Newspapers and nostalgia

He finally decided it was time for the proverbial spring-cleaning. The room was dirty and unkempt from lack of care. Cobwebs had gathered in every nook and crevice of the room. A layer of dust covered the unused articles in the manner of patina over copper. Books seemed to be everywhere except on the bookshelf. But it was the pile of old newspapers lying in a corner that caught his attention first. He decided to start with moving them out of the room.
But as it often happens with quite a few people, one’s attention gets easily diverted by the headlines you see on a scrap of newspaper in which you have received a packet of groundnuts, laundry, groceries or any conceivable object. Imagine being deluged by a flood of such scraps with all the time in the world to spare, as was the case with him.
The newspapers were stacked orderly enough, in spite of the mess he used to plunge the works into.
The Mumbai blasts were the first thing he chanced his eyes upon. Enough was written about it and discussed among the intelligentsia. Yet he could not help feeling again that the country would never be considered developed until it learned to value every human life the same way a politician of today cares about his booty from office. Maybe that is why the country never really embraced family planning seriously; talk of foresight! Scarcely had he sifted through a few more newspapers when he saw images of the same city grappling with floods, as if it had to relive the nightmare of the last year. He clenched his fists in sheer frustration at those using the ‘Mumbaikar spirit’ to conveniently brush under the carpet the burning issues including but definitely not limited to the incompetence of the intelligence agencies and lack of initiative of the civic planning organizations.
The frustration had hardly subsided when he remembered that ‘Shiv Saniks’ had run amok in the city just a few days prior to the blasts to avenge the disrespect shown to their leader’s wife; that it was not the ‘holy’ leader himself seemingly made it that much more an issue of honor for the marauding maniacs. This incident probably mirrored a much more inexplicable riot on the streets of Bangalore some months earlier. The ace thespian, idol of the masses, winner of the highest national honor for cinema, Dr. Raj Kumar, had died. Was every Tom, Dick and Harry not being allowed the ‘privilege’ of viewing the mortal remains being carried out in a ‘state’ly procession reason enough for youth to go berserk in large numbers and destroy every piece of property in sight even killing a few of their own group during the cremation? Who was responsible for allowing the scheming politicians to manipulate the youth to suit their parochial interests thus laying waste the potential makers of the country? No easy answers came to his mind.
So much for the cities, he thought. The newspapers were being moved out at a snail’s pace. He felt the need to hurry up, but the image of the failed launch of Insat-4C held him back. Just below it was the headline crying out the failure of the ‘Agni III’ missile. These were ‘failures’ he could not digest easily. Weren't satellite launch capability and ballistic missile development one of the few strongholds the country could boast of? How could technical failures creep into the elite establishments of ISRO and DRDO all of a sudden? He wondered whether the government’s desire to have a finger in every pie had been stretched to these sensitive places as well. After all, even education was being tampered with in the worst imaginable manner…
This brought him to the series of front-pages with large chunks of journalistic space reserved for the ‘contentious’ issue of ‘reservation’ in institutions of higher education. How in their right minds could these lawmakers achieve social equality by constantly highlighting the differences and lowering the productivity of the institutions that matter (read killing the golden geese)? In the first place, how could mealy-mouthed politicians ascend to the ranks of cabinet ministers dictating the future of the country?He fought hard the idea that we as a people are responsible for all that befalls us, for do we not elect these people in the polls? Surely people ought to know that there are developmental issues larger than television sets being disbursed free when it comes to evaluating a manifesto and voting a party into power. But there was also the question of the demagogues keeping their ‘vote banks’ in the dark swearing by the credo ‘Darkness is power’. He was not sure of what was the chicken and what was the egg.
Before he had realized, the newspapers were all cleaned up and piled outside consigned for trash. Maybe, this is the way we deal with things, he thought. When the incidents strike us, we pause to think of them, even express our outrage at them. The media has a field day covering it every which way earning the bread for a few ‘experts’ in the process. But public memory is short and soon the existing set of issues, which is bound for the ‘trashy’ recesses of the public psyche, is supplanted by a different set of issues. Perhaps this is what the current crop of leaders thrive on and exploit to get away with what they do. Sighing deeply, he felt the emotions ebbing away. He wanted to complete cleaning his room and get on with his work. He decided vaguely that he would start reading the newspaper from ‘Page 3’ onwards every morning; why should he begin the day on a sour note for no fault of his?