When I decided to quit as a lecturer, some of my friends advised me not to do so. And when I came down in favour of journalism, the advisors increased in number. I was instantly compared to the warrior king in a medieval Persian tale who was tantalized by a goblin to his cave, offering potential luxuries. Later the foolhardy king was desiccated in cold blood.Now it’s almost two months since I have entered the cave. Have my dreams shattered? Have my expectations dissolved in the thin air? Is the goblin’s laughter reverberating within the four walls of the legendary Goenka’s sanctum sanctorum?
Only my well-wishers can answer these questions. I, as is my wont, am prone to analysis:
Since camaraderie was built into the contours of teaching profession, I always felt that I was working within a community. After all, I was not sitting in front a computer whose nerves have never circulated blood.
Having the eyes of around 20 students glued on to your face, your mannerisms, gesticulations and all means you should have something within you for others to depend. If you lack it, you should try to have it, updating yourself all the same. When someone becomes a teacher, he/she inks an invisible deal with a group of students. A trust, which, if you break, will take you to perdition. Hold onto it, it will establish you as a source of light for many.
But being established is the only downside of this holy profession. It is more like a way of life. You will be floating in a stream, whose depth has been vastly reduced by the sedimentation of syllabi and curricular requirements. You will be trapped in the dangerous vortex of an overhanging university.
Nevertheless, journalism in India is more established and more politically motivated. At a time when boundaries blur and cultural isolation is more or less a thing of past, media can’t be as free as they boast. The taste of readers is all that sets the agenda of Indian journalism. It’s the four F’s, as Kushwanth Singh rightly observes, that bring bucks to a journalist’s pocket: frolic, film, fashion and fabrication.
As far as my two month’s experience in TNE is concerned, there does not seem to be much I can contribute to the profession. Packing news items with glittering and colorful trappings is what sub-editing is all about. What matters is the pace at which you design the pages to the imaginary satisfaction of a group of readers to whom newspaper is a nothing more than a necessary nuisance.
Still, the volcano of experience is getting fierce. It is coming close to eruption, when the readers, if any, can pick up something valuable. Then I won’t be a mechanical editor. But a journalist as free as he should be.
