Terror Attacks and Indian News Channels
The whole nation was shell-shocked when Sanjay Shukla, a 46-year-old unemployed writer, forgot that it is 26th Nov’, the day Mumbai terror attacks happened. This… despite the fact that all the news channels of India were relentlessly trying to remind everyone that Mumbai was attacked and hundreds of innocent people were killed exactly a year back. Sanjay’s atrocious amnesia came to the fore when he appeared live on Bakwas News, a famous TV news Channel with highest TRP rating.
“What are we discussing here? Why have you called these models and actresses? And you just played that music video, why? I’m sorry I’m completely at loss and I can’t think straight. Are we discussing some film that is going to be released tomorrow? What is that ‘lest we forget’ stuff backstage? What are we forgetting here? Please help me, I can’t recall anything.” Sanjay appeared totally baffled and scatterbrained in the middle of the Bakwas News’ Live show called “Mumbai has won”.
Rubbish Sharma, the Bakwas News newsreader who was anchoring the show, whined (in his usual signature style) as soon as Sanjay expressed his failure to recall the 26/11 events. “Irresponsible people like Sanjay are letting us down!” Rubbish Sharma pronounced with his index finger pointing towards the sky and his burning eyes looking straight into the camera, before he directly addressed Sanjay by pointing the finger at him, “Can’t you recall how our countrymen were butchered like lambs a year back. How can you forget Sanjay? We showed all those stuff Live and Exclusive! Can you recall now?”
Sanjay couldn’t recall stuff as an offending nation watched him blabbering live on television. Finally, Rubbish Sharma had to announce a commercial break after his repeated attempts to make Sanjay recall the events of 26/11 failed flat. During the break, Sanjay was taken away from the live show and handed over to his friends. “Mumbai has won” resumed after this minor hiccup with all the guests vivid with their memories and demanding some sort of action to be taken against the problems.
“I don’t know what happened to him suddenly. He has a good memory and he remembered everything till yesterday. And tell me, how can you forget the events of 26/11? You forget something only when there is some change or a considerable time has elapsed. There hardly has been any change on any front” Sanjay’s friend John Ravi told Bakwas News as he took away Sanjay from the venue of “Mumbai has won”.
Sanjay was later taken to a hospital. He is apparently the only Indian being treated for such sort of amnesia, as the rest of India thinks they have not forgotten anything.
But, Sanjay had many questions running on his mind. He was wondering, “Why such shows? What comes out of these shows? Does it change your routine? Does it bring about any change in the mind-set of people and Governments? What will you do by remembering it? Who has really won from the attacks? What wil come out of these grindings except raising TRP ratings of TV channels for more commercial adverts?