Dodge this!

Tarun Tejpal weighs in on the symbolism of the "shoe protest" phenomenon. A recent addition to its annals is the incident in which a Sikh journalist threw a shoe at P. Chidambaram, Indian's Home Minister, to protest the central government's clean chit to two prime accused of the anti-Sikh riots/pogrom in 1984 - the prime accused are politicians and members of the same political party that the Home Minister belongs to.

Tejpal's edit also serves as a reminder that good journalism is not just proving a voice to the population but also holding a mirror to it.

Then again, how many really care for true journalism really.

Lasantha

Lasantha Wickrematunge, wrote this piece in the Sri Lankan news magazine The Sunday Leader shortly before he was shot dead by assailants on his way to work on January 8, 2009. He was the editor of the magazine.

I unfortunately never heard of him and the enormous risks he took while he was alive. It was only after his death that I came to know of him and his work. People, like Lasantha, devoted to their duty above all else are extremely rare. Especially when they are ordinary folks like you and me.

Investigative journalism in the sub-continent is a very dangerous profession. While Sri Lanka seems to have an abysmal record in taking care of its journalists, other countries in the region do not fare too much better. In India, what passes off for journalism in most newspapers and news channels, is just farce, focused as it is largely on celebrities and sensationalism as an end in itself. News magazines like Tehelka are some of the few remaining bastions of true reporting in India. They may not always be right, but they fight hard to expose the truth to the public, especially in those circumstances where it has been forcibly kept under wraps. They provide us with a mirror with which to look into ourselves as a society, culture, country and citizen of the world.

In several countries, including democracies, those who report against the existing powers of the day constantly live under the threat of some sort of retaliation by those powers. Most will find it impossible to continue working under those potentially life-threatening circumstances - and rightly so too. To those few who, inspite of the risks, strive to bring us the truth, and not farce - we owe a lot.

The world is a flat circle

... going round and round.

NY Times, which a couple of years ago had made its Op-Ed section a paid access site, has finally realized the error of their ways and are now back to allowing free access to all. In case you can't make the connection - they have come full circle. That's good news - right?! Perhaps. Trouble is, most of their columnists have really lost credibility, at least in my opinion, since their blind support for the war on Iraq and the no-questions-asked clean chit to the bullcrap fed to them by the Bush administration with respect to Iraq.

One of the chief defaulters on the credibility front is Tom Friedman, columnist and author who wrote, among others, the famous "The World Is Flat" which touts outsourcing as a great positive movement. Recently he wrote this column in the NYTimes.

While the article may not signify a full circle traversal by him - it clearly implies a backtracking from his earlier position of being gung-ho on the war on Iraq. In fact, he's backtracked so much so that, off late, he has been rather apologetic about that error in judgment. Well - good for him, I say.

But it's difficult though to figure out what his true intentions are with all this - to borrow a Republican term used very effectively against John Kerry - flip-flopping. Tough to figure out if he's just trying to win back credibility and through that, readership for his next edition on outsourcing or Iraq - or that he really thinks deep-down inside that he somehow screwed up and now he's trying to make amends for it. He may be back to being on Bush's case now - but when it really mattered in the buildup to the most useless and counter-productive war in recent times, he failed f***ing miserably in exhibiting good sense.

But then again, he wasn't alone in that.

Bombay street vendor Anna!

Yesterday, I briefly talked about street artists. Here's a story on/in Mid-Day about a street vendor Anna who makes money serving chai at night on the streets of Mumbai, and his interesting interactions with his customers. It's a very nice little piece illustrating once again that there are people out there who work very hard and innovatively at making a living (while others spend their time surfing on a computer and complaining about how there's nothing interesting out there! Heh! Heh!). We do see and know a lot of these people. And their stories are inspirational in their own ways.

I do visit Mid-day's website almost everyday. I guess because it gives me access to happenings in and around Bombay city and its suburbs. And also because it believes in good investigative journalism whereby all parties involved in a story are given the opportunity to put in their point of view (if they wish to). And some of Mid-day's columnists are really very good. Definitely a daily newspaper with some integrity.

Apart from their investigative journalistic stories, they also have interesting (and I suspect sometimes unintentionally funny) stories with slightly misleading headlines on their website. Sample this one titled "Tiger attacks man", and maybe you'll start to understand some of the content on Mid-day. Somehow, its captivating and interesting, and funny all at the same time. Makes for great timepass, that great Indian passtime.

Although, I do wish that they could provode a direct obvious link for the daily "Mid-day mate" on their website. Bombayites (Mumbaikars), you know what I'm talking about!:)