News or Nonsense!

“Kabristan ka Rahasya”, “Ek Khooni Ghar”, “Naagin ka Badla”, “Khoon ka Pyasa Sadhu”…

This list might sound like a list of C-grade books available in a book-store of a railway station. However, that’s not the only place one can find these titles. These are the “Special Reports” of some of India’s leading news channels!

That’s right. Flipping through channels, we can find a variety of “news channels”, whose “news reports” revolve around stories like that of a palace where a king killed his queen because she had an affair with the minister and how her spirit still lives there waiting to kill any man who enters the palace. How ridiculous can things get!

Some channels cannot stop talking about how a film actress and her boyfriend made out. Not only this they claim that this is the biggest “news” and keep flashing the pictures of the film actress in the skimpiest outfit ever made. Other such “news” items talk about how two actresses hate each other because one of them lost weight and looked better in a movie which starred the other actress as well.

There will be “special reports” on how a sadhu or a tantrik can bring back the spirits of the dead and how he can make you talk to them or how an image of some god has appeared on the wall of someone’s house and how it’s auspicious!

Do we seriously need such “news”? We live in the twenty first century. People talk of life on other planets, the technology is advancing, new discoveries in every field are made everyday and here we are stuck with the ghost of a queen who betrayed her husband. What knowledge can we possibly gain from knowing how an actress made out with her boyfriend? But the biggest question of all, should the “news channels” actually be given the permission to term such trash “news”?

I do not think it’s required to show such “news items” just to increase a news channels’ ratings. Instead of showing such cheap, indecent and to some level superstitious reports, they can arrange for relevant talk shows, debates or maybe start off with an educational program which will help increase a viewer’s general knowledge, when there is no news available.

Just to sell their channel or make it “the most viewed” channel, people go to any extent. On one hand, they’ll condemn a particular act strongly like how they condemned the dancers or cheerleaders in a recent cricket tournament. On the other hand, they won’t stop showing them off. There will be an hour long “special reports” on those very cheerleaders and how colourful and “sensual” cricket has become due to them.

News is something that keeps us informed as to what goes on in our city, in our country and around the world. It is meant to keep us updated and aware. But, just for the sake of filling up slots where these news channels do not have a good story, I don’t think they should stoop to such levels where they are terming the most irrelevant nonsense as news.

Save Mankind?

Surrounded by the blistering, hot sand, a man stood, barefooted, in the desert, the sun burning his skin, his eyes thirsty to see a human form. Sometimes he ran in the hot sand, sometimes he beseechingly called out to unknown people, with all the strength inside his lungs, to come to him, and when his strengths wore out, he fell flat on the hot blanket of sand,in a semi-conscious state, till his strengths returned. Days and months and years had passed and now his hopes were shattering, giving way to a dreadful truth. His search for a mere sight of a human form, other than himself was finally drawing to a dark, horrid conclusion. He was the only one left. There was no other human being in the world. Mankind was on the verge of extinction, and he was the last survivor…

It might sound like a plot from an up-coming Sci-Fi movie; however take a brief moment to imagine a situation like this in real life. What if this were true?

Some of us may feel it’s ridiculous, others may think that a situation like this will arrive long after our generation has passed and that when the time comes the future generations will find out a solution, why should we worry? Only a few people would understand the depth of the situation. They very well know that this might not be that far off.

With the invention of various nuclear and biological weapons, it might not be a big surprise if the situation of mankind on the brink of being extinct is just a war away. Almost every nation today has successfully tested nuclear weapons. And the situation around the globe is so tense that people get enraged and start fighting over issues ranging from racial discrimination to religion to land abuse and what not. The political leaders of most countries do not look beyond their own profits. And in the future if these leaders gain from going on war, they will not hesitate. Biological weapons too have their destruction quotient. Anthrax, poisonous “death” gases, etc have a deathly impact on humans and may result in mass killings.

Apart from weapons and wars, we have the global warming situation dangling over our heads. Again for some people, it’s yet another term which will not be threat to them. Such people feel that how will their control on using electrical appliances and other equipments, which are hazardous to the environment, help curb global warming. According to them, they are just a drop in the big ocean. Even if they do something, it will not make change for the whole world. So they end up doing nothing. What they do not know is that most of the people in the world think the same thing. They are well aware of the situation; however they do not take any precautionary measures and continue to do with what they’ve always done.

Even though, the thought of an extinct human race is ludicrous, it can happen sooner than any of us can ever imagine. We still have time to make a difference. There are still things which we can do, which might postpone the threat of nuclear-wars and global warming, and give us a chance to obtain a permanent solution to this. But the biggest question is: Will the internal hatred among humans let us survive the test of times?