Open Letters

To Preity Zinta:
Journalists once called you the "only man in Bollywood" after you identified some underworld gangsters in the Bharat Shah case. So why do you have to lie now? Why do you even bother to say that no one ever approached you? You think readers are fools?

To Rajat Sharmaji:
Ok, I'm not going to tell you whether what you did was right or wrong. I just want to ask a few questions- were you even thinking of what you were doing? Did you even bother to ask yourself what the repurcussions of the operation will be? Not on Shakti Kapoor or Aman Verma, but on the journalism industry? So now the I&B Ministry is going to be demanding regulations for the broadcasting industry. Do you really want that?

To Sallu:
So we all know that you're trying to clean up your act, and project a good-boy image. What will the stories in BT and Mid-day. And it may just work. Who's your PR agent? (Maybe he could help out Rajatji as well.)


To Souravda:
Oh dear dear Souravda, much as I think that you are (or were) a good batsman, I really think you need to chill out, have some rosogollas, take stock of your batting, and then take action. Maybe we'll tell good ol' Geoffrey Boycott to perk you up a bit, and give you a piece of his mind.

To BJP members:
Kindly spare us this anti-US rhetoric. For once, we were almost on America's side, till we realised that wouldn't it be better if Modi just went to USA and got lost in the crowd there, never to be seen again?

Question for the Day

Sure, we've heard of police assistance during protest marches, cricket and football matches, and during WTO meets. But where else in the world do you need police vigilance for an exam?

What a dude!

He's been labelled the Indian Idol No. 1. And today's ToI had not one, but four stories on him, and he also adorned the masthead. Nope, it isn't Narain Karthikeyan, not even Sourav Ganguly, and neither is it Shah Rukh Khan. It's Lord Shiva! (Sorry, 'him' should have been 'Him' in the previous sentence).

Ok, so it's Maha Shivratri, but do we need a lesson on Lord Shiva? Bachi Karkaria's nonsensical anchor story is just another waste of space, and reading beyond the first paragraph of that story is a waste of time.

Does ToI plan to turn into a pseudo-religious newspaper? As if the spiritual columns were not enough, we now get religious lessons too! So during Ganesha festival, let's expect a four-page special report on Ganesha. And during Navratri, let's read about the Goddess. And during Janmashtmi, maybe they can inform us about Krishna as well. What about Prophet Mohammed, Buddha and Jesus Christ? Can the newspaper please teach us about them too?

Shall we call this the beginning of the religionisation of the Indian media?