Category: Patrakar types

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Patrakar types

Swaminarayan Temple authorities always treat women this way

Yogi auditorium next to Dadar’s Swaminarayan Temple always asks women to sit a few rows behind men. A personal account.
by Vrushali Lad | editor@themetrognome.in

I learnt with dismay, but not with surprise, of a woman journalist being asked to vacate her front row seat at the auditorium adjoining the Swaminarayan Temple at Dadar. She was there as an invited mediaperson to cover a religious function to honour Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in the wake of the beef ban in the State.

I know the journalist for years now, and first learnt of the incident on her Twitter feed. She was understandably furious over being asked to sit ‘three rows behind’ – women are not allowed to sit in these rows and must take a seat in the rows behind. After arguing with the authorities and even speaking about it to a senior BJP leader, she finally left the auditorium.

The same thing happened a couple of years ago.

An awards function to honour Gujarati achievers

It was at the same venue a couple of years ago that I first learnt of this practice. My husband, a Gujarati by birth, was to be awarded for his services to journalism. He was part of a group of other Gujarati awardees from various fields – entertainment, education, law, civil rights. I had accompanied my husband and some of our family members to the event, and I remember looking through the invite which had pictures of the other awardees. Only one of them was a woman – a young pilot with a commercial airline, possibly the first from the community.

When we got there, the function had already started but the auditorium was not full. When we made our way to the front seats, I was promptly stopped by two young men, who told me to sit anywhere provided it was 10 rows away from the stage. Perplexed, I assumed that the front rows were reserved for families of the organisers, which normally happens. We sat behind and awaited the prize distribution.

At one point, all the awardees were asked to take their seats on the stage, and my husband joined the others. But there was no sign of the woman pilot. I wondered if she was going to show up at all, then decided she must be at work and somebody else would take her award for her.

Then the chief guests for the awards function, two sadhu brahmachari types, were brought on the stage and a lot of feet-touching and speech-making followed. Finally, the awardees’ names began to be called out. When the pilot’s name was announced, there was a flurry of activity at the far end of one of the middle rows of the auditorium – everyone kept craning their necks and looking at a smiling woman who had just stood up. With horror, I saw that it was the woman pilot.

A little questioning finally helped me understand – the woman had not been allowed to take her place on the stage with the other male awardees, had not been allowed to sit in any seat in the first 10 rows, and what was worse, she was given her award at her seat in the audience by two other men from the organising committee, not by the sadhu chief guests. All of this because ‘women cannot be in physical proximity of a brahmachari‘.

On the stage, I saw my husband looking mutinous. When his name was called, he took his award and left without acknowledging the chief guests. Later he kicked himself for accepting the award in the first place.

I just looked across at the woman pilot – the young achiever for whom the sky was literally not the limit, was completely okay with being treated this way by a bunch of religious nobodies who, in this day and age, hold on to some archaic views on women in the guise of religious sanctity. What would compel an independent, successful woman to accept an award at a venue that routinely makes women sit in the back rows because ‘that is the rule here’? Didn’t she feel the slightest humiliation at being the only one to not be seated on stage with her contemporaries, on account of her gender?

I still wonder at her. And I’m never going back to that auditorium again.

What do you think of yesterday’s incident with the woman journalist at the CM’s function? Tell us in the comments section below.

(Pictures courtesy www.mapsofindia.com. Image is a file picture)

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Patrakar types

“You paid media dogs!”

It is the age of the instant response – and the age of the crudest name-calling against mediapersons and celebrities. We are so quick to take offence at the media commenting on things that affect us, that we resort to shooting the messenger instead of debating the message.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Two days ago, we ran a story on how traders in Thane and Pune had all but called off their agitation against the LBT after Sharad Pawar’s intervention, and how traders in Mumbai were about to follow suit. See the story here.

We’d got quotes from Viren Shah, President of the FRTWA, who was part of the delegation that met Sharad Pawar on Sunday at the latter’s residence. We had excerpts from the press note that the FRTWA later issued, outlining the points discussed. Viren Shah even went on record to say that, “The FRTWA is against the LBT but our retailers will not down shutters. Business will go on as usual while the protest is on.” The story went live on Sunday evening, and Monday’s newspapers carried the same news with varying degrees of detail.

But on Twitter, at least five tweeters called us several names, the substance of their remarks being that we, like other media outlets in the country, were “paid media dogs” who were bribed by the Congress to spread rumours. “Pls do not spread rumours. Do u have a signed letter to confirm this?” asked one, the mildest of the lot, while another tweeted, “chal jhota, congress ne paisa diya hai kya rumours felane ka? #PAIDMEDIA #LBT” with an entertaining cartoon showing the Congress scamming everyone in sight. A little digging by our social media team found that this latter guy had been on a name-calling spree all afternoon, tweeting at every mediaperson on Twitter and calling them all #PAIDMEDIA. Some of these luminaries included journalists Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt.

I wonder if people really understand what this ‘paid media’ thing really is, though all and sundry use this phrase as freely as they use public streets as their personal dustbin. I always imagine this paid media business to be a situation where somebody comes to a media office with bags of money, plonks them on the editor’s desk and says, “There, I paid you. Now write nice things about me.”

I’m not saying things don’t necessarily pan out like that, either.

In recent times, we’ve been seeing a growing tendency in the country to take offence at everything. And, not content to merely take offence, we’re outraging all day about things that, in hindsight, were meant as a joke, albeit a not so funny one. Some of us are so outraged, we form packs of similarly-outraged persons and attack the offender all day.

Recently, a sarcastic tweet from stand-up comic Rohan Joshi, who was responding to a self-proclaimed feminist who’d accused him of being a male chauvinist, took up the Twitterati’s time for an entire day. And he wasn’t even being a chauvinist. A Firstpost.com article about how a new initiative to provide leftover food from one’s lunchbox to starving slum and street children was most likely a sham, prompted all and sundry to address the article’s writer with every possible swear word known to mankind, even as they jeered at his cynicism and asked how much money he’d been paid to write that piece.

And there’s no point responding, if you’re the writer of a particularly controversial piece, to such name-calling and trying to explain your point of view. Any such attempt only results in a bigger barrage of insults.

We didn’t know this a few years ago, safely insulated as we were in our print media offices and our TV channel stations, how much hatred there was out there. Then the media’s working changed, to the extent that every bit of news and information put out there is compatible on all forums, most significantly, the web. And the Internet doesn’t do a very good job protecting us from instant, biting feedback the way other media can. Sure, there are such things as comment moderation tools, but what does one do when an article also has Facebook-enabled comments? Who’s going to disable Facebook?

Does this hate stem from the genuine fury consumers feel at seemingly important issues not being covered by the news media? The LBT strike, for instance, is over 25 days old, but apart from snippets on how closed shops are inconveniencing the public, has there been an in-depth piece on the issue by the electronic media? Even on Sunday, as trader organisations decided to suspend hostilities for a few days, news channels continued screaming headlines about one more player arrested in the IPL spot-fixing scam. Not a single LBT-related story surfaced at all that evening.

Or could a part of this hate be attributed to the clout the big media players enjoy, of being able to function well despite its consumers not liking most of the content they put out there daily? In another business, for example, if people don’t like your product, you’re going to either take their feedback on board or shut shop. This doesn’t happen with say, The Times of India, which gets roundly criticised every single day for having more ads than news, or for biased reporting, or for peddling advertorials as news items. The TOI continues to function, and function well. Is that enough to make people so resentful that they start calling the TOI names and tell it to go to jump off a cliff?

Or is it as simple as a lack of manners, of good breeding? Sensible people, when debating a point, argue with the person’s point of view. They don’t tell the person to his face that he is a jackass, or worse. In my eyes, you have to be totally moronic to say a person is a prostitute who sleeps around with Congress politicians and writes against the BJP, when what you really wanted to say was that the writer’s views had hurt their own and they begged to differ. Say what you wanted to say, don’t get into needless side issues about a person’s parentage or background or tendency to take bribes. Apart from being moronic, it is an unnecessary exercise in wasting time when, instead of debating the message, we shoot the messenger over and over again. Tell people they are wrong, certainly, but remember that you don’t really have the right to do so. A point of view is never right or wrong; it may be contrary or controversial.

And besides, how brave would you be if you had to say half those things to the mediaperson’s face, and not from behind your computer or phone’s screen?

Vrushali Lad is a freelance journalist who has spent years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so. 

(Pictures courtesy blogs.reuters.com, mag.bewakoof.com, pastorchrisowens.wordpress.com, www.sodahead.com)

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Patrakar types

Can you keep a secret?

You’d think you couldn’t keep a secret in the public realm, in a city like ours. You’d be somewhat right.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Nothing remains a secret between people, at least not for long. In a city as populous as ours, where even a scuffle on a public street attracts gawping crowds from five streets away, where the whiff of a possible dead body in an abandoned warehouse brings people to the scene within minutes, where something told in confidence by one person to a friend and an acquaintance becomes news in a day, can anybody really keep a secret?

Turns out, they can. At least, for a little while.

Last month, an artist held a top secret showing of her works at Project 88, a well-known gallery in Colaba. The showing was a secret because it contained some photographs and videos of a sexually explicit nature. I had an invite to it, because a friend of mine had assisted in putting it up. I had been invited with the rider that “You cannot write anything about it, because given the nature of the work, it will be shut down in no time if anybody finds out.” The invite was non-transferable, and I couldn’t bring a plus one.

When I went there, two guard-type guys meticulously checked my name in a list of invitees. When they didn’t find any Vrushali on there (of course they didn’t: one was looking for Vaishali, the other scanned the list for Burshal), they looked at me coldly and were about to remark when I found my name on the list myself and pointed it to them. They duly crossed it out – this meant I could not visit again. I saw the work and proceeded to speak with the artist, who promptly hit the roof on knowing that I was from the Press (never mind that several mediapersons had attended the opening, since they were her friends and I was not). I assured her, despite my mounting irritation at her rudeness, that I wasn’t there to write about the work and thus bring about a speedy shutdown of the exhibition from right-wing nuts (a genuine fear for artists today), and that I had only dropped by because my friend had told me about the exhibition months ago, and I was very curious to see a secret exhibition in a public place.

After I left the gallery, I was still mad at the artist for unreasonably slotting all journalists into the same troublemakers’ box. For fully five minutes, I toyed with the idea of writing about the exhibition and getting her into the kind of trouble she was fully anticipating anyway.

Then better sense prevailed. I guess all artists, in fact, all creative individuals, are so attached to their work that anything disquieting – by way of a negative critique or a downright shutdown – must really cut them to the quick. After months of hard work, I suppose this artist also had the right to be touchy about who saw her work and who didn’t. So I wrote nothing.

A few days later, Mumbai Mirror carried a vague reference to the exhibition, and specifically mentioned that it was still on at Project 88. Within hours, the artist pulled the exhibition down. I learnt later that the Mirror columnist had been at the showing and was one of the artists’ friends from the Press.

You never know who can really keep your secret safe, huh?

Last week, I read a curious little item, also in the Mumbai Mirror, about a dessert queen in the city. The woman keeps her identity so secret, everyone only knows her via her brand name – Sweetish House Mafia. To sample her cakes, cookies and other goodies, you have to place an order on her FB page or tweet to her, and she lets you know when a car will come around next in a designated area on a designated date and deliver the order.

I really wonder how long the proprietor of this establishment can keep her identity a secret. Somebody must know her, right? And going by that, somebody’s got to spill the beans some time, right? I love the secrecy of the project, though. It reminds me in a weird way of the shoemaker and the elves.

My point is: how does one do something in a public place and keep it a secret? I suppose one could opt for a pen name when writing a salacious blog or book, for example. Or one could say that they are only the face of a project, while the actual creator would not like any publicity, thank you very much. But still – how long can you keep it up? You could probably swear your family and close friends to secrecy, but what about those outside your immediate circle, who might somehow learn who you are and that you’ve closeted yourself behind a secret all along?

Besides, there is a delicious thrill to unmasking someone, isn’t there? Is that why most things don’t remain a secret?

Vrushali Lad is a freelance journalist who has spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so. 

(Picture courtesy www.moneywithflo.com) 

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Patrakar types

Security? Who’s that?

Fresh out of a serial bomb blast strike in Hyderabad, you’d think the police everywhere would wise up, right? Wrong.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that the police are a bunch of dodos. What else could explain what I’m about to describe next? And, trust me, this has happened before as well.

A few days ago, I was looking for a Borivli-bound train at Churchgate station. If you’ve been to Churchgate station, you’ll know it is characterised by three things: its subway, its Wimpy restaurant right opposite the public restrooms, and the benches on which bored policemen and policewomen sit and chat with each other, occasionally taking down details and checking bags of random commuters.

It was to two of these policemen that a scared-looking young man, probably on his way home from work as well, ran up to, breathless with excitement. “Sahab, wahan ek bag pada hai! (Sir, there’s a bag lying there!),” he said, pointing in the direction of Platform 4. His face was flushed, and I noticed a tremble in his hands. “Please come with me,” he implored the two cops.

To his chagrin, the two cops merely glanced at each other sleepily. “Tu jayega ki main jaoon?” one asked the other. (I swear I am not kidding). As if by some tacit consent – one of them probably owed the other some small debt – the sleepier of the two rumbled to his feet. “Chalo,” he said to the young man.

I followed the two to see what would happen next. If there was an unidentified bag with a potential bomb in it, I wanted to witness the action.

The cop followed the young man, unhurried and supremely bored. The young man, meanwhile, raced ahead looking for the spot that he had seen the bag in. When he found it, his face lit up with the glow of achievement – he was, after all, rendering a great public service by pointing out unidentified baggage, which is what public service announcements exhort us commoners to do all the time.

The bag was finally found, and I confess my heart sank when I saw it. A black rucksack, placed next to a pillar, adjacent to Platform 4. It was bulky and could have held practically any kind of explosive. The young man pointed at it and backed away, eyes wide.

The cop, whose name should ideally figure in next year’s Gallantry Awards list, nonchalantly approached the bag, and I swear I am still not kidding – poked it with a finger, then pulled open a zipper and started rummaging through its contents.

The young man backed away, horror written all over his face. With a last look at the cop happily emptying the bag of its contents  (a few books, some loose papers, an ID card, stray stationery), he walked away and soon melted into the crowds. I wanted to stop him and tell him to not be horrified. Because I have seen cops do exactly the same thing every time a citizen points out suspicious baggage on railway platforms or on the streets or inside trains – they start by tapping the baggage with their lathis, then poke and prod with their fingers, then empty out its contents before pronouncing, “Kuchh nahin hai ismein.”

At the risk of sounding extremely uncharitable, if there ever is a time for a bomb to go off, that time is when a lazy, foolish policeman approaches suspicious baggage and starts poking it. Too bad we citizens are not empowered to call the bomb squad ourselves.

Vrushali Lad is a freelance journalist who has spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so.

(Picture courtesy stockpicturesforeveryone.com. Image used for representational purpose only)

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Patrakar types

The devil wears (borrowed) Prada

…and throws her weight about like nobody’s business. Why do women bosses in the media model themselves on Miranda Priestley?
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

If you’re anything like me – that is, a girl who likes to work because she likes to work and has no other girly interests, such as the latest fashions and whether brown is a colour Indian women would ever prefer whole-heartedly – do not ever work for a woman’s lifestyle or fashion magazine.

From personal experience, I can tell you that you will be expected to dress like a model. Wearing footwear other than stillettoes is a crime punishable by hanging from the ceiling by your toes. Using a scrunchie to keep away your unruly hair from your face is also a crime fit for the guillotine. Wearing denims to work will get you ostracised till you came back wearing linen trousers or a very expensive skirt. If you wear flats, they have to be ballerinas, not flip flops or something equally foul. You never repeat an outfit for at least two months, you eat at only the most expensive restaurants and you network only with those in your circle.

Speaking in any language other than English will get you transferred to the mail sorting department. And where I worked, you couldn’t speak to the boss at all, even when you were dying of a terminal disease and needed a day off to arrange for your own funeral, because the boss was too busy to look up from the computer screen where a furious game of Angry Birds was in progress. I am not kidding.

I find that women heading magazines catering to women consciously model themselves on Miranda Priestley. They would have modelled themselves on Anne Wintour directly, but most of them are not sure if Miranda Priestly is Anne Wintour, and Meryl Streep is more famous. Of course, Miranda Priestly is a bi**h, but she is a bi**h who is on top of her game, knows exactly how to produce issue after issue of stellar reading material, cannot be fooled by fancy story ideas that are essentially a rehash of last year’s covers, and who shows up for important events and photo shoots because all she cares about is that the magazine looks good.

The women I worked for in magazines ignored the rest of these qualities and concentrated only on being bit**es. It didn’t get them very far with the staff, but it got them the editor’s chair, so all was good. These women dressed fancy, spoke Oxford English, some accented Hindi when telling the office boy “thoda chai leke aana, bhaiyya,” never spoke to the staff unless to yell at them in front of the entire office, never showed up for magazine events unless they were covered by the Press (in which case they showed up only with their cronies) and were shameless enough to demand freebies such as jewellery sets and iPads from PR agencies liaisoning with the magazine for stories.

If only they cultivated Miranda Priestley’s class as well.

Compare this state of affairs with the few women editors in newspapers. I’ve heard glowing reports of Ranjona Banerjee as the boss at DNA a few years ago. I’ve found Sumana Ramanan (Senior Editor, Hindustan Times) to be soft-spoken and clear about her expectations from a story. Deepali Nandwani was a capable editor at Yuva, always taking the trouble to discuss each story idea at length before giving the go-ahead to work on it. Carol Andrade was a gem of a person to work under at Times Response. Several tales are still told of Dina Vakil’s class and good manners, and the woman’s not been around for quite a while now.

Nobody’s saying these women are/were perfect editors, but at least they didn’t make themselves out to be jerks. Which is what anyone expects from an editor in the first place.

I was once speaking to senior journalist Mrinalini Naniwadekar about the tendency of women bosses to throw their weight about, sometimes for no reason at all. Mrinalini thought it stemmed from an old struggle that the first women journos in the city faced when trying to get themselves assigned on important beats such as crime and politics, which used to be denied to them. Probably the resentment still lurks. Probably several women have been thwarted in their ambitions by men. But these situations don’t exist any more, at least not in the big cities – though most editors today are still men – and with so many women already in the profession and so many more joining the ranks every day, it is inexplicable that women bosses would still need to show any measure of ‘toughness’ by being total as***les.

And why be rude and unkind to appear tough? Is there any call to treat people like dirt just to show that you are the boss? Since when has it been cool to make ‘no’ your favourite word, not grant people you don’t like an audience, not sanction leaves that the employee is entitled to, and generally go on an unnecessary rampage against the world because you want to first cultivate, then reinforce the image of a no-nonsense go-getter who suffers no fools?

Worse, why try to be tough when your entire staff comprises women? If you were out to fight the men in a men’s world, why are you giving such grief to women as well? Or are you really just nasty?

If anyone’s figured this out, do let me know. *ties her hair up with a scrunchie and goes about her business in Osho chappals and last week’s clothes.*

Vrushali Lad is a freelance journalist who has spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so.

(Picture courtesy news.com.au)
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Patrakar types

Who have you ignored today?

The media that complains of a Government ignoring its citizens can’t really talk, since it deliberately, subtly ignores certain ‘others’.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Oh yes, the Government’s a bi**h. It doesn’t care about you, it doesn’t want to hear your views, it steadfastly ignores your protests and it sweeps every matter, however monumental, under the rug. It doesn’t care if you’re dead or alive, as long as you rally around and vote it back to power in 2014.

There has been a round of protestations against the severe (mis)handling of things by the Government with regards to the Delhi gang rape issue. The country’s newspapers and channels have gone all out in their criticism of the Government’s workings, and several media houses have launched campaigns for justice, organised self defence camps for women, dug out old compilations of rape statistics all over the country, and stepped up their coverage of every crime happening against women.

In the midst of this noisy reportage of the state of affairs in this supposedly rape-happy nation, the media continues to turn its back on those it has always turned its back on.

Since the New Year, there has been a huge bunch of people protesting at Azad Maidan, Mumbai. This group comprises displaced slum dwellers and those affected by the decisions of the State Government, a group that is on a relay fast till its demands are met and its leaders given adequate time for a meeting with the higher-ups. The group marched to Azad Maidan in huge numbers, prevented from advancing at several stages by cops, denied a meeting with the CM more than twice, but it still camped out at Azad Maidan, and is still there. Headed by fiery activist Medha Patkar, this group is gathering strength with each passing day, and at least 30 of its members, at any point of time, are on a fast.

Did the papers and channels cover this momentous protest?

Slum dwellers in Mumbai are an active lot, forever demonstrating against demolition drives and demanding meetings with authorities. As the population of slum dwellers in the city swells and they get official sanction as vote banks, what logic dictates that their issues, their demands, indeed their existence, must be denied by the media?

One reason for this studied silence, and this is a reason propagated by managements and editorial staff in almost every city media house these days, is that the media must cater primarily to those who read their papers or watch their channels. “We are catering to the South Bombay crowd,” my chief reporter told me during my orientation at a city tabloid years ago. “You are on the health beat. You should get news from private hospitals, not civic or government hospitals.”

I can agree in part, but are we journalists or middlemen for business houses? If we are one but not the other, why pretend otherwise?

This same arrogance was the reason why several media were slow to pick up the pulse of the Anna Hazare-led agitation for the Jan Lokpal Bill last year. It was an agitation led by a little villager, so what? But when the numbers began to align with the same man, the media pounced. Even yesterday, at the ongoing Azad Maidan agitation, the media deigned to cover the proceedings only when Anna Hazare landed at the spot to offer his support. And even then, the questions remained largely restricted to his views of the Delhi rape case. As journalist Javed Iqbal, who is covering the agitation tweeted yesterday, “Anna holds press conference. More media today than all the media I have seen @ demolition drives in past 3 yrs…And during press con, not a single question abt Rajiv Gandhi Awas Yojana, SRA scams, only questions about Delhi rape, irrigation scam & Anna’s anti-corruption campaign.”

In its bid to cater to the ‘upper’ classes of society, the media willingly ignores the poor and the marginalised, in fact those same people who are genuinely in need of the media’s help. It assumes that the poor are not reading the papers that the rich are buying. In demarcating readership thus, the media creates a clear ‘Us v/s Them’ divide, it sees development only in the building of glass pyramids and gorgeous townships for the elite, not in the housing of the city’s poor and the generation of employment for them. This divide further points at the poor being the enemies of development, and hence, the elite. This explains why you will see lengthy stories of new slums being recognised, of water connections being granted to certain slum pockets, but not much about deliberate irregularities committed by the builder lobby (or the advertising lobby). Several editors are known to address issues such as an entire area receiving muddy water only when the taps in their own homes spew smelly water and the domestic help (who stays in the neighbouring slum) tells them that she has clean water in her shanty.

In its flawed reasoning of what constitutes development, the media inadvertently and, sometimes subtly, blames the poor for whatever backward spirals our cities occasionally fall into. For rising crime. For increasing poverty. And to complete this pretty picture, it goes and ignores the poor some more, choosing instead to outrage for days on end over rubbish statements made by the country’s politicians and spiritual gurus. It’s almost like an entire class of people just does not exist in our collective conscience. The only times ‘they’ are receiving any coverage these days is if ‘they’ annoy ‘us’ in some way. And then all of us yell ourselves hoarse for being ignored.

Vrushali Lad is a freelance journalist who has spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so. 

(Picture courtesy youthrelationships.org)

 

 

 

 

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