The Right to Forget...

I got a sms exactly at 18.10... Meerut on Fire...500 under trap...100 feared dead.

This reminded me of the same time but different place when I got the sms regarding Varanasi blasts: I was sitting in NSD in New Delhi enjoying a play which was as boring as anything in our times. I was enjoying because I had no option...and as I got the sms, the first reaction was to ask the well being of friends and foes, both in Meerut and Varanasi. 

The next day I was watching the headlines...The life goes on in Varanasi... This has been the most trendy feature of our media to first hype the things as if something very unusual has happened in the country where people just get lost due to Dengoo or Malaria or anything of that sort. After some hours of hitch-hike and formal P2C's and VO's, how could the life comes to normalise? We saw burnt dead bodies on our screen; Sahara Samay, India TV, Aaj Tak and the list goes on. Leave ND, Dr. Roy is that's why honoured amongst his TRP rivals also. He is mature at sometimes. (Don't remind me of the  April Fool melodrama which Abhisar and that Takkarwala Ahirwal played shamelessly. I thought that I must send sms to 6388 and I did so. The original text was, "This is the most foul game of TRP ever being played by the mass media in the Indian History. Down NDTV" and lo...I got back thanks for the message.) But this time he has shown that Sharm unko magar kabhi-kabhi aati hai.

Indian Electronic Media has not matured yet. There was no need to have shown the roasted human beings, without that also the weight of the accident would not have been affected. Now, you just keep an eye on the idiot boxes and you will see that the next day they will run the news as..."Meerut ke logon ne itni badi ghatna se bahut kucch seekha hai. Yahan ka jeevan hi aisa hai ki koi bhi ghatna inhein hila nahin sakti. Jindagi dobara patri par aa gayi hai. Aag ne meerut vasiyon ko is baat ki roshni di hai ki ve picchla bhool kar aage ki sochein...". Last but not the least...cameraman so and so ke saath so and so meerut ke victoria maidan se soso TV ke liye.

Now, first create hype, show dead bodies, roasted bones and then console by saying that everything is alright. Who cares about the people's views? Do they really forget the tragedies? They have the right to forget, but necessarily they don't. This is the camerawallahs who decide whether they have reacted to the situation or come to 'patri'.

Someone said in the 'Gladiator'(I saw it in Hindi dubbed), 'Logon ko bhoolne ki aadat hoti hai...' I think this is not an aadat but an imposed right by the state, media and all the wings and compradors of elite exploiters. Let's erase all the fundamental rights from the constitution and incorporate only one i.e. The Right To Forget. After all, we have forgot Godhra, Gujarat, Mandal, Kalinganagar, Afghanistan, Iraq, Delhi slums, Varanasi and now slowly forgetting Meerut. At least this right will have no resistance from the people's side b'coz it requires no legitimacy.