Living in a well-wired world

Unless a big fat Bollywood wedding happens sometime soon, we're unlikely to be rid of Sanjay Dutt's sorry plight being shoved down our resistant throats by TV channels, newspapers, and magazines. Haneef is a smart guy. He couldn't have picked a better time to land in India. Had he landed after Dutt's wave-and-swagger jail entry, the media would've by now thrust a microphone into his days-old daughter's face and had experts in their studios interpreting her gurgles. In their race to upstage one another, the visual media especially has managed to equate the sublime with the ridiculous: At 9 p.m. IST, all are equal. And every news item whether newsworthy or not, deserves a panel discussion with pro and anti issue panelists along with the hysterical anchor creating a screeching din which can set off a lively debate in your own drawing room where the family is eating in front of the TV and happens to be divided on the issue. Virtually everyone can now express themselves, be heard and read; you can record your antics on a camera and put yourself up for show; you can blog and be boqueted and/or brick-batted; you can read on any issue happening in any corner of the world, form an opinion, and mouth it. This is a freedom most of us are determined to enjoy (including yours truly) which has got people everywhere talking more than ever before but it really hasn't dulled our prejudices - the opportunity to know more hasn't necessarily made us more broad-minded or accepting of one another; we're just more aware now that there are more people than we suspected around us who we dislike and who dislike us and, horror of horrors, we can't do much about it. We've heard it said forever that communication promotes better understanding - there's very little evidence that this hypothesis is true; if there has ever been better understanding between peoples due to communication it's usually been to serve a specific purpose. If you and I can be mutually beneficial to each other in some way, we're more likely to cooperate and put up a pretence of understanding and accepting each other. The benefits of living in a well-wired world are plenty but the wires do short circuit frequently.