Yesterday, Today... Doomsday!

After my piece yesterday I was digging an old diary of mine (which I kept as a journalist I was hoping that when I read my thoughts ten years down the line I would be able to trace the change in me… I went back to my entry in June 1995 and it is amazing how much my life has changed and how little my concerns… Here’s a piece I wrote on June 20, 1995:

When will the perception of fairness and objectivity especially in my profession, stop puzzling me? Is everything that is negative necessarily unbiased? Is everything unpleasant always interesting? It took just one adverse assessment of Raveena Tandon in my magazine to give me the fame that none of my exhaustive research pieces ever did in my last three years of journalism. Every editor of every film magazine reacted to me as a writer of some caliber after that article. And to think that after Raveena had an outburst with me when the article came out, I’m prepared to admit that my interpretations of the said incidents could have been one-sided and completely off the mark! But who will believe me if I said that today? And even if I decided to say it, who will give me a platform? Obviously my magazine cannot go back on its `judgement’ because any such attempt will be interpreted as a PR exercise to pacify her. It’s strange how any one particular star or subject can be interpreted in many ways to prove diverse viewpoints. It’s like having various distorted mirror images of one person. But how many of us are willing to accede or have the objectivity to accept that the images (distorted or otherwise) depend entirely on the pieces of mirror and never really define the person?

Ten years have gone by and from carrying an odd film story once in a month in a Sunday supplement, today every newspaper worth its ink carries film gossip on the front page. Circulations have hit the roof… journalists are being paid in lakhs… editors and critics wield far more power than they ever did… When they said `Pen is mightier than the sword’ I always thought they meant it in a confrontational, rebellious and a courageous context… I never thought it was so, because it could become poisonous!