And the band played on

Published in 1993-4?

Jameer Khan has been blowing his trumpet for various bands for over 14 years now, and he is not smiling about it. Not that life has been fun lately Unlike most other itinerant musicians of his ilk who return to agricultural pursuits during the off season, he must eke out living in Delhi itself and his current vocation is painting walls, furniture, or anything else people will pay him for.

"Music has always been in my family's blood," he declares proudly sitting on a rickety chair by a begrutten wall during a breather, but he would rather that his son grew up into a carpenter or some such thing rather than ever become a trumpeter. Why, I ask and he rejoins with a litany, "The playing season seldom lasts beyond four months, salaries are poor and uncertain, upward mobility, social or professional, is unheard of and there are niggardly compensations to look forward to ... and boy the music nowadays! Carpenters at least never need to sit idle or lay bricks!" he retorts.

He is not alone in this unrewarding profession. Delhi is teeming with brass bands that are virtually mandatory on social occasions. Most musicians hail from poor families with a tradition of professional playing. They invariably come from outside Delhi hoping to make that extra exiguous buck during the peak marriage season or Ramlila when there is an unlimited demand for anybody who can blow a horn or beat a drum.

Ramlila is the big moment when all the musicians and bands look to make the mark that will set the tone for the seguing season. Amidst the festivities, bands from all over Delhi vie to out do each other as the reputations established here are irrefragable determinants of a band's demand and prices. "This is the only time we truly rehearse," Jameer Khan blurts, and some of the sessions stretch for really long periods - sometimes a new tune may take a week to master though "experts" manage in a few hours. Then there are the old favorites that have to be reprised. A good band must be prepared to satisfy all sorts of requests.

Once the season commences life lapses into a familiar pattern. “We want our band to create the right impression," says Madan Lal, the proprietor of Anand Band, "We provide the outfits and the instruments and strive to arrange for the transport. There are a set of musicians on contract, but the number that actually goes out to play varies with the client's requirement and demand."

The musicians themselves know the routine by heart. "A lot of us would make excellent postmen," jokes Mahammad Rajan, a clarinet player with the Popular Band. The work begins with sniffing out the right address and this can be rather cumbersome. In unknown localities when several marriages are being organized in close vicinity, bands preening away at wrong addresses before being displaced by rightful rivals is hardly unknown.

The playing itself is distressingly monotonous. Songs like Aaj mere yaar ki shadi hai and Babul ki duyaen leti ja are the meat and potatoes of every marriage and after a bow to them, the bands launch into the current standards - these nowadays being headed by the ubiquitious Amma dekh and numbers from recent movies like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and Chand Ka Tukda. Occasionally a request is made that certain band members are unfamiliar with, but this is rarely a deterrent as chords are struck and impromptu improvisations made.

"We are prepared to play anything as out salaries are peripheral really”, elaborates Mohammed Rajan. "What we are always looking forward to are the tips we get. Our proprietors do not seek shares here and the total tips work out larger then the pay itself. That is why sometimes musicians are prepared to play for a pittance... foot is rarely served to us but sometimes liquor bottles are provided after the show and I suppose a tipple is alright after a hard night's blowing.”

The flexible repertoire and the ability to instantly draw on a variety of styles is a major draw of these bands. The same set of people happily play movie songs, bhajans, Punjabi songs and a lot else, sometimes all on the same night. Competence levels may be pretty average and more often than not most notes sound alarmingly alike even if played in dissonance, but their efforts seldom fail to enthuse Indian revelers who are generally too inebriated to appreciate nuances of any sort.

The idea is really to have some lights and a beat to wiggle at. The bands seldom believe in displays of virtuosity or setting the tempo, they just adjust to the mood, especially now with trolleys having been banned by Delhi Administration on account of noise and traffic problems and the concomitant loss of vocalists who could communicate with the listeners.

Marriages constitute the single largest chunk of a band's engagements but the calendar includes several other events. A man's association with a band lasts a life time, quips Mohammed Rajan's cohort, "we play at the birth, the thread ceremony, marriage, even death. The world is incomplete without us." Now of course with the emphasis on ostentation mounting, bands have become omniscient, playing at jagrans, processions, even birth day parties, playing the same old rhythms with their numbers being symbolic of the client's status.

Loud music on public occasions has definitely been a constant in Indian culture and with time, rather than emphasizing on quality, decibel levels have gone up. One reason that the brass bands supplanted the pipe players of the yore was probably their ability to really spank the ear-drums. The new orchestras that are coming in routinely use microphones and amplifiers to make quire a din, and with their vocalist they have the advantage of putting up real shows. Does that make any difference to the way the traditional bands conduct their business?

Chander Prakash at Anand Band sees some of the better musicians migrating to the more lucrative orchestras but this is hardly a significant phenomenon. "None of us depend solely on music for our livelihood and our skills are not extraordinary either. But we are willing to walk and our music envelops our listeners who believe we play just for them as we stand in little circles around anybody who wants to move to our music . We offer immediacy and we are an inalienable part of the Indian tradition. As long as traditions live we will be too," he says.

Despite the penury, there is pride in the playing. "Some of us have our problems with breathing, but our breath brightens other people's lives," says Jammer Khan. Poverty may ultimately force his kids out of the hereditary profession but die-hards like Mohammed Rajan say that all in all it’s not such a bad life. "Sleep in the day, blow for a few hours at night and sometimes somebody calls you 'master saab'. Its not too great but its okay."

Part of a seminar on the press during the emergency – on the role of The Statesman

Written in 1992. Published 1995?

Among the English language, mainstream national newspapers, only the Indian Express and the Statesman emerged with their reputation and credibility enhanced by their deportment during the Emergency. This despite the fact that they were more constrained by censorship regulations than other newspapers due to their contumacious broadsides against several aspects of the Emergency. As has been mentioned earlier, the Indian Express was placed under total pre-censorship and not even the sports pages or the matrimonial columns were spared scrutiny. The Statesman managed to avoid such fate but could not avoid intermittent pre-censorship. It however managed to successfully challenge a government decision to not give it any advertisements. The order issued in August, 1976 had to be withdrawn following the high court order in February 1977.

Most post-Emergency works have identified the Statesman, published simultaneously from Delhi and Calcutta, as the most vociferous critic of the government during the Emergency. One of the reasons assigned is its diffused proprietary structure wherein no party controlled over 13% of the shares. These factors allowed its editor, Mr.C.R.Irani, to function in an atmosphere bereft of any standardized management policy regarding editorial content, and follow his own anti-establishment volition. Such fortuitous circumstances were not available to fellow editors. The Hindustan Times was controlled by the Birlas who were decidedly with Mrs. Gandhi, while a third of the Board of Directors of the TOI was nominated by the Government enabling it the latter to pull all the strings. The Hindu owners too were disinclined towards confrontation.

In any case, the fact remains that the Statesman did, in a very notable and creditable way, wage a battle of wits with the Government. However, it should not be assumed that the daily sheets of the Statesman were littered with anti-government propaganda. Not only would such a step have invited immediate reprisals, possibly even proscription, it might also have damaged the newspaper’s credibility. In the case most issues of the Statesman were dominated by the government viewpoint. The highest print and photographic space was accorded to the Prime Minister and most of it held her in favorable light. The opposition, after being absolutely blanked in the initial days of the emergency, got a worthwhile look in only in the crepuscular days of the Emergency. A considerable amount of space was devoted to matters entirely extraneous to domestic policies. Stories from abroad received considerable space as did human-interest stories. Disasters and accomplishments like the Viking landing also competed successfully for space. Active criticism of the Government received a comparative modicum of space, and was frequently camouflaged, but it was this that distinguished the Statesman from most other papers as the following shall endeavor to establish.

Perscrutation of a month’s editions prior to the declaration of the Emergency immediately establishes the Statesman has being sympathetic to the opposition’s cause. The Gujarat elections, extensively covered serve as beacon of Mrs.Gandhi’s falling star, as violence and dissatisfaction dog her campaign. Thus a headline like, ‘Mrs. Gandhi’s car stoned by students’ (5.6.75) appears more message than news.

The paper’s coverage of Mrs. Gandhi’s disqualification by the Allahabad high court judgment and the events leading up to the Emergency may be said to have set the tone for the newspaper’s demeanor over the next year and half. The edition dated 13.6.75 is paradigmatic. The report on Mrs. Gandhi’s disqualification (under banner headlines) mentions ‘wide acclaim’ for Justice Sinha in the ‘crowded courtroom’. The front page includes the opposition’s clamor for Mrs. Gandhi’s head couched in the strident advice to ‘respect judiciary’. The promptly produced editorial urges resignation on ‘moral grounds’. The op-ed article by N.J.N. speaks piously of, ‘democratic tradition and conventions’ while going for the incumbent’s jugular, and a string of letters unanimously endorse the view. However amidst the entire diatribe a photograph of Mrs. Gandhi straddles a conspicuous corner of the front page and she gets her say in no uncertain terms. The second lead story concerns Congress leaders rallying around Mrs.Gandhi in unanimous support. There is also a reprint of the Times, London story that Mrs.Gandhi’s peccadillo would not be considered ‘corrupt practice’ in U.K. Most interestingly however, Mrs. Gandhi is quoted as promising to ‘work for the upliftment of the poor’. A week later Mrs. Gandhi was allowed to invoke the specter of ‘Central Crisis’ and ‘threat on the border’. On the same day the first letter questioning the resignation theory appeared. ON 21.6.75, Mrs.Gandhi earned another quotation in the front page when addressing a boat club rally in her support, she said, ‘when people remind us that many promises have not been met they should remember the obstacles and difficulties. We have not let the nation down’. Such homilies and other ‘progressive and developmental’ ideals were to become a constant refrain over the next 18 months.

There was no edition of the paper on 27.6.75 the day after the imposition of the Emergency as electricity to most newspaper houses had been cut following government instructions. The paper the day after carried very innocuous headlines of the Emergency report. The lead photo, quite ironically, was from abroad and in keeping with the subdued mood, and in marked contrast to 13.6.75 there was no editorial comment on the Emergency. A little blank space had been left in the op-ed page, but this illegal practice was hastily abandoned thereafter. Notably, all letters had switched to mundane affairs. Clearly censorship was in force and the fact was mentioned in an exiguous column, in gross violation of censorship orders, but soon enough the Statesman’s ardor was diminish.

Looking at the newspaper in the days ahead, an innocuous observer may be pardoned if he cannot descry the existence of such a dybbok as the Emergency, and if the Prime Minister conveys the impression of being the paragon of all virtues. The front page was soon reduced to carrying news items like ‘Prices of cinema tickets and eggs reduced’ (22.8.75). And this was not an isolated instance. News reports like ‘Sunday Market at Chandni Chowk moved’ (21.7.75) ‘Delhi shops get a pruning’ (9.8.75) and ‘issue of tokens to cyclists’ (13.8.75) became the norm. Apart from being obscure reminders of government efficiency, they quintessentially appeared to be the result of the need to fill pages. A letter published on 11.1.76 called for compulsory sterilization of beggars. It is unlikely that such a letter would have been published at any time except the Emergency, and while to a later reader it appears to be a manifestation of the general inanity prevalent in the nation at that time, it is unlikely that the Statesman was using the letter as an ironical aside on the Emergency for the posterity.

Not all ‘propaganda’ on the Emergency was couched in such subtile terms. The front page was frequently devoted to playing up the sunny side of the Emergency while Mrs. Gandhi basked in the glow. New items like ‘Indira Gandhi lists the gains of Emergency’ (25.7.75) and ‘ only democracy can work in India’ (7.8.75) constantly appeared. Through most of the period of the Emergency Mrs. Gandhi grabbed headlines spouting democratic ideals and progressive measures. Thus she spoke of ‘Women’s rights’ (15.1.76) ‘decentralisation’ (22.2.76) ‘scientific farming’ (11.4.76) ‘Solar Energy’ (31.12.76) et.al. and espoused other akin ideals and Government measures whilst reiterating platitudes like the need for ‘Democracy to suit a country’s needs’ (29.10.75). She also got away with half-truths, like ‘there is no censorship in India’ (9.7.76) when clearly several publications were under censorship at that time. The Statesman chose not be question such statements. Indeed it published an editorial titled ‘Flourishing Press’ (31.1.76) which was generally a summary of the report of Registrar of Newspapers based on figures till 1973 and made absolutely no mention of censorship laws. The newspaper also gave prominent space to Mrs.Gandhi’s invective against the Western press. News items like ‘Bias in Criticism of the Western Press’ (3.3.76) and ‘ Ignore western press – Indira Gandhi’ (16.9.76) where faithfully rendered with no questions asked. The newspaper also eagerly covered the Non aligned press conference that was ironically enough held in New Delhi and encouragingly published Mrs. Gandhi’s address (with her photo lead) whence she spoke of ‘the need to fight Western Colonial Media (9.1.76). The paper thus let go of an excellent opportunity to expose the hypocrisy inherent in the summit.

The newspaper persisted with an equivocal stance towards censorship. While carrying on a battle of attrition with the censor authorities itself, it strangely enough chose to favor censorship of other media. An editorial on 8.6.76 identified TV and radio as ‘modes of propaganda’ and called for a ‘sophisticated approach’ to their censorship. It also suggested that film censorship be ‘qualitatively vigilant’ rather than merely quantitative’. The movie review section of the paper may be held culpable of being politically inert. The most glaring instance was the unanalytical review of the film made by Sukhdev on the emergency, provocatively titled ‘Thunder of freedom’. The review mentioned ‘wide-spread acceptance’ of the Emergency and questioned none of the aspects of the documentary that was apparently a panegyric to the Emergency. Most galling of all though was the latent tyrant in the reviewer, streaks of which were revealed when he constantly hoped that something in the Emergency provisions would enable him to ban all that he did not like in Hindi movies, viz. sex, violence and even excessive length.

The opposition did not derive much succor from the newspaper, indeed it was blanked out for the most part. Reports on JP’s movement surceased entirely, and JP himself occasionally made it to the paper only due to deteriorating health. Mrs. Gandhi was able to level accusations like the ‘opposition (is) taking undue advantage of our tolerance, friendship, politeness, frankness’ (24.2.76), without the opposition getting a chance to retaliate in print. Top leaders like Morarji Desai and Charan Singh barely got a look in whereas Sanjay Gandhi (after making an initial photographic appearance on (8.3.76) was regularly featured. Other Congress leaders were visible too with some like Barooah being particularly prominent. When the Home Minister made a blatantly pro-Emergency statement that he hoped ‘new habits would become a way of life’ (14.9.75), it merited front-page attention. On the same day, the regime was eulogized for the ‘Big increase in the State’s income – better collection of taxes’. Unsurprisingly therefore, even readers of the putatively anti-Emergency Statesman often became convinced of the Government’s merit as a letter published just prior to the 1977 elections shows. The reader writes, anyone who has read the newspaper carefully over the last year cannot fail to be struck by the advances made’ (20.2.77) and plumps for the Congress on the basis of the Statesman reporting.

Within the limited ambit of the current research it has not been possible to precisely determine the reason for such reporting in a newspaper whose editor frequently took the opportunity to take potshots at the Government. The very need to keep the newspaper afloat could have been once such exigency. The Government made no secret of the displeasure with which it viewed the activities of the Statesman and apart from putting legal pressure even tried to place Government nominees on the Board of Directors. At a meeting held under the chairmanship of Mrs.Gandhi on August 12, 1975 different ways of dealing with the Statesman were discussed and under instructions of the Minister of Information and Broadcasting, the Company Law Board was moved on December 10, 1975 to appoint Government nominees on the Board of Directors under section 408 of Company’s Act, 1956 on the ground that the Statesman had indulged in malpractices relating to news print. It is a different matter that the Statesman was ultimately able to prove the case malafide, but there is certitude regarding extreme pressure. Creditably then, the Statesman refused to tergiversate the carried on in critical vein, though it often had to take recourse to metaphors and veiled references to get past the censor.

The anti-establishment tone of the newspaper before the Emergency has been aforementioned and its vehement editorials (12.6.75, 14.6.75, 17.6.75, 18.6.75) pressing for Mrs.Gandhi’s resignation after the Allahabad High Court Judgment marked the apogee of the stance. The combative mood appeared to have vanished with the imposition of the Emergency and interestingly not a solitary op-ed article condemning the Emergency appeared till December 1976. However while the clangorous nature of the protest may have had to be dissembled, the Statesman, while never losing sight of pragmatism, continued to chip away.

It carried out pretty reasonable reportage of the Supreme Court Appeal by Mrs. Gandhi with regard to her election case, allowing equal space to consul arguments on both sides, thus leaving the door ajar for some anti-government rhetoric to creep in. It also carried regular reports on various constitutional amendments taking place at that time, albeit minus any significant analysis. While this occluded the scope for any trenchant criticism of the implicit motives behind these amendments, it was probably prudent to do so in the days of censorship, thus also excusing itself from the obligation to voice encomiums apropos these amendments.

On 16.9.75 there appeared an interesting photograph on the front page captioned ‘Beggars continue to squat in Delhi’. It showed a couple of beggars at the swanky Connaught Place. Innocuous as the photograph appears, I venture an animadversion in the light of the drive towards order in the city. The papers at that time were dominated by various drives towards punctuality, cleanliness, efficiency, discipline etc., and also reports of punitive measures being taken against offenders. The Statesman, by publishing this photo, may have been trying to picturise defiance. I may be running the gauntlet of over interpretation here but the photo does stand out amidst those of clean streets, perfect traffic etc.

In more assured vein, the comparison with Pakistan was insidiously bruited to exhibit the discrepancies prevalent in the current situation in India. The technique involved was to play upon the antipathy towards Bhutto and by innuendo suggest simulacrum with Mrs. Gandhi’s policies. Two episodes stand out in particular. On 1.1.75 the paper carried out a report on Bhutto using Mrs. Gandhi’s speeches to defend his position and invoking her logic of strengthening the center and simultaneously warned of the authoritarian proclivities intrinsic in such a mode of governance . On 24.2.76 the editorial took issue with Bhutto for carrying out short-term measures’ and went on to apostrophize, ‘Pakistan is more important than Bhutto’. This was obviously a dig at Barooh’s slogan that ‘Indira is India’.

Around November 1975, the reporting on Emergency increased as pre-censorship was relaxed. Mrs. Gandhi, while she continued to enjoy a privileged position in terms of news-worthiness, now occasionally found herself on the defensive. Thus on 6.11.75 a report appeared: ‘Indira Gandhi admits distortions in the economy’. Others in the same vein included, ‘Indira Gandhi denies lurch to the right’ (31.12.75) and ‘fifth plan not given up, says Mrs. Gandhi’ (10.1.76). While such reports failed to establish any points against the government they did succeed in mentioning some of the popular grievances of the time. These reports were filed’ By our special correspondent’ and while not being radical had the merit of raising issues, and also signaled the paper’s independence from the Government controlled news agency ‘Samachar’. This also allowed forbidden terrain to be explored. Thus on 14.9.75, the detenus were mentioned for the first time in a report titled ‘30% of the detenus freed’ due to prevailing normalcy. A more interesting report appeared on 21/2/76 , after the imposition of the President’s rule in Tamil Nadu, a letter appeared that spoke of the ‘value of liberty’ but refrained from mentioning the Emergency. The editorial column too was not entirely bereft of fight. Conspicuous instance included the following:

1. 9.11.75 – the editorial questioned the propriety of the amendment, which made the Supreme Court verdict of Mrs. Gandhi’s case redundant. Cheekily, the editorial was titled ‘Welcome relief’ and began in spirit appreciative of the assured stability at the center before changing tack towards the end. This may have been done to inveigle the censor.
2. 18.1.76 -- The editorial on Family Planning questioned the government’s actual priorities against stated ones mentioning the cut in the budgetary allotment to family planning, thereby making the government appear to be dragging its feet. It also suggested coordination rather than coercion as the more efficacious method, thus bringing to fore the taboo subject of coercion.
3. 13.3.76 – Editorial on the collapse of the Gujarat Government during the budget session refers to the ‘inability of the opposition in the present political climate’ thus hinting at the undemocratic state of affairs prevalent in the country.
4. 24.3.76 – Editorial on the opposition. It bids ‘Ground rules of parliamentary politics have changed… old concepts of opposition irrelevant, new rules of iscusion and criticism’ and leaves little doubt about where its own sympathies lie. It also seizes the opportunity to criticize the Congress role in the Gujarat opposition.
5. 1.4.76 – The editorial says ‘ The judiciary has done us proud in the Emergency’. It makes no specific mention of any judgments but it was common knowledge at that time that the judiciary had courageously refused to be cowed down by the Emergency provisions that aimed at strengthening the executive beyond control. This symbolic editorial put the Statesman firmly behind the oppressed.

Matters finally reached a head with the 44th (later rechristened 42nd) amendment bill, which the Statesman vehemently opposed. The subdued editorial or 2.9.76 set the ball rolling. It spoke sarcastically about its prolixity but was quiet otherwise. It did however mention the probability of a ‘long debate’. Soon enough it began to publish criticism of the bill. Thus on 8.10.76, it published a criticism of the bill by J.C. Shah, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. On 18.10.76 it published pro and con views of a wide section of people. On 20.10.76 lawyers and women vented spleen at the ‘change’ in basic laws.’ Finally on 28.10.76 an editorial described the bill as ‘nothing but an attempt to take away from people what belongs to them’. In a follow up the next day the editorial warned that ‘concentration of power can be very dangerous’. Suitably, a sudden volley of letters took the editor’s side. (30.10.76).

In December 1976, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting finally abandoned attempts to legally force the Statesman into acceding to a government appointment on the Board of Directors. It was a major victory for the Statesman and it showed in its coverage of the elections in 1977. By then it had found the courage to openly criticize censorship. An editorial on 1.3.77 declared, ‘Press censorship is a pernicious doctrine… few countries can outshine India in the bizarre nature of many censorship orders’. When Mrs. Gandhi declared at an election meeting at Behrampur in Murshidabad district that ‘The Prime Minister represents the entire people and any attack on him or, her is an on the entire people’, several letters ridiculed her. Democracy was a different ball game for them.

On the poll eve the editorial ventured ‘The extent of lying heard since June’75 would have made Mephistopheles tremble’. It spoke of ‘meanness displayed in achieving objectives’ and averred ‘never before in India have such responsibilities been placed upon voters’. After the results had been declared and Mrs. Gandhi voted out of power in a democratic way, the Statesman obviously felt vindicated and exulted, ‘We India can hold our head a little higher today’. (22.3.77).

Words as ideas,

From the days when I confused words for ideas. This one reflects my fascination for the cinematic experience (rather than movies themselves). The other one is a look at the evolution of media tools and why its hegemony is illusory. A total write-off this one. Words, more words, and then some more with the odd sparkling sentence thrown in. Spot it if you can. Definitely not my finest hour!!

At the formula movies

Life is a movie formula. We, old fans who have always been at the movies, do not let prescience of the end (death = end of the movies) bother us too much. We sit back in the dark as the projector runs itself out on the glassy screen, in alternating, pulsating shades of incandescent, dull and sombre, as hombres bursting out of the projector’s luminous alchemy spread themselves out on the white screen (but we will call it silver, not because of bromide, but because we worry about the image, of the things we see and the way they show us and the way we see ourselves in them), once vitreous diamond, one sweating, glistening coal.

And we return every night so that we can sit in masochistic darkness blacker than the tenebrity outside, and watch shafts of light overhead torch the silk(y) screen that we have built for ourselves in a distant, visible, conspicuous yet where-else corner of our daily theatre, so that it flares into life (illumining only the smoothly stretched, taut screen, but we feel a soothing glow , and our grateful eyes sparkle and our shining clothes always crackle in movie halls) and onereic, phantasmagoric yet so veritable figures (that we credulous folks, believe that we are going to be just like them, and they are just like ‘me’) twinkle into vivification and we really don’t care whether these apparitions laugh or cry or brood or exult or suffer (for they are pretence anyway !), all that we want to do, while we have the time, while the movie runs and we are more animate than the projector’s people, is to be happy, to make the best out of it.

Our whole life is onanism to these movies, and the movies are peccavis of our hieratic wet- dreams. We sit like paramours with inamoratas, in the last row of the balcony, gazing at the unnaturally clear, epidermal screen, the cleanest part of the theater, a sacred palimpsest of our guilt and desire apropos our neighbor in the theatre and the searing pilgrim urge for exoneration (or exorcism), whilst the screen flickers and crumbles into vitality; but across our uncertain exculpation hangs the pallid aureole of impotent remorse, because we cannot help knowing that every time a movie begins it begins to end. We have amortized the movies with our pertinacious solipsism. We have become the movies. We are the movies.

Is this then the formula? The lord said: let there be life, and there were movies. We, old fans, who have always been at the movies, know this formula by heart, and thrive on its empathetic benison. We are ashamed for we know we are as parasitic as fetus, but we still buy umbilical chords at ticket counters and flee into wombs where these shadowy projectors wait for us amidst deception of the nocturne, with their ephemeral light and their quasi-catoptric grasp and suzerainty over our gullible sentience. We sleep among them because they are our oldest friends and their life makes our own lives luminescent by proxy. We go to these chthonian places because they are ‘it’, because there is no other place to go. Amidst all the prestidigitation, we have no illusions. Yet, we hasten lest we miss the beginning, but everyone knows the end. The formula rules. We know that the gamin will get the gamine, but will it be a happy ending? We have always wondered.

This then is the formula. We like to fly so high that our wings melt and we fall from the sky. But the formula stares me so close in the eye; it is too far for you, too near for I.

An architecture of the media

The industrial society was arguably the first to rush headlong into the future. During ancient society and medieval feudalism, time was at best a tertiary given – ineluctable yes, but seldom imperative, on account of the sharply defined but seemingly eternal elitist hegemonic order (best exemplified in the Annalist historiography which subordinates ‘event’ and ‘structural’ time to the ‘langue duree’), and technology that was evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

The age of the ‘techne’ marked the crossing of a Rubicon – for the first time in human history the notoriously futuristic credo of progress and development became immediately available and the impending became inextricably enmeshed with the quotation. In every, sphere life was suddenly agog with ‘marvels’ – Newton, steam engines, Darwin, the Bessemer patent, the serendipitous invention of the Montgolfier brothers, and more. Factory life and production opened new vistas of possibility and the human horizon of expectations has since been bounding exponentially.

Doomsayers of various ilk, from Spengler to Henry Adams (and we may also include the pessimistic visions of such as Schumacher and George Miller) have often focused attention towards growing socio-political labyrinths and fragmentation, the perilous state of resources, historical cycles and slipstreams, thermodynamic discharge and akin factors, and raised plausible visions of apocalypse but the bubble has stubbornly refused to burst. Discontent with going around the world in eighty days, generations have successively diminished the temporal expanse of the world and as we enter the post-modernist world of ‘chaos’ ‘uncertainty’ and ‘relativity’ we ‘inner and outer’ in techno-time more than ever before.

It is a matter of no little significance in the history of our racer civilization that the media has grown in scale and stature in tandem with the coeval ‘technologisation’ and democratization of the common society. The advent of the scientific revolution and capitalism broke feudal strangleholds and emasculated the various versions of the ‘estates’ order that had been perpetuating their stultifying influence around preponderate parts of the world. Social and philosophical notions of the individual arose. Even while tenets of egalitarianism were distant, more and more men rose to participate more freely and actively and in many more spheres than had been hitherto possible.

Greater involvement logically entailed greater generation of information, which had to be spread over greater distances and a greater spectrum and in lesser time. Indeed, before the world shrank it bloated, but the technology that engendered it also made the proportions of this tumescence manageable, even beneficial. The post office and mass media were both the handiwork and handmaiden of the information driven manufacturing society.

It may indeed be irrefragably averred that the institution of mass media could not have been envisaged or derived even until late feudalism. In those days information was expensive (custom-made, to use later terminology that is most befitting), scarcely traveled large distances and concerned only a handful of people (mostly elite) and remarkable events, and was disseminated with only as much celerity as quadruples could manage. However unlike medieval systems capitalism was an open and outward looking phenomenon that was impelled by its innate, expansionist logic to forever draw and co-opt more and more elements to fuel its dynamics.

Quite inevitably the cost effective, technologically efficient and wide-reaching method of mass media became its natural messenger. The invention of the Guttenberg press was a magnetic event around which all the forces presiding over the passing of the feudal era clustered. The invention, apart from being the harbinger of technological promise, was an important step towards the democratization of the most critical implement of power, i.e., knowledge – it was no longer the sole prerogative of monastic ivory towers and fittingly many great inventors and ideologues rose from the ranks of common society.

The tide soon turned into a deluge even as more and more specialized target audiences for mass media were created. From books arose magazines, journals, comic books, posters and pamphlets. Progress in other technological avenues gave birth to radio, television, cinema video, compact disc, audiotapes etc and today we are on the cybernetic brink of interactive TV and ‘virtual reality’. All along the reach (market = mass base = mass participation) of the mass media (and even popular culture) has shown steady acclivity, so much so that it is now among the cardinal signifiers of our society much in the same way as the elitist activities of the past such as art and architecture symbolized the cutting edge of their respective eras.

Any architecture of the media must be characterized by its triumvirate of coefficients – time, technology and democracy (by which is meant general involvement and not its strictly political connotation), and this combinatory is geared towards the production and regurgitation of information. It is in this light that we must comprehend that mass media can never afford to be either entirely didactic or mindless and refrains like Doordarshan’s pontificatory shibboleth – to educate and entertain – must be assiduously discarded.

The animadversion becomes clearer if the most transparent facets of the mass media such as hard news, features, documentaries, drama, fiction, editorials etc. are neglected in favor of the more subtle messages that are transmitted to the subconscious of the receiver, thus influencing his subjectivity and future choices. Popular cinema is a fine exemplar and the persistence and popularity of formula in various guises around the world a most suitable giveaway. If cinema were to be reduced to mere plots, the medium would soon become redundant and it is the medium’s efficacy as a carrier of sub-textual information that has kept it vivified.

The most commonly understood of these sub-textual signs are perhaps prevalent fashion, socio-politico-cultural trends and boundaries and technological prowess or limitation as the case may be. The prevalent knowledge of and about the world draws barriers for popular cinema that it cannot deny and as such they are reflected in the message- medium. Thus Ramanand Sagar’s Sita showed greater fidelity to Raja Ravi Verma’s prototypes than to some informed opinion that suggested that a topless Sita would bear greater affinity to a historical reconstruction of the germane age’s fashion tastes.

Similar paradigms abound (however it must be specified forthwith that the above and segueing are not intended to establish the primacy of the sub-text over the text or the vice-versa, but rather the endeavor is to piece together the sprawling nature of the mass-media). News selection is a case in point that aptly reflects upon the mass media as a disseminator of collective intellectual information, or the dominant knowledge structure of the world. The triumph of hegemony lies in compliant subjectively and when the mass media, ostensibly of its own volition, chooses to highlight starvation deaths in Ethiopia rather than in Kalahandi or to discuss Booker entries in greater detail than Jnanpeeth winners its susceptibilities become immediately lucid.

The old hat about whether railway accidents should count as news comparable to air-crashes may also be mentioned. A pattern may easily be described in the way news items are carefully selected, classified or discarded by all sections of mass media and this ineluctably denotes the medium as a carrier of hegemonic information more than anything else.

This hegemony should not be construed in the sense of precepts emanating from the upper echelons of the society or else mass media would violate the democracy coefficient aforementioned and would be indistinguishable from propaganda machinery (communist Russia is an example of didactically organized media set up which was destined to be an aberration). The consent I have in mind is a democratic one that pervades common society and is not monolithic. The history of the past two centuries bears ample testimony to the fecundity of such an understanding of hegemony and the mass media has not been bereft of its implications. At an intellectual level it has been witness and party to an unprecedented democratization ideology – never on prior record have so many prominent ideologies jostled for space on a global level and it would not be improper to say that minus democratic mass media such would not have been feasible. All modern ideologies from Marxism to environmentalism owe this debt to the mass media, which has not only spread the word but also lent these ideologies a degree of authenticity that can only come from cold print.

Putative media issues like Bofors and RJB-BM imbroglio may be understood in this context. The media must not be made the hero or the villain of the piece (if holistically considered) for it serves merely as a conduit and not as a demiurge. Its powers are limited by the co-efficient driven nature of its existence. Similarly at the consumerist level mass media constantly alters and establishes points of reference sometimes stretching, but never violating the democracy co-efficient, and also simultaneously reinforces the time principle. An explicardum lies in advertising. It functions at twin pedestals: -

• As a rapid informant of production news with the concomitant sub-textual information similar to the one discussed in the case of popular cinema; and
• As a lever and control on mass media as result of the complex interaction between producers and consumers in the contemporary society.

Indeed the symbiotic relation may be shown as: mass media ß> advertising is an integral part of mass media but also an active instrument of the same while the mass media becomes a gestalt advertisement of the state of the world. In the context of this essay this point may be seen as merely a reiteration of the former, only with the qualification that the definition of advertising would have to be expanded to accommodate not only items that are expressly labeled so but also disparate features like news or rock videos with their implicit underpinnings that derive from all our coefficients – time, technology and democracy.

Thus mass-media would appear to be our culture’s prime mode of ‘talking’ – in the context of getting information across to our ‘circle’ (which is often global in the modern and post-modern case). Undeniably there are other modes of communication, telephones and computers being two of them with global reach but these can never achieve mass media’s influential status unless they venture out of the personal sphere -- computers with their vast and inter connected information pools seemingly have the potential to compete and it is apprehended in several quarters that in alignment with mass media it would inexorably lead towards the de-privatization of our society thus hearkening towards a simulacrum of the primitive commune.

Marshall Mcluhan’s vision of a global village borne out of tetradic permutations is an augury of such a fate. He envisions a world wrapped by inter-connected, disembodied voices in the noisiest era of human history and an altered nature of institutional life towards which we seen to be heading with our telegenic leaders, sound bites, prime time mania and excessive consumerism etc with time reduced to a channel zap. The nature of the individual and democracy shall indubitably be restructured and technology remolded in accordance.
Mass Media, while it shall survive will not remain the same. The portents are already visible. Modern audiences have greater freedom and access than ever before and information embargo appears to be a thing of the past. Modern media so fills our sky that any one with an antenna can pluck gleanings from it. Choices are unlimited and round the clock specialized channels under one flag (thus de-centralizing without losing a central identification plank) are rapidly becoming the norm with the fare doctored to meet international tastes.

The movement is towards ‘totalled specialisation’ and even in India mass media networks are diversifying to include as many servers as possible – thus e.g. Bennet Coleman has acquired a stake in television. Abroad too large-scale mergers have take place with Time Warner being among the notables. Time magazine is also available electronically. It may never perhaps be possible to spread information evenly around the world but it will definitely not be for lack of trying.

A versicle in edgeways; or floundering juvenilia

• The sun has set on the night.
• The winter night, ardent pursuer of the semidiurnal, is yet again inveigled into evanescence by time feigning stasis.
• The dawn has dawned.
• A bellicose, recrudescent sun peruses contumacious, flocculent clouds, seeking ingress.
• The dew, vitreous vesper of the night, wangled from the clouds, ensconced in the grass; and upon it a misty apparition of the quasi morning. It blinks.
• She blinks, she winks, she hood winks.

The revivified sun descries an exiguous schism amidst the hitherto incoherent clouds. The obtruding sorority surmounted, consanguine solar rays, parergons in concinnity, peregrinate towards the land peregrine only to its autochthons. Out in the courtyard, blessed by truant pedagogues to peripatetic delinquency, a quartet of humdingers savors the catechism their spirit siphons from the nature’s procreaees; shuddering at the vagrant antics of the mordacious wind. She, the svelte sylph, is appareled in raiment of morganatic proportion. It, the willow wind, is jocose today. A gust of fresh air, emanating from the burgeoning chimera in our minds, eschews the verdant grass, elicits a shiver from a neighbor, brandishes withered leaves against the fleeting dust, and with chevalier strides swoops upon the girl. Look at that, look at that! A bystander bellows, the wind blows, the skirt billows. Atrophied eyes cartograph the evolution of the escalating arrayment into a spectacle of ascending chic. Bravo! The incendiary (piacular perhaps) faculty of the ebullient wind that transcreates into her pulchritudinous cheeks a flaming rubicund flush. ‘Aw’ she apostrophizes, ‘the gump!

The gump? Nay – the gumption of the cognoscenti. The skirt is scattered, and the day is araised. Oddity! I have fallen in love. The heart, perfidious instrument, conjures and abjures, abducts and reneges, musters and disimmures… the precocious sensation. Far away from me, cloistered by serendipitous prolepsis, cajoled by sententious inefficacy, and yet sequestered by claustrophobic vicinity, the hoyden and the hobbledehoy amble moodily into the purview – and when she tramples his shadow, trespasses into his being, traverses his soul, the stultified hedonism, soporific within him, thrives again; and when their askance glances converge, from her squint-eyed masquerade there shimmers affection, or affectation; from the inchoate swivel of his eyes there gleams trepidation. Speak, I enjoin, let the words roll. The recurrent rhyming, the echoing encores, the awry alliterations! But I butt into rebuttals, I can’t cant, I ascribe, proscribe, I weigh, inveigh… Far away from me the hoyden and the hobbledehoy trot - - and when she unfurls her arms as riposte to a fellow’s hullo-ed humdudgeon, he meanders towards his rescinded persona, stammers thingummy poetry; and when the redolent Samina ruffles his olfactory glands, the atavistic instincts fulminate, the impending perdition prevaricates… Ah! I am maladroit and a goop. Far away from me she shall retreat. I walk away. Chaotic!

Quixotic! The women eh, they make men out of us.

• The hour is a transvestite.
• The air bristles with divested moorings, and embellished paraphernalia.
• Dishabilled: heart in monologue.
• Accoutred: heart in soliloquy.

The aureole is forsaken. Yet the reveur reveres the revue. A splendid chiaroscuro of resplendence augurs the peroration of the interregnum afore the ordained resurrection. Hey, I whistle, hey. He sees pretty, makes prettier. He is a magician. He is an alchemist. He transmogrifies verity. He transmutes the mundane. He transfuses the gospel. He translates the monochromatic. He transgresses the ethereal. He transcends the phantasmal. The eclectic trainee. The cherubic Kavita embroiled in solipsistic missives, strolls along an isolated street, stalked by fobs who vituperate her, accost her, accord her emetic bonhomie. He molests them. The imbroglio has quotidian reincarnations. The ravishing Saryu, lovely in the transpicacious morning, has had her facility at coitus honed by him. He precludes the mottled Swati’s harangue and is dumbfounded by the demure Chaya, ‘Sweetheart! She knows not I love her. Pitiable sweetheart. ‘ The reveur reveres the revue … Far away from me the gamine and gamin perambulate. I walk, I run.

• I am too pudent for chivalry.
• The sun descants.
• Get thee to a nunnery.
• The sun descants.
• How about it.

Net naiveté

More sex! I wrote this one when the Internet was only something you read about. And guess Virtual Reality sleaze was the easiest way to get my editor’s attention! This one is a little tamer. A description of my first encounter with the Internet at a college laboratory when ‘Windows’ was still a magical word.