Kamal Ghorui
These are fab seasoning for tall stories and fake news
Uncles in the park were more excited than the anchors on primetime TV, impossible as it seems. Because their humdrum, banal, retired lives had been infused with renewed energy. Thanks, admittedly, to the War Games on TV. Now, the exploits of middle-aged molesters (Epstein Files) had been overshadowed in park goss, by those of trigger-happy, tin-pot quasi-dictators.
Gossiping G was reciting tall stories about Burj Khalifa being bombed to rubble. Controversial K claimed that the non-existent American embassy in Tehran had a hostage situation. Sensational S was wearing army camouflage, playing air sirens, and emitting the sound of bombs, as startled pigeons flew from their perch. One self-proclaimed ‘war veteran’, who had never stepped outside the dusty corridors of his govt office, was recounting, in lurid detail, the horrors of nuclear World War III that, per him, had already begun.
These sound effects and noise resembled a boomer’s clumsy video game. And these had excitedly spilled over from the television set, onto the forwarded messages of unemployed uncles. I carried the choicest bits of salacious speculation back home, and shared the panic with Kamala. She was not impressed. “Anupamaa is giving us more believable drama, with her exaggerated maaroongi dialogues, than these anchors describing death and destruction at our doorstep.”
During the recent Indo-Pak conflict on TV, there were Mahabharat-type visuals of Karachi port being annihilated. These had the same CGI and special effects that accompanied Abhimanyu, when he was trapped in the chakravyuh. It really has become difficult to figure out what’s real and what’s fake. Because we live in an era of borrowed visuals. And of over-enthusiastic anchors taking us on different trips, to enhance their TRPs. It is only a matter of time, before some market-savvy commerce chain announces an End of the World sale, with massive discounts on bomb shelters and magic pills, promising to protect you from nuclear radiation.
Meanwhile, I glanced at my phone and noticed a message from Panic Parashuraman. He was fuelling rumors that there would be a petrol shortage, and suggesting that we should fill up our tanks immediately. Hiram Johnson famously said that the first casualty of war is truth. Somehow, hyperbole and exaggeration always seem more exciting than mere facts. Kamala gave me a piece of her mind about war theatrics, as I was picking up my phone, to forward fear and fake news. War Games can easily distract us from Hunger Games.
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