The Spin Doctors !

And you thought only Shane Warne and Murali could spin !

Well, if you are an avid current news follower like me who happens to spend a good amount of time traversing through the HTML pages of the right wing "Daily Pioneer", to the Left Wing New York Times & Indian Express, you could possibly relate to my first sentence.

Yes we live in a world where Spin Doctors galore. This phrase 'The Spin Doctor' has now become a global phenomenon much like anything else. And no, you do not need a college degree to have this doctorate. This doctor is pretty much a person, who by his ability to apply spin, can convince you that what he believes is the actual fact.

Subtlety is her forte. She packages her news,views and ideas in a certain manner so as to buttress her claims or her ideology.

There are spin doctors on both the sides, i.e Left and Right. Its from who's prism you see the world that makes all the difference between you agreeing or disagreeing on a certain subject.

Bush's "war on terror" has been the most argued subject in my recent memory. Right from the New York Times to the "Navakal" of Pune,India, would have debated this war for almost 3 years now. Each newspaper providing its own little spin to this war which has come to stay with us and possibly affecting all of us.

Right from Arundati Roy's rabid leftist views on this subject to Bill O'Reilly's equally strong and intense views, a common reader is witness to the best spin doctors in the game each day.

And the higher up you are on the celebrity chart the better spinner you are.

So Arundati Roy to buttress her 'liberal' views will tell you how 1,00,000 innocent people have died in this war and add more examples where American troops have been involved in killing what she calls and wants us to believe as 'innocent' victims. Off course for the likes of Arundati Roy, even Saddam Hussein is innocent. And so is Osama. Thus Arundati Roy will always be very selective in her examples. She will never tell you that Osama's cohorts have killed more than 60,000 Kashmiris. She will not tell you that Saddam Hussein butchered 100,000 or more Kurds. She will not tell you that in China there have been more human rights excesses than the excesses of all the nations put together. She will instead give only positive examples of China.

But if Left wing is full of spinners the right wingers are not behind. Though they are late in the game, the right wing is soon catching up on this art. They are doing pretty good in US. With FOX news leading this bunch that is ably aided by the blogsphere where right wing conservatives have made a mark.

In India sadly the balance is highly tilted in the Left's favour. May be 10 years down the line the situation will change. Who knows?

For now except for the "Daily Pioneer' of Delhi, most Indian newspapers give a lopsided picture of a story which can be seen only through the left's prism or from the Gandhi family's prism.

For all practical purposes the Indian democracy is a farce.
If its not, please give me one example of a democratic country where one and only one family has been voted again and again for more than 40 years. If committing the same mistakes again and again is an art, well, Indians have mastered that.
When the same family rules again and again, you call it Monarchy.

The Indian spin doctors have a huge advantage over their US counter parts. They have no opposition.They are never questioned. Nobody can tear their theory apart.

Times of India in recent times has become the Gandhi Family mouthpiece. The way it is packaging Rahul Gandhi, it can put the best of ad-makers to shame.
So if Times Of India runs a subtle advertisement for Rahul Gandhi, showing how dynamic he is or that how he celebrated his birthday privately, only few people do not miss the fact that the Congress run newspaper has its spin doctors working overtime. This image building excercise undertaken by the nation's 'best' newspaper tells a story unto itself.

How does it really matter to country fighting poverty and looking for social equalities how this Gandhi family member celebrated his Birthday? But "Times Of India', the nation's premier daily comes up with such irrelevant features on front page, and far worse, gets away with show casing a dumbo as a potential PM. Infact ever since Rahul Gandhi has exploded on the Indian political scene, no other newspaper has made us hear the bang more than Times Of India. I think TOI wants us to believe that Rahul G is the best thing to have happened to India after the green revolution or economic liberalisation.

But if TOI today symbolises scycophancy, Indian Express is not far behind. There's been so much of pro-establishment spin in the newspaper these days that someone actually made a web site called
spindianexpress.
It is tough to believe that this Goenka owned newspaper was at some point of time forefront in anti-establisment views. There was a time when Indian express really had its money where its mouth was and it backed its tag line 'Journalism of Courage' by bold actions and views, whether it was Bofors or Emergency.

Today it has become Sonia and Manmohan's B-Team. You just have to visit its Editor-in-Chief, Shekhar Gupta's columns once in while to realise how shallow it has become.

'The Hindu' happens to be the worst of the lot. It is now promoting marxism pretty blatantly. And at times it does not even bother to apply spin but brazenly demonstrates its subjective journalism.

In a country where all these newpapers tell you that how Modi is the biggest villain of the century and how Sonia Gandhi is next only to Mother Teresa, there are very few who bother to read the other end of the spin doctors array.

The 'Daily Pioneer'. Its the right wing's answer to Indian Express. Its BJP's answer to Congress' TOI and Hindustan Times. But again Daily Pioneer has a neglible readership. So by and large Congress is way ahead in this game of Spins.

The art of spin is not what you tell, but its what you DO NOT tell to the gullible reader. So to make you believe that Narendra Modi is the biggest villain, the Times Of India wants us to believe that more than '2000 muslims were killed in riots in Gujarat spanning number of days'. A 'truth' it was able to stick by repeated assertion (of lies). What it does not tell you though is that not 2000, but 700 muslims and 300 hindus died in riots and that the riots were not spanning days, but only 3 days to be precise.
Also Times Of India will not compare these figures with the far worse violence nation ever suffered. The 1984 Sikh riots, where even by official figures, more than 3000 sikhs were butchered by Congress workers (some of them are MPs now) and the riots went in for months.
The Indian Express will tell you that Modi government is full of corrupt officials but will never tell you that the Gujarat government under Modi, clocked 15% GDP growth this year against the national average of 7%.

Not telling something definitely is a part of spin. Or tell only so much so as to enforce your view point. You take the reader to a point where he's convinced and than leave him right there. If the reader is really interested in the story he will dig further. But 9 out of 10 will not dig further and the newspaper and the view point will win.

So if Arundati Roy does not tell you about the excesses done by the Taliban in Afghanistan (or even if she does, not with the same intensity as Bush's war on terror), be rest assured that its her spin doctorism at work.

The large number of people who take the views represented in TOI as the gospel truth are in danger of never having known the other side of the story. Similarly all the BJP supporters who have never read anything beyond 'The Daily Pioneer' will never know the follies committed by BJP.

Objective journalism has been a victim of this Spindoctorism. If at all it existed, that is.

We live in a web of lies and only we can apply some common sense to really understand this spin. For most though, news is irrelevant and hence truth is only incidental to the event.

When Kishore Kumar died a hundred deaths

"There are still 8 chapters remaining.I think i will night out today."
"I haven't even tried out any 'problems' as yet. App-Mech really sucks."
"Can i leave those last 2 chapters in option. This year they might not come.What say?""What did they ask in your Viva? Is the external strict ?"
"Forget it. Lets have a fag. Is Ganpat's tea stall still open?"

Flashback to the world of irrelevance. Flashback to the hostel life.
A virtual universe of 24 X 7 chaos, where events waited for mid-nights to occur - nay explode.

If you have ever seen a hostel life, then it's hard to believe, you have not been a part of these seemingly mindnumbing conversations.

For the unitiated,these coversations may sound silly or hollow, but they meant a world for a hostelite. For example , what if the Viva external was really strict? Would that person skip the orals altogether? Or what's the point of having a fag & a cup of tea ? Would it have solved the problem of last 2 chapters? But i bet you listened to these questions as a religious routine every semester.

Those conversations were worth every unsuccessful smoke ring coming out of your lips.
Every tea stall owner fancied his chances of making big, thanks to the relentless customer line all through the night at his stall for a tiny cup of tea - the lifeline of every hostelite. As a rule who has to be awake all night, before the exam.

But it was fun. Fun that everyone from the topper to the repeater would some how find himself in those fruitless conversations before every exam.

Then off course those visits to the temple , asking God for somehow clearing this exam and promising him of being sincere the next time. "Just this. Just this exam, please. !!!". The cry of the "inner voice" bigger and louder than Sonia Gandhi's.

By the time we were in the final year, the "beer" was the defacto thirst quencher relegating water to distant second place. Even during the exam period some of us were audacious enough for going to have drinks in the evening just a day before the paper.Yours faithfully,included.

"Phir bhi theek nikle yaar"... those priceless words from one of characters of the movie "Hyderabad Blues" says it all.Yea,we just managed to squeeze through those years & yea some of us even came out with flying colors.
(One might blame it on the paper checker or the examiner. Oh Whatever !)

And dig this;There used to be a study room in the college premise where all the sincere amongst us would come over to study. Believe it or not,i too visited them often. Not because i was sincere or something.Those four years i had divorced sincerity.
It was just that the canteen (cafetaria for the US walas) was very close to that room and hence i could frequently go for my regular dose of wada pav & tea.

Barring those 15 days of exams & some part of the so called 'preparation' leave (where nothing really got us prepared), the rest of the life in college was bliss. It was divine. Oh yea, also there was a brief "submission" period preceding every semester exam and it had its own share of ordeal.But atleast during the submission period, the window glasses, the bulb and the bucket came in handy. Also the journals of the sincere ones could be used.

Do i miss that? You bet i do. But like all phases of life, that carefree phase of life had to come to an end. A phase where you never knew who would be lying on your bed when you entered your room.
Or a phase where someone would wear your well ironed shirt for playing a game of cricket; a shirt that you had carefully kept in your trunk for some special occassion.Your sleepers would be found under some distant bed in a hostel room just because one of your friends did not want to wear his shoes in the morning before leaving your room.

If your room mate made an impromptu decision of cleaning the room, there were two possible reasons. Either his female friends are paying a visit or someone's parents are expected. Else the room will be a dumping yard, for all those who cared to live in it.
But yea, the definition of cleanliness was limited to all the clothes being dumped temporarily in the shelf. It was all about 'pushing under the carpet' literally.

The girls were a constant and only reliable source of revenue during those economically tough times; needless to say they were given special treatment. And yea they were particularly helpful during the days of submitting journals, as their journals were always up to date.

During hostel days,clock or watch was an entity people did not bother much of; almost as much as that journal itself. It meant very little. So if you happened to visit your food mess at let's say 00:00 am after watching some non-descript hindi movie in an equally shady theatre, you were more worried about someone being in the mess at that time, rather than whether any food was left. Because food was always left. We practically lived on 'left overs'.

There was neither a routine nor a road map. You could have your lunch between the time range of 10:30 hrs to 16:30 hrs and dinner between time range of 17:30 hrs to 2:00 hrs. No questions asked.It was an accepted norm. It was a natural way of existence.The only issue that bothered us about the mess was the bill. Because every one felt that he did not eat enough in the mess to justify that payment. The auditor of the mess owed greater explaination than the defaulters.

Self analysis was a futile excercise. You are just what you are. You are taken as you are. Even if you try to put a facade and impress some crowd, you fall flat on your face and get exposed pretty much within a short span. Practically no one's interested in what you are as long as you join him in having a fag and share a bottle of beer.

You are not known by how well you performed in your last exam (and mind you lot of them perform well), rather how many times you have had drinks this season. Or were you able to befriend a girl from your class. Then even if you have had three ATKTs (back logs) in your cart you were still a hero. Career be damned. You can always recover.Those days you were judged by very different parameters. The rules of the game were different.

Of all the phases that i have encountered in my life and I am likely to encounter in future, this phase, which constitutes and represents four continous years of nonsense (as in things not making sense at all), stand out as the most enjoyable.

I would like to re-live those moments and days, when i was making no positive contribution to the society or my family for that matter. Atleast now when i am earning, i am sort of directly helping my family and my employer and may be indirectly helping my country's economy. Whatever !

I have enough money today to have beer everyday but I still miss those days when i needed to take loan from my friends to join my other drinking friends and have a blast. I miss calling my father for sparing some extra money, 'only for this month'.
I miss those songs that we sang, bereft of any inhibitions, the whole night, intoxicated more by the camaraderie than by the beer itself.When Kishore Kumar died a hundred deaths and when Jagjit Singh was the demi-God of every broken heart.

When smoking was not about making hole in your lungs or pocket, but a neccessary evil to have your rightful place under the Hostel sun. When a game of Flash could extend well into the early morning hours.

Those four years when vices were your friends and decency was delt with contempt. Those four years when you did not need to plan to meet your friends and could hijack one's privacy without giving a call, because privacy was a concept , alien to us.

Those years when our parents merely lived on hope rather than any concrete evidence that their son will somehow get on the career road. Those years when abusive language was not so much of a pariah, but the defacto lingo.
A phase when bordering insanity was not an exception, it was almost a virtue.

Those years when nothing worthwhile or fruitfull was achieved, yet life gave so many reasons to live for.