These days with the proliferation of media in the form of television and print, news are not reported or analysed. The veracity and truthfulness is not looked into. And news is created, sensationalised and reported. The result, we have no way of judging or concluding what is news ipso facto and what is nonsense and imagination purveyed as news. This is where news is paid for. Paid news as we all can see is false hood, and untruth packaged as genuine and thrust upon the gullible public. The discerning still sieves through and throws the rubbish into the trash. Whereas the big majority are fooled in no uncertain terms, for which in fact we ourselves are to be blamed. The reason for this state is the general public is hungry and craving for sensation and sleaze. We see and get what we look for!
With reference to this state of our news media, a fascinating incident was mentioned by a person. This is nothing to do with politics, corruption by politicians and men holding public offices. But it tells the sordid saga and innuendos inside a business house and comical too. The end is risible to a great extent. You could laugh your guts out!
We have heard well about the feuding inside conglomerates like Reliance and manipulations in Satyam. We have seen dirty family linen washed in public when the internecine dislike of Mrs Indira Gandhi for her youngest daughter in law came out to the fore.
The amusing story told to me goes like this. Lady Macbeth (euphemism is true to the character), is the member of a business house by wedlock. True to the characteristics attributed to daughters in law she ,(in this case in cahoots with her spouse) plants a paid news in a not very obscure vernacular daily, with the intent to usurp other members and founding people of the business unit. The write up with a surly photograph of herself eulogised her from beginning to end. Though she came from fringe back grounds and was eking out living consigned to some nondescript job in Government, the article impressed without gumption her courage in jettisoning the cosiness and comfort of a lucrative, respectable and safe job to confront the vagaries and uncertainties of business life. It went on to laud her far sightedness and vision, entrepreneurial acumen, and hard smart work that turned an enterprise of low beginnings into a behemoth it is now. The irony I m told is that people who mattered in the evolution and sustenance of the enterprise were not mentioned even in passing. The gratitude and acknowledgement that they deserved was not accounted in any remote way. It was a petty and cruel joke with deeper insidious dimension.And in fact she was a dispensable and non contributing factor to the success of the enterprise.
She would have like Lady Macbeth called upon the evil spirits "stop up th' access and passage to remorse in order to be relentless".
As expected the paid matter got a fair coverage and where it did not reach she ensured that the clipping was circulated. And then came the somersault- the denial and expression of surprise and squarely blaming the reporter for misrepresenting and contriving. The purpose of the paid news was done. She could send the message across as to who the boss is. It was a successful coup-de-tat after all! There were no ripples, but smooth slide into control of all she surveys. There where mocking and hushed jokes on the news and the woman, in the corridors of the enterprise. People who have known her and her self where amused and where cautiously derisive.
Every place of power has a retinue of self-seekers. And she has quite a crowd of such. And they were nurtured and sycophancy well preserved.
The final shot was from poetic justice, and people in jest said that, they now believe in the heavenly power. And it happened after a few days of the paid news coming out. Lady Macbeth, our heroine set off on a foreign jaunt. She was given a conspicuous farewell and bon voyage by her palanquin bearers.
She was slated to fly out of the country from Chennai. And with great pomp and air of having arrogated she walked to the emigration counter. Where the sky fell shattering on her virtually! She was stopped by the officers and turned back as she did not have a valid travel VISA. The derisive talk of the town is the queen who longed to be the queen did not know the basics. It is now widely presumed that she has gone into incognito, and may not resurface until her predetermined date of coming back from her foreign tour, and that she may need a while to nurse her bruised ego back to its former state.
It is also supposed that the people who felt grievously ignored and hurt by her are drinking wine in private to toast the fall.
4 comments:
It is true that news are made or the truth is manipulated.
The audience devours such and thats why they are fed such kinds of news by the media. We are to be blamed.
This Lady seems to haven proper advantage of the media and got her job done. Only thing she missed were some basics.
Lady Macbeth has risen from her shared ( about 10' x 10') bedroom-cum-hall-cum-kitchen-cum toilet, to a bigger dwelling. She had shed certain morals and acquired others, now that she has access to (for the present) undreamed of riches. Riches has brought along with it, its baggage of illusions of grandeur but leaves behind, the qualities of a lady. As the saying goes : you can take the person out of the country, but you can't take the country out of that person !" A crow cannot be a peacock. Or, more to the point : You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear ! Graciousness,nobility, humility and other such characteristics of a real lady, cannot be bought by wealth. It comes from upbringing.
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