Breaking news!

A lot is being talked about Indian media and its amateur and sometimes irresponsible presentation. During my recent visit back home i realized there were infinite number of news channels popping out news every minute of the day. Whats more? the “situations” in soap operas are put on scrollers these days as news. Quite a shock! To top it all “Aaj Tak” being “sabse tez” showed a coverage entitled ” Kanpur ki Jail main Bhoot” at the prime-time for 45 minutes. I thought I had it, it can not get any worse. But nope, Aaj tak has done it again. I am sure many of you have seen the recent circulating email  about this. If you haven’t let me tell you. The “breaking news” in Aaj tak is “amitabh ko Thand Lagi”! I was dumbfounded for a bit and as I recovered, I realised there is another way of looking at it. These news are meant to be funny! If you look at it that way, wow, there is no entertainment like news channels.

I can almost fantasize about the news that might soon come up. For example “Shahrukh khan ne aaj Germany main hot dogs khaye” Aaj tak sabse tej!

Now I can  imagine the reporters walking on the streets and taking gentry’s opinion on it. There will be a few saying” that is a misrepresentation or even defamation (people use strong words these days for every damn thing)of Indian culture, he must apologize” while there will be some dudes churning their opinions in english even though the question is asked in hindi ( boy, i am such a hypocrat!) giving away some important lessons on  individualism. Some insane minds will obviously not care ( what a pity, why can’t you have an opinion?). Some folks would feel previledged to be on screen and will keep on rambling on a totally tangential comments that would end up being outright hillarious. I remember somebody giving away honest opinion about AIDS saying” the pros and cons of having AIDS should be made known to public”!  No digression, back to shah rukh eating Hot dog!

Oh i forgot, there will be a lot of politics! First up there will be a few fundamentalists raising ‘fatwa’ against poor shah rukh for desecration of religion, while BJP will once again outcry for Ram janmabhumi and Hindu rashtra. (don’t ask me why. BJP and allied gang is capable of linking any issue to a hindu rashtra agenda ). But may be Raj T would spare him because he is not a “Bhaiyya” and he has acted in ‘Gowarikar’s’ film. Emerging parties would obviously blame “videshi Takads” for this.

Of course as we are ‘the argumentative Indians’ we will have a national debate on ‘Eating habits and their repercussions in Indian society’ on one of the channels and some lawyer in some corner of the country will file a petition against the king khan.

Well, after all this Shah rukh will will be forced to clear the issue. The press conference will reveal that he didn’t eat a hot dog but  a boca burger and he didn’t enjoy it (who does anyway?). That will probably settle the dust only for a few hours before a photograph appears in newspapers showing “after hitting a classy century tired Rahul Dravid sitting next to a raised tricolor” (what an insult! he should be standing) and here we go again!

-Rohan Tikekar