(Pune Mirror column): The sweet smell of bad news

We have become a neurotic as well as paranoid society, for sure. We thrive on bad news. We love it, standing there in our homes, remote in hand, jaws hanging open, eyes fixed in fascination, backing away from the TV towards the couch (stepping on the dog’s tail en route), letting out a series of oh nos and what-has-this-world-come-tos. After we watch our fill of footage involving blood, gore and more, we re-live it by calling up friends and talking about it all over again. How we blossom and bloom, with all this doom-gloom. (And how we love bad rhyme too).

What’s the chance then, in this smugly pessimistic world-view of ours, of any really normal, nice, good news to filter through? Very little chance. Snowflake-in-hell type of chance.

No wonder, then, that there were no takers for a story-idea that I SMSed to some journo friends. In the thick of the board exam results, I heard from the parents of a 15-year-old girl who got 93 % in the Xth CBSC. No tuitions, no aggro for and from the parents over the year, no war-footing preparations, nothing. Just a happy, well-adjusted family with a child who excelled. And enjoyed herself while excelling. Would anyone like to interview this sunny, well-adjusted kid and her smiling parents?

My SMS text drew total silence, from print, TV, Net. Nothing, nada. I could almost hear Homer Simpson type voices saying: BORRRINGGG.

Now, as that Hindi stand-up comic says: “Abhi ulta socho.” Suppose, I had sent quite the opposite SMS out to my friends in the media, that went something like this: "Teenager gets 93 %; attempts to slit wrists because she didn't get 98%. Mother in ICU after glugging poision, father lies down on railway tracks after massive drinking orgy" or variations on this theme, you get the point. What if I had sent this kind of message out there? I tell you, the media, particularly news channels, would have descended on this family in stampeding droves. Stories would have been filed; continuous coverage of the front door of their apartment; interviews with the colony watchman (and his dog Tommy); a grandmother would have been unearthed from somewhere to talk about it all. The large neighbour who stopped the girl in the nick of time would be interviewed, lodged tightly in the narrow staircase of the building. A few serviceable shrinks and sociologists would talk sadly into the cameras. Everyone would have their five seconds of fame, for sure.

Our screens would then gladly give us live and breaking information, on the hour every hour, 24/7, din-bhar, baar baar lagataar.

We would be shown the exact spot (red blinking arrow graphic) where the mother passed out; the blade with which the girl tried to slash her wrists; the razor with which the father shaved inside which was the blade with which the girl slashed her wrists, the washbasin stand on which stood the razor in which was the blade, with which…you get the idea?

So what then, is the moral of my story, or the burden of my song, as they say? That not many people today want to watch good news, well-adjusted families, or positive forecasts anymore. It's doomsday prophets and anxiety-mongerers who rule.

But like American journo Charles Kuralt once said: "It does no harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole country isn't in flames, and that there are people in the world besides politicians, entertainers, and criminals."

To my mind, the kid with the 93 per cent who did it without mind-numbing 9-hour long tuition classes all year round, is the real news story. And that red-blinking arrow on the TV screen should point to her out there, wolfing down a pizza and then pau bhaji, like any happy 15 year old. But then what do I know. I’m just a good-news junky.