everyone loves a goodlooking strike, so bring on the docs

Here’s the funny bit: Forever wary of strikes, agitations, stirs, demonstrations, protests, marches, rallies, the Indian English language media has suddenly discovered a new love for the words, till just the other day discarded and tossed straight out the window — bang into that bin marked “Commie mantra/jargon/trash”.

Check any English newspaper worth its weight in the raddiwala’s scale, and the words leap straight out of the anti-reservation ruckus news/views/comments sections as if aiming straight for your red towel. The headline writers are just as much in love with the Commie words as their headline hunters seem to be. (I count the TV channels out of any half-serious discussion on any pseudo-serious topic, for they do not possess even pseudo gravity. And you don’t need a Newtonian law of gravity to figure that out) .

This, mind you, is the same media that opposed the strike by SBI workers and anti-privatisation airport employees, to name just two recent ones.

So, why this sudden fascination? Yes, the SBI agitation made life hell for all the pensioners/students/businessmen/whatever — as the oh-so-sobby ‘human interest’ reports and stories told us day in and night out. And yes, the airport workers’ strike made life a stinking nightmare for everyone and her aunt taking the next flight out.

Without getting into polemics, let’s agree the agitators/protestors were wrong, just to settle for a safe adjective. You cannot, let’s agree, hold people to ransom like THAT, especially when people need money/monetary dealings 24x7 these days. You cannot, let’s agree again, make people take the shit (literally) at airports by letting the stink and rot make faces at you.

But then, can you make people hang on with their illnesses, diseases, emergencies and death till you demands are met? I don’t know. Seriously, I don’t. I don’t have an opinion on whether quotas should go up, down, east or west — for any which way it goes, we will get doctors, engineers and technical people from institutes all over the country where your parents’ wallet is enough to see you through and across.

I don’t know whether people subjugated for centuries ought to get a prop to help them lift their head and look us, the ‘others’ in ‘general category’ (as forms in schools, colleges and even govt put it), in the eyes.

I don’t know where people who say reservation should start at elementary school-level are when the ‘public schools’ their sons/daughters/nephews/nieces/brothers/sisters and uncle’s colleague’s pet’s owner’s daughter studies, refuse reserve seats in their hallowed institutions.

I also don’t know if owners/managers/editors/reporters/sub-editors in the media organisations fancy this particular strike because the protagonists look/talk/act and shit good-smelling crap like us — as against the Commies in any other strike.

All I know is something, somewhere, is wrong, just to settle for a safe adjective. And making people wait outside hospitals will never right that wrong. It will only maim or kill them. And that’s certainly not funny.