Babble all around us. Many tongues, literally and figuratively. Manifestos, meetings, code violations, dinner diplomacy, somebody is in, somebody is out………… As Bill Lawry is wont to say, ‘it is all happening here’.
Add to this media frenzy and hyperbole, particularly the high decibel pronouncements and heart thumping of the English News Channels, the intractable stand of BCCI wrt IPL,it is all toooooooooooo much for you and me.
It is also sickening to see that every channel claims that it has exclusive footage of the same story (scoop in media parlance!) that is aired ad nauseum in every TV channel!
Fortunately some sanity still prevails in print and, of course, the Internet – since you have more choices and the obnoxious ‘in your face’ high decibel reporting is absent. What a relief.
Elections in India are noisy affairs!
As far as the ‘Main Course’ is concerned the action is yet to start. The different menus are being prepared and once ready, the right recipes have to be in place. Not everything is going to be a ‘success recipe’. Armed with the menu, the so called leaders will start serving these menus – literally down the throats of gullible people. Before all this all the parties will go into all kinds of contortions on who is with whom and where. It is also strange – defying logic – or may be not – that X and Y will be pals in State1 and serve a menu while X will choose A and Y will choose B in State 2 and what was food for X and Y in State1 will become poison in State2!
With each political dispensation trying to woo voters with loads of promises, it is one helluva cacophonix and well nigh impossible to understand, assimilate and then act.
In the meanwhile, the jokers & villains, not to forget the criminals, in every party have their moments under the Sun and in some cases as a Son!
Unwittingly or otherwise, unmindful (or plain foolishness) of consequences, the Sons in waiting blurt out all the wrong slogans and get into deep s**t. If that is funny, if not downright deplorable, what is funnier is their denials. There is a limit to what anybody can get away with – even the Son. Video footage with crystal clear audio is rubbished as doctored. (Varun Gandhi).
More cacophonix – TV reporting, replay of meeting, denials, censures……. Oh!
And to think electioneering is yet to begin…….
L.Ravichandran
ravi@chennaionline.com