Places best avoided

Look up this blogpost.

I sometimes feel this world is not a happy place to live in at all, and maybe ignorance is indeed bliss.

Going around New York City

The only time I was in the United States - that was in the summer of 1991 - I made a three day stopover in New York on my way back home. I put up with an Indian friend who was then a medical intern in a city hospital. The apartment was on West 42nd Street, I think, or maybe 62nd (these are the kind of details I am beginning to forget now), very close to Central Park. My friend's idea of showing me round the Big Apple was to take me by subway to Jackson Heights: the unique aroma of incense mixed with stale urine and paan hanging heavily in the air told you from far away that it was the Indian enclave. He was eager to show me the shops and the temples, where lots of well-heeled Indians had made large endowments: golden idols, heavy jewellery, marble filigree work, that sort of thing. It was on my persuasion that he agreed to visit places like the Guggenheim Museum and Broadway and Times Square, and climb to the top of the Empire State Building (if I had known what was going to happen to the World Trade Center in a decade's time, I might have chosen to visit one of the Twin Towers instead).

It was later on, over mugs of beer on the last evening, that my friend sheepishly admitted that though he had lived in New York for four years, he'd probably never have seen the sights had it not been for my visit...

On hacks, once more

One thing I found out long ago about journalists (one of my reasons for quitting, besides poor pay, irregular hours and too much time wasted on the kind of people we call faltu in Bangla) is that though they make a living out of pointing out everybody's faults and weaknesses, they are by and large - even the pettiest cub reporter, not just high-and-mighty editors of international newspapers and TV channels - very houmourless and self-important people, precisely the sort who throw stones at others' glass houses all the time but get furious if a few pebbles are occasionally hurled at their own (so here's a link to the kind of jokes about them that everybody except they themselves should enjoy). You hear far more doctors and lawyers making fun of their own kind than you'd hear journalists (and, as I never tire of pointing out, anyone with the remotest connection with a media house flaunts the tag these days, even those who are no more than ad copywriters, subeditors or basically stringers who are allowed to cover nothing more substantial than models doing the catwalk). Just watch how self-righteously they scream when anyone says something sane about putting some reasonable restrictions on their sacred 'right' to pry, provoke, prevaricate, concoct, exaggerate and vilify: power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot through the ages, as a British statesman once famously said! Suggest that every Tom, Dick and Harry does not constantly need to be told disgusting and trivial home truths about high government officials and celebrities (where they buy their underwear, whether they religiously kiss their wives and kids good night every night), or that journalists themselves might have lots of skeletons in their cupboards, and they loudly predict the return of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.

But if you want to get them really angry, tell them they slaver for the kind of wealth, power and fame they are always criticizing, but they neither have the stomach nor the talent to make it on their own as tycoons and even doctors, lawyers, corporate managers and some teachers do, so they feed on scraps in the same fashion as lampreys cling to sharks. And this also I have noticed: those who frequently invoke the names of Daniel Pearl or P. Sainath to tell the world what a noble profession they are in rarely, if ever, choose to follow in the footsteps of those stalwarts. (P.S.: For those who don't know, Pearl wasn't even a hero by choice, he just happened to be abducted and murdered, and that, cruel as it sounds, did infinitely more for his reputation than any journalistic work he had ever done! It's quite like Stephen Hawking, who'd have been about as much of a pop-celebrity as Murray Gell Mann but for his debilitating handicap)

Abhirup sent two very interesting links in his comment on the post titled 'Journalistic ethics'. You might also try this and this before making up your own mind about whether this is the right career for you. 

odd tags

Why indeed? And why do police officers sometimes have surnames like Lawless and Coward, while diplomats are named Crooks, and surgeons Slaughter or Savage?