Just as I was out to start writing this, a mail from the Mumbai Press Club arrived that the famed bar is shut today
Just as I was out to start writing this, a mail from the Mumbai Press Club arrived that the famed bar is shut today. So, if you haven’t stocked up and don’t have a friendly neighbourhood bootlegger to help you refuel, you’ll need to make do with laddoos on a Dry Day.
Television channels had correspondents focussing on the ball-shaped sweets being readied in anticipation of a BJP victory. An Ahmedabad journalist reported that an Ahmedabad shop had received an order of 4,000 kilos of laddoos.
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A BJP office in Delhi has become a makeshift laddoo workshop. Across the country, wherever the BJP is a force to reckon with, laddoos have been ordered. All of this, thanks to the favourable exit poll results of all television channels.
My worry, hence, is not about what will happen to the country if we have an unclear verdict, but what will happen to all the laddoos if the BJP/NDA doesn’t win comprehensively.
Save the news of the laddoos, there wasn’t much to watch on the telly. I saw some Headlines Today guests cross over to NDTV (and, I’m not sure, vice versa), but yet again, the only meaningful discussion on air last night was on CNN-IBN. The guests were so much better — even though you know what to expect when you have a Hindu rural affairs editor P Sainath or a Swapan Dasgupta on the show. But, they’re so much better than Sanjay Jha and Meenakshi Lekhi. Or all those you see on Arnab Now. Ah, well, Times Now.
I was hoping to catch a bit of Prannoy Roy on NDTV 24x7, but found Barkha Dutt, who could do with another hairstylist. And Dr Roy needs to do something about the hair colour he has used... just too black.
Uff, why the hell am I commenting on Barkha’s hairstyle and Prannoy’s hair colour? Guess two-and-a-half months of writing this column, watching two-and-a-half hours of news television almost every day, has gotten to me.
By the end of today, we’ll know if it’s the haath, kamal or jhaadu. Or khichdi. Gimme laddoos!
Pradyuman Maheshwari is a senior journalist and editor. When he’s not chasing news, he’s watching it. Twitter: @pmahesh
E: noose@pman.in
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