From the diary of an anchor

THE Agra Summit is over and Parliament is busy debating who reduced it to a flop-show. Was it the media? Or the media managers? Was it India or Pakistan? Was it the breakfast show or the reality bytes of the Information and Broadcasting Minister?

Can it really be that simple? Here we have a dictator who has ousted a democratically elected government, convincing us through our own TV screens, that we are ruthless, dictatorial suppressants of what he calls a freedom struggle, a people's uprising. We are not. He then falsifies our thoughts, our roles, our history. And once again we are likely to be drawn into an ugly, uncivilised slanging match about Kashmir that most of us do not understand, much less want.

July 15: As events unfolded in Agra, one saw no options one could identify with. Is that normal? Is it because being a woman, most of the political and diplomatic options being mouthed by men in those glittering five-star hotels, in TV studios, sounded so aggressive, stupid or far fetched, compared to the simple needs of men, women and children in a beleaguered State? The Kashmiris, like all of us, need to move about freely, to communicate, to have children and bring them up without fear of losing them to the bullets of militants or the armed forces. Their young need to talk, to play, to have fun. The elderly need to enjoy watching the young grow and plan for their future. Where did they and their simple desires figure in all that semantic quibbling over blood-letting, national honour and territorial rights?

At home for a short rest, one flicked channels and saw school- going children in some stray Indian and Pakistani game-shows. They were enjoying themselves by the river or in a disco or by the street side, laughing, pulling each other's leg, hamming it up before the cameras as only the very young, very innocent can. One thought of their parents and teachers watching the Agra Summit, anxious and tired like the anchors, worrying endlessly about the future and what it holds for them on both sides of the border. Watching the beautiful, unlined faces of those teenagers, hearing their gurgling laughter and silly bantering, one thought how nothing could stop their zest for life. One knows that over time, some of them may go on to acquire strong xenophobic ideas and may already be wanting to migrate, away from the mess created by their elders.

July 16: By the evening, you could see that even the naturally garrulous mediapersons and analysts were beginning to fumble for words. In the large hall at the Media Centre in Agra, many were just sitting and staring in front of them. Others were pacing up and down like caged animals. Media persons often do that, when they are denied access, but not proximity, to a possible source of information. They, at the centre in Agra, and we the anchors, in the TV studios in Delhi, were part of a common scenario. The result of the summit by then was already pretty certain. The Indians first made a big noise about the live transmission of the editors' breakfast with Gen. Musharraf, and the Pakistanis followed with complaints about the Indian Information and Broadcasting Minister's statements to the media. Nobody dared to alter or check the rage being bandied about by both sides. The rage, one saw, was largely a whipped up affair, it was not spontaneous. The message was, we shall not negotiate any more.

Everything about President Musharraf's speech, his face, his voice was familiar to those of us who had met him at Islamabad a few months ago. From the other side: a defeaning silence. Back in the makeshift studios, the panelists were all so anxious, they could hardly sit down. We had to tell the waiting audiences what the scenario was like, but before that we needed to be briefed. So everyone waited and chatted. Late at night, came the briefest briefing, followed by the departure shots of a grim faced Musharraf in his limousine. What would Indo-Pak relations be like hereafter? It did not require elaboration. One felt utterly depressed, absolutely lonely, as Agra handed over to Delhi.

July 20: One saw President Musharraf once again, facing the international media, this time back in Islamabad. It was more of the same. The tone was a tad more belligerent, supported, no doubt, by some xenophobic friends of the domestic media. "Are you joking with me?" he said testily, when a hapless correspondent from Nawa-e-Waqt pointed out the futility of an unelected general sitting down to negotiate over what had been tackled better by chosen representatives of people in the past, at Shimla and then at Lahore. For a minute, one saw the mask slip and the merciless general surface from behind that boyishly grinning "friend of the people" face. Once again it was all cool reasonableness, and back-thumping male bonding. Then the fabled hawks from both sides swooped down. "I was so upset, I could hardly speak", said a friend, "his men have begun shooting in Kargil and his Jihadis are killing pilgrims in Amarnath once again. What are we doing to each other?"

As the Thakres and the Salahuddins begin to breathe fire and brimstone, some of our star correspondents and anchors may quietly be getting ready to cover yet another war. War is a great spectacle, Yuddhasya Ramyah Kathah, Ved Vyas said. As guns boom in Doda and Kishtwar, those earnest voices begin to report from difficult terrain and visuals show the bodies, identifying them as Hindus or Muslims. These dead may have no names, but each one has a religion.

Do we realise that each such reality byte brings us closer to the mouth of the long tunnel of fascism? The kind that wears a familiar face. It is that of a suave gentleman, who is dangerous because he doesn't know his own or the media's boundaries, but has columnists and correspondents eating out of his hand. And another, who speaks in many tongues on one channel only to badmouth it on another, and finally pours scorn on all TV channels, in his column.

July 21: One watched the BBC commentator talk about Islamic fundamentalists as horrible people who cared about nothing except their own turf; and about hawkish Hindu fundamentalists protesting against the Summit. One hates the ethnic generalisations that surface from such reports. One wonders if they even pause and think it over. But do we?

The woman weeping in front of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad can barely speak. Her father has just died but the stalemate means she shall be denied a visa. "What use is anything to me anymore," she wails. The young man in front of the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi is equally broken hearted. My uncle is dying of cancer, he says. But I've been asked to come after September 3. "Of what use is a piece of paper to me then?" he says.

At this moment, the difference between the two, an Indian and a Pakistani, is marginal. Both have been pushed into one long tunnel with too many emotions and too little mobility. Both face permanent struggle and bad dreams.

MRINAL PANDE

The author writes in Hindi and English and is a freelance journalist.

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