Good evening Indians, we are the news ... in the next 30 minutes we will give you 5 minutes of relevant required information , 18 minutes of irrelevant information and 7 minutes of advertisement so that you can shave, shampoo better. And in next program we would showcase the same news with more ooohh, ahh effects.


This is what I think the news has come to. I had left watching news because, there was simply no news. But I was compelled by few people to watch it so yesterday I decided to give it a try. I hit few channels and this is what one channel said:-

  • Which Dhoni look do you think is better, (a) the old straight, (b) the blond look (c) the sleek cut?

On one other channel here was some news:
  • For the cricket and hockey crazy nation here is some news, India's ace driver Narayan Kartiken is going to be the first Indian driver to race in Formula 1 ........ he has been choosen for the next season and would be racing in 2005
Cool which year is this?

  • Vishwanathan Anand Challenges Kasparov.
This is interesting I thought - Anand challenging Kasparov, what turned out later was that after repetitive questions by the interviewer Anand gave in and said that it would be great to challenge Kasparov.
Some way to re frame things.

  • China sends satellite to moon.
China has send a satellite to moon which would reach moon by November................China is going to be in the distinguished league by putting the second man on moon.

Oh god! What happened to Buzz Aldrin who went along Neil Armstrong to moon? Is it the second man or the second country to put a man on moon?

  • Trigger happy cops
I still didn't give up and continued watching and the news now talked about Delhi Connaught place shooting - Trigger happy Delhi Cops get jail, Neema Goyal the wife of the victim Pradeep goyal happy but not satisfied. This news has been up for a while but I wanted to know this fake encounter - how did it happen?
After surfing TV for more than an hour I didn't find the information I was looking for. I like to know what, how, when and why of the story to be more clear on things but to my dismay there was nothing much so I had to give up.

The morning news paper, Times Of India says the trigger happy cops get life term.... OK but how did the fake encounter happen. At the end no clue, Indian Express played neutral quoting fairly and Economic Times was silent.

Question: If it was a fake encounter, why did the Delhi policemen do it?
I mean were they doing target practice or they had some dispute (for which there is no evidence). One other theory was for promotion - which is so ridiculous, why would one kill someone for promotion when they know that postmortem is going to prove them wrong anyway? And why do it in CP? This came from CBI, now I wonder how they work with no logic.

So why did they shoot? One small line in the newspaper said that the policemen plead the case of mistaken identity. 34 Bullets fired, 10 men, a running car.. makes sense to me. I mean if you were told that there is one gangster in the car and you have to take him out how would you approach with your small pistol or a single bullet firing 303 rifle? Ask him to pull over with a nice smile... I don't think so. Practically thinking if I know there is a gangster in a car and I have to stop him I would be too cautious, because if you have seen a AK47 fire (or something similar), believe me you wouldn't want to be there, I have seen the fire so I know. And these gangster on the other hand won't smile and say - You got me, they would just pull out their guns and fire. And if you die not many would bother. But then I would say that there was lack of professionalism in the action, 34 bullets fired meant they were dead sure that the guys in the car were terrorist Yaseen and a partner. An id check wasn't done before taking the action. Although difficult, but some sort defensive action should have been taken. But I guess they were to charged up that only thing in their mind was to kill the guy. What ever the truth might be - all I want to say is that I don't have any information from any media.

My friend in Times Of India says otherwise. He says that this is what the public wants and this is what we are selling and its a business after all. Stating ahead he says that no matter what people say - they want only this which is very evident by the rise in share of Times Of India, even the smart one want to read it though they might complain otherwise, but they still read it. Good glamor and style and people are happy. I can't contest much with him as he is into brand marketing team of Times Of India (north).

So, at the end of the day I go back to the radio and tune in to "BBC" on All India Radio. After all this useless info and the kind of time I have, accuracy and knowledge is what I need.