Category: Columns

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Patrakar types

An open letter to Dr Satyapal Singh

We all agree that nobody should attack a public servant, whatever the provocation. But is anyone disciplining the police force?
by Vrushali Lad

I don’t advocate violence. I hate fights on the streets. It makes me sick when people beat each other up over trivial matters in the train. I feel frightened by how easily people are raising their fists, or even guns, on those who have irritated them in some way.

But all of that is nothing to the irritation I feel when I see the Men in Khaki make complete dirtbags of themselves, especially when they are supposed to assist the public. The Mumbai police commissioner has issued a circular that outlines the harshest punishments to those who attack cops in the city. Those who assault a cop may lose their jobs, the freedom to go out of the country, their driving licenses, their passports, and most importantly, their reputation. (Read about the circular here)

In the case of such incidents as the Azad Maidan violence, when rioters beat up policemen and molested policewomen, and even in such cases where cops get beaten up by gangs of thieves who the cops attempted to capture, I feel for the police force. They are overworked, underpaid, and generally not protected by the administration when they face such issues on the field.

But, Dr Satyapal Singh, please answer this: However underpaid, understaffed and unprotected your police force is, does it take your men too much effort to cultivate some basic manners? I cite a few incidents that I have personally witnessed, and which will help you see what I mean:

–  My house was burgled two years ago. It was a case of forced entry, and the thieves took advantage of the fact that my cupboard keys were lying in plain view. The constable’s (who came for the panchnama) first comment to me was: “You are educated people. How can you leave your cupboard keys lying around when nowadays there are so many burglaries taking place?”

– The fingerprint ‘expert’, while doing nothing useful, kept extolling the virtues of the thieves, who he said had not left a single fingerprint behind. “Very clever this thief is,” he chuckled to my face.

– At the police station, while getting my FIR written, a woman from a neighbouring slum came in crying and said that her husband had taken her child away from her and locked her out of the house, furious that she had gone to Tirupati without his permission. Do you know what your duty officer did, Dr Singh? He didn’t write a complaint. He didn’t call the husband to the police station. No, sir. He said to the woman, “Has he been fighting with you for long?” When she said ‘yes’, he said, “You had gone to Tirupati. Why didn’t you ask God to grant your husband some sense?” The woman left the police station shortly after this.

– When a call centre employee was rude to my father over a disputed phone company bill, the duty officer at the police station deigned to call the call centre, but hung up after a brief conversation, because the girl who was rude to my dad refused to give her last name. The duty officer exclaimed, “I cannot talk to people who do not give out their father’s names.”

– My best friend went to court with his aunt to claim a gold chain that had been snatched from her a few months ago. Your officers refused to return the chain without a bribe of Rs 500. And the chain they gave her wasn’t even hers, it was somebody else’s.

– Two years later, my burglary case has still not being solved. Why? Because your men tell me that “jewellery and laptop thefts are difficult to crack.” Oh, but they insist that I go to court and classify the case.

Dr Singh, you are within your rights to protect your men. And I do agree that your men require protection. But can you really blame a person for assaulting your men, when harried by the theft of his car, or his mobile phone, or a domestic dispute, and instead of receiving help and commiseration, only gets unasked-for advice on how he was wrong and how he deserved what happened to him? It took me all of my self-control to not pick up a heavy object and hurl it in your constable’s face, when he kept saying that it was my fault that my house had been burgled. Only the fear of consequences stops more people from assaulting your men.

We’re human, too, Dr Singh. We get really furious when your men tell us how we got what we deserved. Does anybody deserve to be thrown out of their houses? Or to lose everything to thieves, everything they’ve worked for all their lives, because they left their home for a few hours to visit relatives? Or to have their mobile phones flicked from their pockets? What gives your men the right, then, to tell us that we were in the wrong when something like this happens to us? Or to demand a bribe to do their jobs?

Yes, you are within your rights to make my life a living hell if I assault a member of your force. In the meantime, Dr Singh, why don’t you also ensure that your men mend their boorish, often uncooperative ways? If you feel that taking away my driving licence, my job, my passport and everything that is a close part of who I am, will ‘discipline’ me, are you also issuing a circular to your men, stating how you will discipline them if they refuse to do their jobs, and not add to a complainant’s grief and fury by being wiseguys?

Respectfully yours,

Vrushali Lad,

A Mumbai citizen.

(Picture courtesy mid-day.com)

Categories
Soft Coroner

The Partisan of India

Prashant Shankarnarayan muses on the North-South Div(why)de, and wonders why history books omit South India from the Indian freedom struggle.

The situation – A friend’s casual comment, “Tum madrasiyon ne toh azaadi ke liye kuch kiya hi nahin!”

The observation: A good-hearted Punjabi and a funny radio host, he just blurted it out. However, his jovial comment reflected a deep sense of prejudice hosted by many compatriots. He is an innocent by-product of an indifferent education system that made us believe that South India did not contribute anything to the freedom struggle, and the North was where all the action occurred. So here is my response to that lame comment but before that:

Is this article about freedom fighters? No, because I have no moral credibility, right and intention to even comment on them just because I happen to sit on a chair with a backrest and know how to operate a laptop.

Then what’s the fuss about?  Because although North India saw more bloodshed because Punjab and Bengal were divided amid political machinations, and considering that Kolkata was the erstwhile capital before Delhi took over, it still doesn’t mean that the southerners were sitting around eating appams and drinking payasam all day while the feisty North battled long and hard.

This is just a humble rumination on a few known but not often-discussed facts which, I believe, need to be included in our history books and conversations, so that our institutions stop manufacturing Northies and Southies, but Indians.

India’s first Sepoy Mutiny

No, it wasn’t the 1857 one at Meerut. Actually, the first one occurred on July 10, 1806 at Vellore. The Hindu and Muslim sepoys of the Madras Army protested against army rules that hurt their religious sentiments, and were also fuelled by a desire to put an Indian prince on the throne. The mutiny broke out and the sepoys killed many British officers, raised the flag of Mysore Sultanate at the Vellore Fort and declared Fateh Hyder as the king before the rebellion was crushed by the rulers in a day.

The Queens

Who was the first Indian queen to take on the British? The mind conjures a brave and beautiful Rani Lakshmibai seated on a horse, with her infant boy tied around her waist, wreaking havoc on the battlefield and dying a heroic death in 1858. They called her the most dangerous of all Indian leaders, yet there were other queens who took on the might of the British long before the battle of Jhansi. Chennamma, the ruler of Kittur in present day Karnataka, fought with the British East India Company for the same reason as Rani Lakshmibai would later fight for – to ensure that her adopted son remained her heir. The courageous queen was captured and later died in prison in 1829. As for Velu Nachiyar, the queen of Sivagangai, she was amongst the first ones to use a human bomb way back around 1780. She even created a women’s army to face the British soldiers and named the unit ‘Udaiyal’ in honour of her adopted daughter, Udaiyal, who died detonating the British armoury.

One of the many revolutionaries

This patriot, affiliated to a nationalist outfit, assassinated an English officer and eventually committed suicide by shooting himself to evade arrest. Before you say Chandrashekhar Azad, let me tell you about Vanchinathan. Born in Shenkottai, he was a member of the Bharata Mata Association and shot dead the district collector of Tirunelvelli, Robert William d’Escourt Ashe – almost 20 years before Azad’s martyrdom.

The list can’t continue further as the article runs the risk of being branded as a history lesson by a rank amateur. But it is an earnest appeal by a layman to stop viewing Indian history from a partisan North Indian perspective. It is this sheer ignorance that makes a random North Indian guy rebuke a random South Indian guy just because the former doesn’t know even an iota about South India’s contribution to Indian independence. And it is the same ignorance projecting in different ways that very subtly sows the seeds of alienation fuelling the Aryan-Dravidian or Hindi-Madrasi undercurrents that we see in religion and politics.

No one knows why our educators decided to chuck quite a bit of South India from history books, but as a result, people like my friend have created their own incorrect opinions about the freedom struggle. More importantly, my Punjabi friend thought that he represented all the freedom fighters from the North just like I, for him, represented all the so-called docile South Indians. What matches his pathetic gleeful ignorance is the equally rigid Dravidian politics of certain parties from the South. As commoners, it is definitely better to erase each other’s ignorance rather than feed on it like Dravidian netas.

I believe that the honourable frogs who set history curricula should jump out of their North Indian wells and take a dip in the Indian Ocean to familiarise themselves with the adjacent Indian land mass. Lala Lajpat Rai and Tiruppur Kumaran both held on to flags, at different locations and a different time, even as the police assaulted them, and both eventually succumbed to injuries. I asked my fiancée, and as expected, she had studied about the former leader in school but knew nothing about the latter. Worse, she accused me of being a defensive South Indian after reading the first draft of this article. No surprises, considering she is a North Indian.

Prashant Shankarnarayan is a mediaperson who is constantly on the lookout for content and auto rickshaws in Mumbai. This column tries to dissect situations that look innocuous at the surface but reveal uncomfortable complexities after a thorough post mortem.

(Image courtesy Satish Acharya)

Categories
M

The marriage curse

The most successful Bolly actresses have lost their equity and brand value post-marriage. Will just-married Kareena Kapoor break this stereotype?
by M | M@themetrognome.in

Like in the rest of India, Tuesday afternoon’s lunch conversation revolved around Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor’s much-hyped marriage. I think by now, everyone is abreast of the most trivial details of this two-day event. A casual comment from a colleague triggered a thought; his comment was: “How can Kareena get married now? She is currently at the top, but now her market will go down.”

Apart from fuming at the word ‘market’, I was intrigued by the fact that despite living in a world where a 94-year-old man can become a father without being frowned upon, a 32-year-old woman cannot get married and still have a career. The age-old perception that married actresses don’t work at the box-office is still rock-solid in the Indian mindset. And even in Bollywood.

Great actresses from the past have been treated like sore corns post their marriage, and stereotyped in roles fit for elderly women. Usually, the public assumes the actress will completely quit or take a sabbatical from showbiz. Some of them do return to the big screen, but instead of talking about their performance or their talent, the marketing is focused on positioning it as a post-marriage comeback.

This really makes me think: are women, especially in India, truly free? Our patriarchal society cannot help but enforce its rigid belief system on Bollywood as well. The next few lines of this column might sound crude, but what is being practiced around us is even worse. For years now, our society has propagated the importance of marring a virgin, who is clean of committing moral sins. This is exactly the reason why married actresses are not accepted in Bollywood.

The men in society cannot fantasise about a woman who is not a virgin. The lusty siren on the big screen that makes them drool, once married, will belong only to her husband. It’s not that men don’t lech at or have sexual fantasies about married woman, of course they do; but they can’t openly accept this in society. Therefore, the actress will still be imagined seducing them when required; but once married, she will not be a good actress any more. In a lighter vein, they must think that the actress loses her talent along with her virginity.

Unfortunately, it’s not just the audience that holds on to these views, there are men within the industry who share the same hatred for married actresses.  Most producers will not risk their high budget projects, and so you will hardly ever see a married actress in a big banner production. Yes, there are exceptions like Kajol, who has managed a successful comeback, but sustaining it will be a challenge. A respected producer in the industry once expressed his thoughts on the same subject. He said, “Married women remind us of our mothers and we cannot expect the audience to like their mothers romancing the hero in the film.”

I feel sorry for actresses who utterly and completely devote their lives to cinema and who live under constant fear of being forced to retire once they settle down and have a family. Ironically, having a family at a decent age is again enforced by the society, and women who don’t abide by this rule are termed rebels or are assumed unfit to find a suitor.

This could explain why a Madhuri Dixit or a Juhi Chawla are left to do television shows, while the Katrina Kaifs of this world rule the roost in Bollywood. This also explains why our actresses can’t have a family along with a healthy career even at the age of 40, but our heroes, who are wrecks at 50 years of age can romance nubile 20-year-olds.

Nobody raised a brow when Aamir Khan or SRK made their debut in Bollywood after their marriage. But has there been a single instance where the actress made a debut post her marriage, and went on to have a successful innings? Not in Bollywood. This could be a distant dream, but for now can we just accept our actresses to be married and still bedazzle us with their performances?

I say, let’s give Kareena a chance. I hope her marriage and subsequent career would be the much-needed breakthrough for other women in the industry.

(Picture courtesy: www.movies.ndtv.com) 

 

 

Categories
Soft Coroner

A little more. And a little more.

Our national penchant for something ‘extra’ will have us become shameless and expect freebies in every situation.
by Prashant Shankarnarayan | prashant@themetrognome.in

The situation – A matrimonial ad seeking an extra-brilliant groom

The observation – There were the usual clichés – the girl’s father needed a groom from a good family. Expecting a brilliant son-in-law seems perfectly rational. Who wouldn’t want to flaunt an IIM son-in-law or an IIT son-in-law or an Ivy League son-in-law? But what caught my eye at first seemed like an error. This family wanted an ‘extra’ brilliant groom!

What on Earth does that mean? Is it a level between brilliant and genius? Was Einstein brilliant or extra brilliant?

To be honest, we do understand that the girl’s father wanted a smart and educated groom, but what it signified is just an Indian trait to expect something extra out of every situation. This demand for ‘extra’ brilliance is just a reflection of our culture where an extra could mean different things at different times. Yes, I know the first thing that comes to mind is the extra something that we pay under the table, but that is just one of the things ingrained in the Indian psyche. Don’t believe me? Read on.

Habit: The hand drops the last pani puri in the mouth and the throat gulps it, the lips sip off the leftover pani off the plate and even before the tangy concoction reaches the tummy, the hand shoots out at the vendor to rightfully demand…an extra puri! Or an extra peppered alu with sandwich. Sometimes, it’s extra sheng chana with paanch rupay ka bhel. Even I remember coolly picking up a few extra sheng chanas and walking off nonchalantly, even as the chanawala gave me a nasty ‘bloody shameless freeloader’ look. It’s in our blood to demand extra.

Class: The idea of demanding extra also reeks of class consciousness. The same person (me) who would demand an extra puri at a chaat stall will abstain from doing so in a restaurant. No one does it. It looks cheap. Instead, I will tip the waiter lest he thinks I am a cheapskate. In fact, the tip is directly proportional to the status of the restaurant and/or the amount in the bill. On one hand, I tip the waiter and on the other hand, I take an extra puri from the street vendor irrespective of the possibility that both might be from the same economic strata.

And not to forget the local trains in Mumbai. It’s perfectly fine to rest one bum and then slowly push and prod to create a fourth seat in a second class compartment. The ‘extra’ seat is a part of the system. But try doing the same in a first class compartment and…well actually you just can’t do it there! It’s an unwritten rule – no fourth seat here because we pay more. And as a true blue Mumbaikar, even I completely agree and follow this maxim. First class commuters might be unaccommodating, but then what is the point of paying more than three times the second class fare if we have to travel cattle class.

Peer pressure: What started as an innocuous filler to pep up boring CVs has become a scary proposition; it goes by the name of extra curricular activities. Agreed that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but all work and all play makes Jack’s father pay through his nose even though Jack will still grow up and most probably slog like his predecessors. Extra curricular activities are a must and should be encouraged. I have carved my career in a discipline which was not a part of my school or college curriculum. But when my 12-year-old neighbour goes to the USA as part of her ‘school trip’, I do shudder. We used to go to Chhota Kashmir at Aarey Milk Colony in Goregaon for a picnic. While it is heartening to know that schools have taken on the mantle to create super students, I don’t know how many of these kids will grow up to be rocket scientists-cum-horse riders-cum classical violinists who represent their country in Judo or Karate even as they win dancing and singing talent shows on television – when they’re not busy with Vedic maths, that is.

Our generation turned out okay. I hope future generations turn out better. Desperately piling extra curricular activities on the kid doesn’t seem the apt way to go about it. Still, if the parents believe that it works for their kids, then I wish them ‘extra’ luck.

Tradition: This is bit light-hearted. It’s the act of adding 1 to every transaction. 11 coconuts to bribe the gods. Rs 11 in an envelope as shagun from relatives. Rs 111 in an envelope to make a relative more endearing. Festival celebrations in the colony means it’s time to shell out Rs 501. This harmless extra numeral stems from the belief that 0 puts a full stop to a transaction, whereas 1 adds perpetuity to auspiciousness. Weird logic, but works for me.

Oppression: This I mention on behalf of all those struggling writers, including yours truly. It is one of the main reasons why many professionals prefer a full time job that assures a stipulated salary, as compared to having one’s own set-up. Dear clients: when you say ‘pilot’, we hear ‘free’. It’s like the housewife telling the vegetable vendor to thrown in extra kotmir with the lot. Freelancing professionals hate this extra work that is thrown in by clients even as they dangle the usual carrot – we’ll rope you in next time for sure. The more desperate you are, the more ‘extra’ work you do even as an ‘extra’ carrot keeps getting added to the dangling list. And I’m sure this gets replicated in every industry. What matches this ‘extra’ oppression in its ruthlessness is our next aspect – double standards.

Double standards: We’ve heard it before. How one needs to report on time; something which I sincerely follow. How one needs to be presentable at work. How employees in developed countries are thorough professionals and we need to match up with them. Our bosses want us to be like them, but in our own way, which boils down to extra working hours without extra pay. Our stickiness to copy ‘foreign ishtyle‘ corporate culture ends there, simply because there are 20,000 people in line waiting to grab your job.

Sporting conscience: No surprise that the sport that Indians follow passionately is often defined by its extras.  Think it doesn’t matter much? Cut to the match when Sri Lankan spinner Suraj Randiv bowled that no ball, leaving Sehwag stranded on an unbeaten 99. More than India’s victory, the columns were filled with lectures on the spirit of the game and a denied century. True to our style, we even prefer sports with freebies.

p.s.: Although I have just touched the tip of the iceberg as far as our natural penchant for an extra something is concerned, I will vouch that no extra is more beautiful, deserving, fulfilling and quintessentially desi than that ‘extra’ half mark doled out by a generous soul that helps you touch the most important barrier in life –35 out of 100.

Prashant is a mediaperson who is constantly on the lookout for content and auto rickshaws in Mumbai. The Soft Coroner attempts to dissect situations that look innocuous at the surface but reveal uncomfortable complexities after a thorough post mortem.

Categories
Patrakar types

Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?

Do those who condemn the media’s standards really know what their own expectations of the media are?
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

In a train to Churchgate recently, gaggles of giggly collegians on every side were mighty excited about the fact that a senior and her two friends had been featured in the entertainment supplement of a daily newspaper. Both groups tore away the main newspaper and made a grab for the supplement inside it, which they pored over as if studying for their exams. When one group got up to alight at Dadar, the newspaper lay forgotten on the seat, while the supplement was still being tossed about.

Meanwhile, a portly uncle in the gents’ first class compartment was reading the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna. Half of the front page carried an ad of some sort, while the other half had news of national and city interest, all content similar to any other newspaper that day. Two young men seated opposite him scanned the headlines before declaring, “Main yeh bakwaas paper kabhi nahin padhta.”

If a survey were to be conducted, we would find that one of every two newspaper readers thinks The Times of India is a yellow, crappy piece of paid-for newspaper that is shitty beyond words. Both these people surveyed would be The Times of India readers. When asked what they found crappy, the answer invariably is, “What nonsense news they publish, yaar!” No details are ever given, but yet, on Twitter, TOI headlines are routinely tweeted and retweeted.

A leading daily newspaper in the city, (not The TOI) routinely rehashes its own stories and publishes them in a pretty form. Readers can never tell the difference.

Only one daily broadsheet in Mumbai publishes pocket cartoons even on Sundays, when the usual norm is to have a large editorial cartoon on the edit or Op-ed page. It also carries the editorial cartoon. Five marks for knowing which newspaper this is.

Readers routinely diss the media for pandering to advertising. Then most of them participate in contests run by those media and those same advertisers, and rejoice when they win prizes.

Judging from most readers’ responses to news content, all politicians are thieves, Mahesh Bhatt is a slimeball, Aamir Khan is a better actor than Shahrukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra’s debut music album is doomed before it releases. Similarly, all heritage structures in the city are to be wrapped in cotton and preserved for eternity (“It is our history, after all”), those bowing to union leader Sharad Rao’s wishes receive ‘cuts’ from him, and the Ganesh celebrations were very really noisy, particularly this year.

Readers often start slanging matches with each other on online forums when somebody has the nerve to have an opinion contrary to theirs.

Lastly, this column was written by a pro-Congress, paid writer who has never done an honest day’s work in her life. All journalists are like that – they write false news, they take bribes from everybody, and they are heartless, microphone-carrying robots. I tell you, nothing good will happen in our country if this media is there.

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

Categories
Patrakar types

Freedom of speech and all is okay, but you are a troll

Most people commenting on online content should not be allowed anywhere near the Internet even if it’s their dying wish.
by Vrushali Lad

Look, I’m all for freedom of speech. Much like I am all for power naps, provided the nap doesn’t span a period of four hours on a day when I have the choice to either hand in that news report or die.

Freedom of speech is great. It’s wonderful. Heck, who doesn’t want to say exactly what they want, without fear of being bunged into jail wearing long hair and black kurtas, shouting slogans for the news cameras? I, for one, am the absolute master of saying what I want, when I want. If I am on the treadmill next to yours and you’re ponging of several ripe guavas, I will make a face and pointedly use another treadmill. If you ask my honest opinion on a piece you’ve written and it, well, sucks, I won’t say it sucks, but I will say that it could do with not being published at all.

And I’m completely okay with you making a face and pointedly using another treadmill if I’m ponging of ripe guavas.

The problem starts when you give me unasked-for advice. The problem gets bigger when you shout out that advice on a public forum, and make specific references to my other job as a hooker (when I’m not pimping stuff through my articles, that is), my genitals, my complete lack of ethics as a reporter (‘These media people are all paid bastards!’), my choice of profession (‘Who made this bitch a journalist? These media people are all paid bastards!) and so on. It gets worse if the story is about the Congress party, even if you’ve written a completely neutral story about Rahul Gandhi’s recent visit to Mumbai.

As to this last, the headline the editors gave the story was a rather unfortunate one. Describing Rahul’s Mumbai visit as an effort to get demoralised Congress grassroots workers together as ‘Rahul digs deep to revive Congress in Maharashtra’ (or some such. They later changed the headline and deleted the offending comments) was a most unfortunate choice of words, both for Rahul and me. Before the website flagged down the offensive comments, several smartasses had referred to how deep Rahul had dug to get this particular reporter to write about him. And that was just the usual tone of the comments posted.

The worst was when I interviewed ACP Vasant Dhoble (he of the hockey stick fame), and expectedly, the story was commented on a lot. However, several of the comments, which showed an astounding faith in Dhoble’s style of functioning (‘Corrupt, sleazy Mumbai needs this kind of brave cop!’), ganged up on me in the worst way possible. Sample some of the feedback directed at me:

‘This Vrushali is sick and needs to be rescued’.

‘This journalist has written this article she is a prostitute whose dhanda is affected by the actions of this zealous and noble officer.’

‘These media people are angry because they go to drink and do sleazy activities after work, and now Mr Dhoble has stopped it. I salute you sir!’

‘Why this Vrushali Lad has written this article? What is her problem? Her parents did not teach her any morals, that she has to write all this nonsense about an upright officer who is doing his job.’

And to think, the interview itself was neutral to the point of being sterile. This time, I yelled at my editor and they had all the comments screened and the worst ones removed.

No, I love feedback, I really do. It gives my work a sense of validation. I like it when readers write to say that they found a particular story lacking in depth, or if they have a new angle to suggest. It helps me write better, and keeps me from becoming complacent.

No, I hate it if you’re going to sit on the other side of my computer screen, one hand typing and the other in your pants, as you come to your own profanities while you imagine me to be your worst/most desirable idea of sleaze in a skirt. I know, when you’re writing off my morals and my character and my upbringing and my ethics, that you’re wondering just how to get into my pants. Worse, when you’re actually accusing me of being an idiot who writes articles for the Congress after sleeping with Rahul Gandhi and taking money from him, your pea-sized brain is busily conjuring up images of a Casanova-style Rahul Gandhi in a roomful of paid women journalists, and nobody’s wearing anything.

I notice that these trolls restrict themselves to talking only about brain size when they’re abusing male journalists.

Dear abusers, most of you are idiots. Most of you are incapable of stringing two words together. Most of you learnt your spellings from the SMSes you send and receive, lolz. Most of you are prize losers with miniscule dicks that need constant validation by targeting people on the Internet. Most of you are furious that you are not getting any, that you only have the Facebook profiles of unsuspecting women to come to. Most of you are so terrified of actual bodily harm that the only time you’ll ever shout abuse at anyone is through a comment thread, and even then, you’ll sign in as Salman Khan.

And most of you, firmly believing that any writing about the Congress party is paid/financed by the Congress/published after several sexual favours by Rahul Gandhi, are vile monkeys who have not had a coherent opinion since the beginning of time. You, particularly, should be locked together in a room and made to watch Manmohan Singh speeches for a year.

You choose the Internet to be blunt and funny. How safe and macho you must feel, hiding in your closet and gleefully typing out all the expletives you learnt from your father. How knowledgeable, how profound your observations must sound to you, as deep as your knowledge is about the workings of the media and its lack of ethics. How closely you must have watched us journos go about our business, how skilfully you must’ve stalked us, if you know that we work only in exchange for money from politicians and make a living off kissing ass.

Yes, I love freedom of speech, and I use it within bounds. I disagree with the message, not its creator. But you, despicable waste of space that you are, even now you’re typing, ‘This Vrushali is a bitch with loose morals.’

Vrushali Lad was a freelance reporter who spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so. She can be contacted at vrushali@themetrognome.in.

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