...And The Award Goes To None

Raju Korti
I am overtaken by a sense of trepidation and despair every time a Sunday approaches. Not that one doesn't need a welcome break from the daily skullduggery and humdrum. But for sheer ennui and redundancy, Sundays aren't fun days any more.
Being a habitual home bird comes with its own incumbent risks. There are not many ways to break the shackles, and more often than not you end up switching on the telly in the fond but useless hope of stumbling upon some wholesome recreation. The menu is anything but appetising.
Thanks to the presiding officer of the cable entertainment, the starters are provided by regressive, outrageous soaps punctuated by synthetic and larger-than-life characters who are either too lovey dovey, too scheming, too rich, too poor and too generally too. Loud and pedestrian dialogues matched by garish costumes are far removed from the real. A few minutes of dekko is enough to throw you into pessimism to last till the next weekend. As one who would pause to occasionally watch Marathi serials because they were a wee bit more sensible and down to earth, it is frightening to see the rot setting in there too. There is truly university in this stupid diversity.
The anchors of the crime shows look like criminals themselves, spouting corny scripts and accompanied by strange gesticulations. Of course, they are fun to watch, if you can soak in the humorous element, but then that humour is as dead beat as some of the decomposed and mutilated corpses that are meant to send chills down your spine. The "reconstructed" scenes are probably enjoyed only by the actors who must laugh their guts out at having made a neat pile of dough for doing something as non sensical as that.
Brace for worse for the onward journey -- a plethora of so called news channels. If you haven't seen or known the hosts of talk/debate shows, news anchors and sundry reporters passing off non events as news, you can see them giving you fixed grins from ubiquitous posters dotting your cityscape. They do not need any more honourable mention here. These guys do no wrong, say no wrong, know almost everything under the Sun and their opinions matter above everyone else's. Little wonder even the "experts" summoned to speak look lost and stymied, cut off as they are even before they start waxing eloquent on their valued opinions. Upstart reporters asking inane questions to a cluster of people, most vying to get in front of the camera, look flustered and like sacrificial lambs when news anchors dictate to them from their air conditioned studios what questions to ask. Debates are a non show if there are no frayed tempers.
Movie and music channels that used to be tolerable once have run out of steam. The fare is repeated far too frequently under different heads. So be prepared to watch Shah Rukh Khan's DDLJ ad nauseum in "Romantic Movies", "Love Films", "Kajol Special", "Chopra Special" or maybe "King Khan Week".
But by far the worst is the awards functions. Week after week a hapless audience is condemned to watch some award function or the other or their repeat telecasts "for the benefit of those who missed out the first time". Not satisfied with one man anchoring the show, these days they foist another who in tandem make a pathetic attempt to tickle your funny bone. The scripts are either too pompous or too free flowing to the comfort of your sanity. On the other side of the stage we have award winners who have to kiss and hug their folks after their name is called, jealous competitors sporting disdainful smirks, and others who clap and watch animatedly at just about everything. The inspirational thanksgiving speeches of the ones pipping their rivals to the post are interspersed with the co-anchors pulling each other's leg or making snide remarks against their peers -- all in good humour. And sitting in your drawing rooms, you are supposed to enjoy this unmitigated mediocrity as spice.
The laughter shows make your intestines spill out of your tummy. If you don't laugh here, you are being too harsh on yourself. And to the hosts! If you can't understand and appreciate below-the-belt humour, then your sense of humour is perhaps warped,
That leaves us with some sporting encounters. And if it is something like the IPL that is long enough to give the Great Wall of China a complex, you have the liberty and option to redefine what kind of event it is. A recreation or entertainment.
Whoever said what the eyes don't see the heart doesn't grieve about certainly wasn't speaking through his hat.

The American Paranoia

Raju Korti
The Americans are always obtained on when to mince words, use officialspeak and when to draw from political humour that borders on subtle satire. One does not know whether it was his rigorous stint with the Marine Cops or his diplomatic skills that he kept honing while doing duty for President Reagan and Bush (Senior), but the then Secretary James Baker was sure a class act.On his numerous failed attempts -- like the North Korean Missile Programme -- to broker peace in the conundrum called Middle East, the suave juggler had termed the region as a theatre of the absurd, which indeed it was. When asked by a posse of we-know what-you-would say journalists on what were the guarantees of a conciliation from the US intervention, he reparteed with the trademark non chalance a la Sean Connery, "No guarantees. This is Middle East".Baker's influence may have been replaced with Hillary Clinton's tepid responses as far as the Americal foreign policy is concerned, but the pronounced contrast in the American perception is clearly discernible. That, of course, is quite understandable given the otherwise Big Boss status that the United States has arrogated to itself, more so after the fragmentation of the erstwhile Soviet Union. What amuses, however is the paranoia that it displays when it comes to North Korea and Iran.Pyongyang's latest attempt at acquiring a 6000-9000 km range Inter Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) may have come a cropper, but the Americans believe, rightly or wrongly, that the missile could have been punched with a nuclear warhead.Having been witness to how then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's smiling jaws had dropped to his knees when an Indian rocket launch went kaput, I can also visualise how the American think tank must have took in a long sigh of relief at the failed missile test. But the US also knows, it will be sooner if not later before the reclusive rogue state sends another one soaring to the consternation of millions of gasps.The North Koreans may be still way off a smooth test, but before things degenerate to a head, the Americans need to drop all sense of anxiety and first call the Nokor's bluff before taking any action on the ground, considering it musters the courage to do so. And this is where the crunch lies. Having flopped in most of its military exercises, including the not-so-honourable one when India and Pakistan stood perilously on the brink of a nuke war in 1971 war, the US also needs to reduce its dependence on umbrella organisations like the NATO. Each time it cannot draw support and sustenance from a host of allegiances like it managed to during the war (ostensibly) to rescue Kuwait. Recall how some stooge nations were vociferous in their protest against the US when the UN inspectors did not find even a grain of evidence on the existence of weapons of mass destruction(WMDs) in Saddam's Iraq.The problem is the US has remedies worse than the disease and with its sometimes esoteric approach to handling foreign relations -- expediencies granted -- it only succeeds in isolating itself. The post bin Laden killing is a case in point. Half cock measures don't work in international issues, not in the longer run anyway.Weighed down as they are with the might of China, the implacable North Korea and Iran, and the obdurate Cuba, its time the Americans saw a mirror image in India and deal with the unpredictable Pakistan accordingly. A meandering Pakistan rife with uncontrolled religious extremism is a far more dangerous proposition not only for South East Asia but to the whole world.The North Koreans may or may not reach the Americans, but the Pakistanis have already placed themselves in that situation. Dabbling far too much in others' affairs is fraught with dangerous consequences and the Americans know it. Only they do not learn.Ariel Sharon got it right when he said "Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people control America and the Americans know it."