Book Review: Wise Enough to be Foolish

Wise Enough to be Foolish

-- Gauri Datta Jayaram

First things first. For the first time, I am reviewing a book written by a person, whom I personally met and even ran together, a couple of long runs over the weekends.

Wise enough to be foolish - For me, the oxymoronic title sounds very philosophical and playful, at the same time. And, the same feeling lasted through out the read.

It's about a girl narrating her story, right from her infancy through adulthood, taking the reader through the idiosyncrasies that one person goes through in one's life. Most of the readers would be able to connect with the narration, at one place or the other, and hook. There is nothing extraordinary about the girl. Probably, that's what helps the connect happen. It's just that she happens to be wise enough to be foolish, more than once, by choice or by default.

She grows up wishing her parents to be more of friends than goal-setters, goes through a relation built over a few years of companionship that breaks up with no obvious reason, turns out to be wise enough to take several foolish sounding decisions like clearing every penny of her savings to fund marriage of her maid's daughter, and deciding to marry a person whom she was yet to meet in flesh and blood etc.,

As per me, the best part of the book is, everyone feels special about at least one person in their lives. Oneself. Either at narcissistic levels or moderate :-) And, one would want to tell one's story to the world. That's exactly what the author did, claiming it as based on a true story (may be, her own). It's all more interesting and worth the reader's while, as, despite being her first book, the author has shown excellent story telling skills and made it a gripping read.

Book Review: Social Media as Watchdog

Social Media as Watchdog

-- Ravinar

I came across this book, which is a compilation of blogs written by the author at media-crooks, when a friend of mine shared one of the blogs criticizing the biased or crooked role being played by Main Stream Media (MSM) and how Social Media (SM) can take on MSM.

Manish Tiwari, the then spokesman of Congress, said "Anna Hazare is head-to-toe corrupt" when anti-corruption campaign was at its peak.

Nidhi Razdan of NDTV tries hard to push her agenda and gets ripped apart by a British MP, a couple of days back.

Rajdeep Sardesai of CNN-IBN tweets that deaths in Assam in 2012 were very less compared to deaths in Gujrat in 2002 to attract enough attention by (his) MSM, when MSM was questioned about (lack of) coverage, and later regrets for his insensitivity when SM blasts him.

Sagarika Ghose of CNN-IBN does a 'live show' with recorded clippings as answers to her 'live' questions and later 'deeply regrets' for 'the bug', when SM brings it out.

BBC changes the headline of an article overnight from 'sarcastic question' to a 'praise', as it was based on wrong statistics quoted by some source and corrected later. And, SM gets credit here too.

And, my favorite: A very active leftist friend of mine on SM comments on a news website when a statue of Saraswati was destroyed inside a University in Hyderabad - "Oh! these stupid Hindu fundamentalists are going everywhere. Why did they build a temple inside a University? " :-)

As people like me spend a good amount of their reading time reading news and analysis (and some people spend a lot of time even watching such things on TV), it is worthwhile to know the modus operandi of the stuff that they are consuming. If the readers/viewers are not attentive or patient enough to ponder, they would soon get sucked into the game plan of these extremely glib liars, who are working full-time, pushing their own person agenda under the veil of reporters.

Social Media as Watchdog helps the reader precisely with such information. Though we see people like Digvijay Singh making irresponsible and incoherent statements, why does MSM go to him at the drop of a hat? Why does an anchor push his/her own agenda and pass judgements and sermons, though the actual job is to facilitate others speak and let audience ponder? Why do we see the same set of people in all kinds of panel discussions? Why do large PSUs fund several MSM events, which don't spend much in advertising otherwise? Why does each news channel appear to have its own unique way of looking at things? The list goes on...

So, the bottom line is, one should consume news (whether MSM or SM) with buckets of salt (pinches and grains are not enough anymore), as everyone seems to have an agenda and are working for that 24/7 in every word they utter, be it a TV show or news paper or Twitter or Facebook. Though the author talks about how SM can help take on MSM, SM itself is severely infested already, and the logic that the author applied to MSM applies to SM as well.

As a friend of mine cautioned me when I was picking up this book, the author and his blog has clear politics behind it. And, my answer for that was: "Yes, it does. I noticed it in the introduction itself. But, when congress is governing the country for the last 10 years, you can't 'start with' criticizing BJP for today's state of affairs. And, As they say, not many are into charity. All have vested interests. But, the good part of this book is, if someone teaches you how to be skeptical, and if you really learn it, you should ideally be skeptical about that teacher as well. Otherwise, you have not really learnt. So, no harm" :-)