In a conversation with a much younger woman working in a television channel (no, NOT as an anchor) for the past 15 years, invariably the talk veered to the current generation which we took great pleasure in dissing, comparing it (of course) to much earlier and fairly recent generations respectively.
This means we went from print and radio then added television and finally, digital. What a pleasure we took in pointing out our shared experience of working “hard and responsibly” of “burning the candle late into the night”, of great commitment to “job satisfaction” and finally about money!
We generally did not move from one news organisation to another, and then joke, when I first entered the profession was that you could write your epitaph (more or less) on the day you joined a reputable place. Unless you were carried out feet first, before you retired, in which case you just had to make a very small correction. We were safe, we were happy, you got the impression that people “outside’ media respected what you did, identifying yourself as a journalist carried with it a whole world of little and big advantages.
Sure, we worked like little navvies, we dressed down to look the part of journalists careless about everything but the story, we raced around getting things done, it did not occur to most of us to plagiarise, we helped each other out, we smoked and drank. But gawd, we were poor!
Then along came television and liberalization and the start of the internet era and suddenly, our salaries were much much better, migration became a sort of statement of worth, and suddenly, there were these hordes of young people who thought nothing of turning our favourite illusions about ourselves upside down. It was not a nice feeling, but you could not help admiring their brashness, their absolute certainty of their place under the new liberal sun, and most of all, the air of enlightenment many carried on them with the air of a crusader wearing a shiny breastplate. And each wave seemed to be shinier than the last.
Around the time of the first riots in Mumbai, in 1992, then 1993, we suddenly realised that being journalists did not automatically ensure your safety. Not like those red crosses on top of ambulances ferrying the wounded around during the wars. We were seen as “side takers”, identified, by look and carriage and language, with a particular ideology. And sadly, it was not a passing thing.
Then came 2002 and the schisms were laid bitterly bare. But there was still the hope that lessons had been learned and experience was salutary.
The new century has not upheld this optimism. Today, as I look around, I am filled with a sickening dread that we are going to look back (those of us who can, of course,) at the first 70 years of this country’s existence as an independent entity as halcyon. And I realise I would hate for that to be the case. But the truth is, as we go into another round of events and celebrations for March 8, when we lay claims to being faster, stronger, higher, whatever, we have had our public spaces curtailed,, our freedom of speech subject to self-censorship, even our clothing choices examined, all by the need to be safe.
I was asked, “If you had a daughter, would you be happy about her becoming a journalist today, would you support her?”
If I had a daughter, I like to think she would not wait for my permission to become anything she wanted. But would I support her in her choice? Not really. Too many bogeymen out there.
