Return of The Prodigal

First it was the hoardings, then the front page advertisements in newspapers of a well known bespectacled and smug face. For the first time I noticed he has a mole on his forehead. 

After a hiatus of six months, post-truth icon Arnab Goswami was coming back to TV screens, and his fans began feeling giddy and delirious. With their echo chamber bereft of its favourite nightingale, they were battling cold turkey conditions all these months.

After all how long can one make do with cheap imitations like Gaurav Sawant! Even during his earnest display of machismo (being clad in battle fatigues at newsroom) Gaurav seemed like Ben Stiller trying to pass off as Rambo Sylvester Stallone. 

Now the fans wanted to make up for the lost opportunities of the inimitable Arnab fix that transports them to a feel good delirium. His force multiplier vocal cords, which he uses to decimate Pakistani panelists, were sorely missed while the country was going through tumultuous events such as surgical strikes, demonetisation and UP elections.

As the launch date of the Republic TV channel approached the hype was gradually built up. His fans regrouped under various hashtag battle formation across all social media platforms, ready to blow Republic's trumpet and pounce on detractors in a manner which would make even Goebbels blush.

True to the hype he began from where he left off. For fans and worshippers their echo chamber was once again vibrant with the hyper-ventilating jingoism they were addicted to. The template continues to be same: Find an 'other' and attack him or her in a pack, never allow them to put their views across. What amazes me is how some of the panellists, especially the Pakistanis, even agree to appear for the show considering its pointlessness.

So finally it is achche din for the fans, with onerous tasks like trolling the detractors (go wild on keyboards, issue murder and rape threats) and play cheerleader to their beloved anchor. For them he remains the minstrel of utmost happiness!

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

IPL: Some Home Truths

Spot Fixing: A 20/20 version of match fixing. All you need to do is bowl a few lousy deliveries or as batsman you have two options. Either behave as if you need a microscope to see the ball or loft it under the delusion that laws of gravity have taken a sabbatical.

The Betrayed Billion: A coinage by TV newsmen who mistake hallucination for facts. They know that India's population is about a billion and cricket is a religion, but have deluded themselves to think all of them worship cricketers and take IPL seriously. The viewers very well know that this brand of cricket is at best a nautanki with a carnival fizz. It has little cricket but is loaded with 'fringe benefits' such as cheerleaders, well endowed hostesses with size zero knowledge of cricket and after match parties.

D-company: When a small kid's parent or someone dear dies he or she is told that their dear departed has become a star in the sky. Though Dawood Ibrahim is alive, for the Indian public he is many galaxies beyond the reach of the country's law enforcement machinery. Hence if any case gets linked to D-company, they know it will forever remain a mystery. The case dies an early natural death, notwithstanding Arnab Goswami's vocal cords, and its clerical remains are interred in a dusty file in some nondescript police station.

BCCI: In the 1970s there was a bank with the same acronym called Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). It was founded by a Pakistani Agha Hasan Abedi and based out of London. It went bust in early 1990s thanks to Ponzi schemes and other nefarious activities such as funding dictators and drug cartels. Many overseas Pakistanis lost their money. It later came to be known as Bank of Crooks and Criminals. Our Board Of Control For Cricket In India (BCCI) is only a shade better in the sense that they are great survivors. It is a private organisation with an iron curtain over its finances and beyond the purview of RTI. Hence it attracts avaricious politicians and industrialists, for whom the interest in the game is at best an afterthought. Sports Illustrated had in 2011 exposed spot fixing in IPL and 20/20 world cup, but the thick skinned BCCI bigwigs just winked and moved on. After all when many of the IPL franchisees (some of them run by BCCI members themselves) have dubious funding running into crores, why bother when some enterprising lads make piddling lakhs on the sly!

Main Beneficiaries: No you got it all wrong. It is not Harbhajan Singh or those hapless viewers for whom Sreesanth's simian antics make their spleen work overtime. It is our former Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal. This minister had the back on his wall over the bribery case involving his nephew. Little earlier it was the former air force chief over helicopter deal. Crores of rupees were involved in these cases and that too at the cost of public exchequer. For them this spot fixing scandal is godsend as the media has trained its guns elsewhere. 

Also Read: Bangalore Beat