homes. 

“But you see, it's not me. 

It's not my family 

In your head, in your head, they are fighting 

With their tanks, and their bombs 

And their bombs, and their guns 

In your head, in your head they are crying” 

For all the tweets, and no matter how many glasses of scotch generals polish off before shamelessly spouting vile, incendiary spiel to millions on TV. They don’t understand. All of what you are framing as a solution, will have to be implemented by real people. 

Here’s the thing though, we have been here before. In the past, there used to be a measure of rectitude exercised by people who considered themselves responsible. But now, it’s just not visible. Now, even our leaders are stepping up to the bully pulpit to display their mastery at misdirection. And everybody knows where this goes. 

But we knew this would happen. When we build people up to be heroes, and then they abandon the dreams they promised were achievable, we always end up here: war-mongering. Bill Maher says the abundance of superhero movies makes us feel that there is always going to be a hero coming to save us. It never happens. 

To quote Sigrid 

“Everybody knows that the dice are loaded 

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed” 

That’s what we did nearly half a decade ago. And for some reason we have ended up in a place that looks familiar, but doesn’t feel so. Sigrid continues. 

“Everybody knows the war is over 

Everybody knows the good guys lost 

Everybody knows the fight was fixed 

The poor stay poor, the rich get rich 

That's how it goes 

Everybody knows” 

Hope as an emotion is almost like a high, as long as there is light at the end of the tunnel. We will select another hero soon. To lead us into battle. But here’s the thing about heroes: we know they will fall. That’s because they can’t bear the burden of hopes of so many people. 

That is mass media coverage for you. We are strapped in and waiting for a hero who will come and save us. 

We think we know how the families of the soldiers who lost their lives in Pulwama feel right now. It’s all around us. From our WhatsApp inboxes, to Facebook and Twitter. And the news media is not far away. There are also reports on tweets by celebrities’ messages to the soldiers’ families. 

But the real heroes are the soldiers. Yes. I consider them as heroes. If the CRPF got half the amount of perks and facilities that the Indian Army did, maybe I would have said they are professional soldiers, and that’s their job. But not with the CRPF. 

We always want someone else to be the hero. Not us. We want someone else to go fight the fight we can’t. On Twitter, people want other folks to fight for them. This has now warped into organised trolling. Based on your political persuasion, you might tolerate some level of vile behaviour. These trolls are defending their anointed heroes. 

But in the end, the real heroes are those who go into war knowing that it’s futile. They’ll either kill or get killed. That’s for certain. Maybe that’s why we in South Asia love to refer to our slain soldiers as martyrs. They joined the fighting forces to make a living, but they know that they have to run at the enemy, and destroy them when ordered to do so.  

But we want our fix. We wish for death and destruction. We are high on nationalistic fervour. It’s like a drug. 

“O chitta ve, 

O chita ve, 

Kaiyan nu hai khush kitta ve, 

Hai mittha ve, 

Hai mittha ve, 

Kundi nashe wali khol ke dekh” 

So what’s in your head?