News Anchors or Illusionists

Soothing winter morning and the bright beam of sunlight, coming from the near window was falling intensely on the meditative, self-possessed idol of Buddha. Despite the sunlight’s importunities to dazzle his mindfulness, the idol remained calm rather an epitome of serenity, which added to the beauty of the environment.

It was a holiday, and I’m not a kind of Netflix person, so just opened the television to see if there’s something entertaining coming up. Disappointed by all boring programs, I switched to news channels to get some insights on what’s happening around. The moment the news anchor started to narrate the news in a loud, hypnotic, and violent manner, I started to enter into a helpless state of negativity, which was pouring in my mind through the illusory words of that reporter. Moments later my mind got entangled in judgements about different communities of people as if, all of a sudden my thinking became readily narrow and conservative. A little later, I started to pass toxic comments on different types of people, the anchor tagged as “unfit” for the society and by the point of time I stated to be spelled by his jargons, I better changed the channel. To my surprise the other magician/illusionist (by the time I concluded all news anchors as magicians), was honking toxicity about the other “group” of people; and this time with some of his own facts so as to spellbound his audience. And to my surprise, I found myself trapped by this illusionist as well, starting to think the other community is wrong. Sardonically, my perception kept on changing with each changed channel and magical spells by each illusionist.

These illusionists have their own way to instigate fear, trauma, apprehension, judgement and rage in you- some use our “Gods” as a tool, some our “complexion”, some our “gender”, some our “economic status”, while others our “ignorance”. If I were to believe them, I would probably start to behave like Holden Caulfield of Catcher In The Rye (novel by J.D. Salinger) who literally found every person of the world “phony.” In short, these illusionists have an indefinite set of tricks to make you believe the whole world is approaching the end and we better pack our bags to board the ship which was the last hope of humanity in the film 2012 by Roland Emmerich.

After getting pissed off by the black magic of these illusionist, I went to my balcony to take a fresh breeze, and to my surprise people seemed so normal and engaged in their routinal life. The real beauty of a society, it's simple, common people who literally are too engaged to earn a livelihood to get swayed away by this illusion. Everyday, they travel with each other in public transport, being unconcerned of what’s the religion or opinion of the person sitting next. Despite being less literate than these chauvinists, they deeply understand the word ‘Coexistence!’ After this retrospection, I got a sigh of relief that our future is far brighter than what illusionists made me believe. I sometimes wonder, the real role of the media was reporting information, not moulding opinions. The people should be allowed to use their own rationale and form an opinion backed by facts instead of these illusionists hiding real issues of society which require immediate attention.

Well I don’t want to end this on a negative note, but I can’t see any hope that the media is going to be pragmatic or idealistic anywhere in the near future. I feel the only solution is that we all idolize Buddha, adapt his imperturbable attitude to stay composed in this loud, opinionated world to stay free of opinions,

"The way he didn’t lose his calm despite the disturbing lights failing to flicker his charisma!"

-Shreyash

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