What after the elections…

Jug Suraiya

Two journalists, Patra and Kar, are exchanging professional notes. Here are their takes: 

Patra: Thanks to the General Election, the papers are all chockablock with news…parties trying to form alliances, people switching sides, people squabbling about seat-sharing, NaMo saying nasty things about RaGa and RaGa returning the compliment.  It's a wonder how we manage to fit in all these happenings in each day’s edition.

Kar: You can say that again. For a change, there’s barely any space left for advertisements, much to the annoyance of the ad department.

Patra: Yeah, the going is great for us journos while the polls are in the offing. But what worries me is what happens when the tamasha is over and a government — any government — is formed. What do we write about then to fill the paper?

Kar: Why, we’ll fill the paper writing analyses of why one lot won and the other lost.  

Patra: OK, that’ll do the job for a couple of weeks, then readers will start getting bored with these analyses and wise-after-the-event business.  What’ll we do then?

Kar: Well, there’ll always be a new scam to write about.  

Patra: Scams have become old hat.  Even new scams have become old hat.  They’ve become predictable and unexciting. Readers want to read about things which are totally unpredictable.  

Kar: Defections? Horse trading? Attempts to topple whichever government has been formed?

Patra: Might work for a while.  Then all that will also become predictable and boring.  What we need is something which remains completely unpredictable all the time. 

Kar: Hey, I’ve got it!  How about cricket?  Isn’t it called the game of glorious uncertainties, which is just another word for unpredictable?  There’s the IPL, and then there’s going to be the World Cup.  And that’s just the stuff that’s happening on the pitch.  The really exciting going-on is what’s behind the scenes, like match-fixing.  Then there's also the endless argument as to whether we should/should not play against Pakistan.  All that should keep us in work and help fill our pages without depending on endless ads.

Patra: Cricket is a good standby. Particularly, the match-fixing and Pakistani bits.  But there's something which is a whole lot more unpredictable and news-making than cricket.  

Kar: Yeah? What’s that?

Patra: The monsoon.

Kar: The monsoon?

You mean when it rains?

Patra: Yes. Or when it doesn’t rain and the monsoon becomes a non-soon. Either way the monsoon is always unpredictable and has been ever since they invented meteorological projections and something called El Nino. All of which ensures that there is no such thing as a normal monsoon, in that the norm for the monsoon is that there is no norm.

Kar: I see what you mean.  It either rains too little and there's a drought or it rains too much and there are floods, and sometimes both together in different parts of the country.  Then all netas start rushing about in helicopters for photo-ops at the drought-/flood-affected areas, getting in the way of those who are doing the actual relief work. 

Patra: That’s right.  And everyone starts speculating about what the monsoon, or lack of it, means for not just the rural economy but the whole country’s economy.  

Kar: Yup, no doubt about it. The monsoon is a sure-fire guarantee that we’ll be flooded with things to write about.  Whether it rains or doesn't rain, the unpredictable monsoon will always reign the news…