In Search Of A Pensieve

What is a journalist without angst? I think angst is what separates a good from a bad journalist. Sure, a good journalist is driven, motivated, committed, but is also spurred by an inner pain about an outer reality that is addressed with the only weapons you possess - knowledge and words. Journalism is a quest for truth, a crusade to expose injustice and wrongdoing by getting to know the facts and then using words to communicate them effectively.

Especially when you are young, your antenna is fine-tuned - you pick up signals of injustice, corruption, exploitation and you boil with rage. If you are a real-life Amitabh Bachchan, you go out and physically set right the wrongs. But you are not, so you deal with it in the only way you can - with knowledge and with words.

The journalist's quest is invariably a challenging task as there is usually a powerful caucus of people who wish to conceal the truth. And so, hacking away at the lies, the deception, the half-truths to expose the truth becomes an overriding commitment. Journalists play a crucial role in a democratic society and that is to provide information - accurately, fairly, quickly. Professional journalists cannot and must not be activists. It's not their job to change things: that's for the other wings of democracy - the politicians, bureaucrats, enforcement officials, citizens or ngos. But when they do change things for the better, a journalist's quest is truly fulfilled.

So a journalist's moment of triumph is when usurped land's restored to the rightful owners, the guilty are punished, when citizens form groups in villages to safeguard communal harmony, when food's distributed to the famine-stricken, when a corrupt minister or official is sacked and so on.

Journalism involves the huge responsibility of providing accurate information. In the search of which, no hurdle is too high, no danger so perilous to retreat. If getting the real story involves sidestepping landmines in Sri Lanka, running from tank fire in Afghanistan, ducking bullets in Kashmir, so be it. If reporting war, you have to do it from the battlefront. If reporting riots, you have to do it from curfew-bound neighbourhoods; if reporting about famine you have to travel for days on dusty, back-breaking mud tracks; if reporting about rebels in the Northeast you have to cope with malaria.

You do it because you believe in your work, because you are spurred by angst: how can you let people suffer, how can you allow reality to be buried, how can you allow a lie to be perpetuated. You can and will make a difference with the weapons you have - with knowledge and with words.

I'm not so sure any more. Today I face a new angst. Nothing really changes. You played with your life for the sake of a story and yes it made a difference - but only temporarily. And then, things slide back to where they were, and life goes on more or less at the same level of deception and corruption. And then, the same story repeats - the time, place and cast of characters may alter, but facts remain the same.

Thirteen years ago, I reported on a drought India faced. It was the cover story. And to get the true and whole picture, one went to drought-stricken villages, suffered blisters and dehydration. The scale of the tragedy was horrifying. With underlying passion and anger, one wrote about the heart-rending stories of hunger and destitution, the officialdom's apathy, the cavalier, uncoordinated and ineffective government response when the drought erupted full-scale, one outlined the list of preventive measures delineated by experts in the hope the authorities would implement them to prevent recurrence of the tragedy.

But drought recurs...as do stories in the media. There are sad scenes of desperate farmers, dead cattle strewn on parched lands that should have been lush with crops, there are attacks on official apathy and list of steps on what should be done to prevent the recurrence.

History repeats. So does news - the war in Sri Lanka rages on, chief ministers meet to discuss the Cauvery water dispute, caste massacres flare in Bihar, the pwg kills landlords and policemen, tribals are stripped naked and paraded for the audacious sin of chasing away intruding hens from their paddy fields.

You learnt in school that news is what's new. None of these reports are new and yet can you argue they are not news? But the repetitiveness of today's media reports fills me with this new angst. And it bothers readers for different reasons. Evidently, many Indians don't see these stories as news anymore. They're no longer interested, outraged or excited about war, caste massacres or scams. What's new, exciting or outrageous is celebrity, lifestyle, fashion, society gossip. And so stories on these issues fascinate the readers of today, the way "serious stories" (as we old-fashioned or hard-core journalists like to describe them) on exploitation, injustice and corruption fascinated the readers of yore.

And it could be that most of today's readers are the same readers of yore. They've grown, evolved, changed. Their attitudes, priorities, circumstances and lifestyles have changed. They're bored by these "serious stories". But then, it's only a matter of time before today's public tires of the inanities, the trivia and sheer banality of current media obsessions.

Readers are always in search of the new, the exciting, the different. And that perhaps explains why adults are as enthralled as children by Harry Potter's powers of wizardry and latest adventures. From the dreary, repetitive world of news and current events, it is a fantastic leap to a magical world of supernatural tricks and enchanting concepts such as the household clock that instead of merely indicating time, informs you about the whereabouts of your family members - at home, working, travelling or in mortal danger or the "Pensieve", which is a basin to hold one's excess thoughts until they can be dealt with at leisure.

Maybe I need a Pensieve for my current angst.