SHYAM MENON on mainstream media & AAP - The water hole
The reason the media has been wary of the AAP or has rarely displayed imagination suitable to understand the empathy for it is that much of mainstream media is the media equivalent of the BJP or Congress. They go where the water holes are
One of the ways to get around world parcelled by corporate, money and political parties is to link the dots in the remaining world for alternative body of thought.
Some days ago, I came across an interview with actress, Tilda Swinton. In it she says, “There is no reason why people shouldn't know that their work is in their own hands. When art becomes part of the whole capitalist objective, the story is, the theme tune is - that art and culture and life is actually out of human hands. You see, you better leave it to the people with money. No, no, no, you can't make a film for less than twelve million dollars and they have to be dollars, not pounds or Euros or whatever. And this feeling that it is impossible for example to see a film on a big screen outside of a multiplex. Or to make a film that came out of your own head; you have to put it through a committee of fifteen people.
It isn't true! It never was true and it still isn't true. But there is this sort of constant barrage of discouragement of feeling your work and your life and your art is in your own hands. And if I have any kind of mission, it is to remind people - that isn't the case; that it is constantly possible to just get up and do it.'' She then goes on to explain why one of the reasons this remained true for her is because she started her career with a director who was a prime mover, who often started work ahead of budget, distributor, even script.
Recently, there have been a series of interesting interviews with Paronjoy Guha Thakurta, in which he talks of Ambani and the controversy surrounding natural gas pricing. Reading it, I got the impression that answering the question of whether you are with Ambani or not, betrays more the nature of divide in India today than whether you will vote for the BJP, Congress, AAP or anyone else in the next elections. Who you will vote for seemed a sub-issue. The bigger issue is, when you want money, political distinctions blur. Everybody drinks off the same water hole. Seventy per cent of the planet's surface is water. Sixty per cent of our body weight is water. Our lives quenching thirst for money at that metaphorical water hole is similar. In life shaped so much by money, if you want genuine change, you must want less money. That is true of not only politics but also every field. From another session browsing the Internet some days before, Swinton's comment made sense. One of the ways to get around world parcelled by corporate, money and political parties is to link the dots in the remaining world for alternative body of thought.
Our world is like a Discovery channel or National Geographic documentary. High summer takes hold in the African savannah and functioning water holes shrink to a few. Water is more critical for life than blood. Killer and prey drink off the same pond. Rejuvenated, the politics of survival begins; lion eats zebra at elections. In other words, that water and the act of drinking it are beyond politics. In front of water, lion and zebra are equally subject. It appears to me that what could survive differently then, is a camel. Something that can use scarce resource efficiently, doesn't need to be at the water hole that often to court danger and walks terrain where water dependent-danger doesn't have sufficient water to invade and sustain. I think that's what the Maoists did. For a long time, our challenge was finding security forces that can be at home in their ecosystem!
There are aspects to both the BJP and the Congress, which are plain boring and mainstream. The AAP interests as idea (not party) for despite their anarchic ways, they are the only ones who raised any questions. I overlook the popular criticism that they lack answers. If we wait for answers first to raise suitable questions, then we destroy the need to think. And if it wasn't for asking in times when anarchy wasn't anathema, would any of the favourite questions and scandals highlighted by the BJP and Congress as opposition, exist? Not to mention the great Indian bandh and riot, dating to before the AAP and which, qualifies to be not anarchy only because we all kept indoors out of fear.
The reason the media has been wary of the AAP or has rarely displayed imagination suitable to understand the empathy for it (the same media partied when inflation was growing) is that much of mainstream media is the media equivalent of the BJP or Congress. They go where the water holes are (that's why they missed inflation for long). Indeed they have become like hippos rolling in the muck; our fat dailies are wrapped end to end in advertisements. To change the game - at the very least to start questioning its own self and inability to imagine differently - the media must either become a camel or it should learn to sustain on alternative fuel that isn't the ooze of the watering hole. I suspect there isn't any different fuel yet. But that camel bit is possible if we make some tweaks.
This thought may annoy many: the risk that can be shouldered to pioneer new trends is proportionate to the cost of trying something new. If you load your revolution with high salary for work as revolutionary, it becomes fluorescent Che Guevara on T-shirt meant for nightclub. That revolution goes nowhere. There is much talent in the Indian media. Problem is - they are not saying what they should or seeing what they can because they come for a high price. They have trapped themselves in high cost, surrendered themselves to the rules of the water hole.
This is where Swinton's observation engaged. If you think about it - the means to making less costly films and being able to see a movie on big screen without having to be at multiplexes, are all there (with right motivation, even our high cost stars may take the plunge and do so, hopefully without advertising their charity on Facebook and Twitter). It is a matter of making it happen. The reason those costs need to go down is because we are witnessing profoundly dull times. We are seeing people play God thanks to money, even as the universe stretches far and wide before us. We are seeing people resist change that matters even as they advocate it because the money is in the status quo; alternatively, change is what suits money. We don't wish to do things ourselves. We would rather be led.
Hence this fallacy that a change of prime minister - to which has been pinned the criticality of the next elections - will substantially change our lives. You want change in human life? Then you should free up the water hole or free human imagination of the need for the water hole. You must delete insecurity from the mind. Delete - that's the only way. Recently I interviewed an award winning author who is a former rock climber. He described how years ago, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and recommended surgery. A friend suggested that since he was already old and could therefore die of many things, why don't he just go away and live in the hills? Ten years later, he had written the book of his dreams and was in Mumbai to collect a prize. “Run away from today's doctors,'' he said, “and as for hospitals - they are factories of death.''
The truth is money is single dimensional. Pursue it excessively and all you get is single dimensional life. Like hospitals -- which kill you by their costs even before they care. Without the accompanying conservatism and smugness of unquestionable value, money can't be money. The only promise it guarantees is - have money and you will be last man standing. If you can afford the ICU, you will be immortal all the way to preserved mind from 2014 speaking through robotic body in 2401. Is that what the media wants for itself? Are journalists that insecure? If I had a wish, I would wish this for money - be last man standing in a world of camels. A world of camels that are busy writing, painting, singing, acting, dancing.....doing what they like.
