Tehelka: Obsessed with framing

After many years, today I bought a magazine: if you exclude the Gujarati magazine Safari (knowledge-based), I have now not read an Indian magazine for quite many years now. None at all on politics, business, “current affairs”, sports, fashion, photography, travel, food, bikes, computers, gizmos, cars, and whatever else is there! I bought the Tehelka. Apart from the premium put on sensationalism at every moment right from the cover itself, the shoddy production values, and the lack of any depth in the case of any article (worse than India Today, if it is still today as it was many years back), I was stunned by the extraordinary amount of what I call “situating”. I am referring to the September issue (Vol. 5, issue 36).

The first interesting bit starts from the cover photo of a boy, a boy burnt in the tension simmering in Orissa between Hindus and Christians. Designed to sell? Yes, maybe, considering that we’ve got an ad for NCR region’s tallest towers having “apartments with plunge pools” at the back cover. What a juxtaposition! On top of the cover, instead of reading a headline for a news, for something that has happened, I see a headline “Bihar overrun: A government-aided national calamity”, is the emphasis on the calamity and doing something about it, or on pointing fingers at the government? Or rather, just pointing fingers? At anybody, just point them. Yes, the journalist serves to bring out the truth, to bring out the nonchalant attitude of the officials involved in the rescue effort. But specifics don’t make generalities, first of all. Maybe, the article inside has just a bad writing style, after all it’s very current throughout the world. Take a specific example and imply that this is what is happening everywhere (because you know that people infer too easily a specific example to be a typical example). The article mildly fingers, gives the usual data regarding number of boats, displaced, marooned, dead and missing, villages, days, whatever: I thought that newspapers must have already done that in a better way. Ok, but you need to place things in context, or even in perspective? That’s why the figures? Great. So, where is the rest. A specific example, sweeping statement, and some figures: and the article is done within 2 pages. Who reads it? Does the reader then feel very great that he has done something for the Bihari flood-stricken? Or does he discuss the marooned and debate the correct figure with his colleague over lunch? Or does he assume himself supremely intelligent, since he ‘knows all’ and ‘can see through all’? Is that so? Maybe, that’s true. The last possibility. Yes, sometimes. But what’s important? To sieve things and get at the bottom of them drinking coffee in your armchair, or do something, change the face of world, its attitude? No, I don’t mean rallies, protests, strikes, mass campaigns. Maybe, they help. But I mean real thinking, tactful thinking on what to do, and then doing it. Not “I won’t stand this”, get together and bear some brunt, and feel good. No. Did it serve the purpose? What did you do actually? Better, change the media first of all. Why do people read a Tehelka? Change people, ask them about reading, why do they read it? They want information? Ok, we will give you better. You don’t want it too complicated. Ok, we will give it you slimmed, toned-down (but slip in something somewhere). And, most importantly, don’t “situate”.

Most intellectuals, the so-called ones, do a lot of it. So they align with causes they know nothing about. And then they situate to make themselves look better, make world look horrible, and thus actually make things more horrible. Maybe, the world is horrible. But holding a mirror isn’t going to give any confidence. No. Hold a false mirror. So that it sees a beautiful reflection and gets inspired. After all, truth is nothing but imagination, isn’t it? Look at the photos of the magazine. Why do they need to show undue stress where there is none? Why to horrify? And whom? The coffee-table readers who are going to spend fifteen rupees or more to buy you? Look at the photo on page 30, the cover story photo. Of course, the photographer doesn’t know how to make an impact, that’s another story. He should have focussed upon the bell, and keep the people in blur. That would have been really impactful. But I don’t agree with the slightly un-straight photo, the amount of burnt property shown in the foreground (of course, considering the caption, “… ruins of a church”), the font of the title caption superimposed on the image “In the name of God”. No. Pure sensationalism. By the way, the photo nowhere seems to show me “ruins” of any building. The people are clearly situated. Some are looking at the camera, they couldn’t resist it. But since all have been asked to look pondering, thinking about future, and don’t look at the camera, there are some who do that, but unfortunately are not good actors. Since after all once the cameraman goes, finding a good story with good shots to boot, they do have to think about future and how to live. Why to live. The next page’s photo is even worse, and caption is simply difficult to understand (“Ashes to ashes”!). No need to comment on the photo on p. 38 at all, completely tasteless, strainingly related. Of course, if you are situating, you should know how to pretend. All the photos in article “Undercover watchdogs” (starting on p. 44) seem to be that of models more to me than real men. Which is why, when you take a photo, it already gets determined: since you decide some instant when you want to take a photo, and you decide the instant when you do take the photo. So, it’s never reality, it’s always “framed”. Unfortunately, even with the best of photographers, it’s also “situated”: the photographed also is determined. Could be anything: his pose, his location in the photo, how much he will be in focus or out of it, how much in blur or out of it, his expression, and the very fact of his being “suitable” for the subject on which the photographer is working. That’s real unfortunate!