The ToI trilogy- Part 2- The Two Columns

Turn to the editorial page of the ToI.

It is a page second most frequented by me (of course after the pune times).
Statutory Warning- If you for one second even compare it to the editorial of ‘The Hindu’, you are actually comparing Bappi Lahiri to Pink Floyd. So, don’t do it!!

If you bring your eyes to the lower side of the page, on the extreme left and the extreme right, you will find the columns which I’m talking about. One of them is a column written by every Tom, Dick and Harry which would make you think if this is really an editorial or is it a blog like this one, where everyone posts everything for millions to read!

On the right side you will find another column that calls itself ‘the speaking tree’. This one claims to bring the readers to a spiritual enlightenment and one of its many contributors was the ex-Swami Nityananda- whom you know better as the guy who was caught on video with a lot of naked women!!

These two columns are not mere columns, they are the pinnacles of stupidity to which a newspaper which has taken its readers for granted can reach.

The column on the left recalls stories of how a women now in her forties lost her pens frequently when she was at school, people of a colony getting the municipality to clean the garden in front of their houses just because “ooh! It stank so much…” or how a guy whose daughter was about to get married faced the difficulties in arranging for the ‘shamianas’ and catering. I sometimes feel like asking the editor, “Is there nothing better to write about in the whole world than the price of chingri maach or the number of calls one had to make to get his TV repaired just so he could watch the T20 world cup??”

People like us face these kind of situations every day, the only problem is that we are not ‘accomplished’ writers to figure in your editorial. We know how many calls it takes to ask the APSEB guy to come and fix the broken meter, how many applications one has to forward if he just has to get his house registered, how many potholes are present on which road and why they were created in the first place. What we want to know is what is happening in the country and how the country is being affected by it. We want to hear people considered learned enough to talk about the subjects they are good at, not an economist talking about religion.

Coming to religion, we now take on the column on the right. This one talks about How doing pranayaams can help increase our life span, how the peace of mind is the only way to reach ‘moksha’. How we can only dissociate oneself from material gifts and be happy. C’mon guys, you need the material benefit that’s why you are running the paper. You need the material benefit and that’s why you print so many ads. You need the material benefit that’s why the world runs the way it does.

Just like Gordon Gekko said “Greed is good…all the greatest things achieved by men were achieved because they were fired by greed” and now just because you say so, do we give it up and become saints and go about our daily lives feeling nothing, earning nothing, living nothing? How relevant is your word in today’s world? There are people who lived for short life spans and achieved all the things people who led an uneventful 130 years!! Whom do you consider greatest? Whose legacy will be followed?

But then, there are reasons stronger than the irrelevance of these columns which force me to read this paper I just scorned..