Raja's read only memories

If there was a memory of my growing up that I would like to hark back to, it had to be my first tryst with erotica, in the Irving Wallace novel The Second Lady . The novel, which was about the sexual escapades of a Russian doppelganger of the First Lady of the US as she manages to get intimate with the President in order to extricate war-time secrets from him for the KGB, had me revulsed and excited. An “emotional-fork-in-the-road” moment confronted me as I finished reading it. I gave the sentiment considerable thought before proceeding to devour all of Wallace’s books, in addition to those by Harold Robbins and Sidney Sheldon. I soon started grading authors on the basis of the e-quotient in their works. Wallace was lurid, so was Robbins; Sheldon and Clancy were measured and graphic; Archer the archetypal British prude; Puzo the neophyte American; Steele the eternal bore; and Grisham the American misfit. However, a nagging sentiment persisted in me: the source of the literature wa...

The reactions to media sting operations over time can be a barometer of their relevance. Consider this: In 2001, when Tehelka conducted one such operation on the BJP leader Bangaru Laxman by offering him a bribe; when caught, he was forced to step down as party secretary and was eventually sidelined. Such was the resultant embarrassment to the BJP that, as admitted by Laxman himself in an interview to The Indian Express , it consigned him forever to its margins. Circa 2014, two sting operations conducted in different parts of the nation under similar circumstances seemed to yield little result: while the one conducted by the news website mediasarkar.com on candidates of the Aam Aadmi Party, including Kumar Vishwas and Shazia Ilmi, showed them seeking cash donations in exchange for favours, the party firmly stood by them and discredited the operation. “Why not conduct this on BJP and Congress members?” asked one party member. Down south in Karnataka, when the Kannada news channel TV-...

Logos of the leading Tamil TV news channels Puthiya Thalaimurai (top) and Sun News Of late, TV news channels, and not sitcoms, seem to have become a source of comic relief. Not that this is a new phenomenon, but it has been rather pronounced of late. The other day I decided to tune in to a Tamil TV news channel and boy, I wasn’t disappointed. The channel was running a talk show, receiving grievance calls from public who had yarns of woe to relate, especially those relating to governance (in particular its deficiencies). One such caller said how sewage percolating into water supply lines in the suburbs of Chennai was proving to be a health hazard. It was the charade that followed that would prove to be a bounty of mirth. The caller then nearly choked on his tears, as the talk-show host listened on intently, asserting that this would not have happened if Kalaignar (DMK chief M Karunanidhi, to the uninitiated) was the chief minister. The host perked up when the caller ...