A journalist’s diary

Ahmedabad, 13 July 2013

Couple of dumb executions!!

It’s about couple of dumb executions I came across recently. A picture featuring giraffe has been clicked in AC coach of Agra Fort train. I was coming back to Amdavad from north Gujarat in this coach and spotted it. This poster is part of ‘Incredible India’ campaign of Department of Tourism, Government of India. It is shocking to find that our Tourism ministry puts giraffe poster to promote tourism in India! Giraffe is not found in any jungle in India, then why Giraffe poster here??? Why not lion, tiger, elephant, rhino that are found in India and attract great number of tourists? This Incredible India poster, featuring giraffe is sheer wastage of government money. It demonstrates dumbness of top order!

The other example of dumb execution is presented in another picture above. This garden is located at perfect distance from my bungalow. If it was little nearer, it could create lots of disturbance, if it was little far, it could be difficult for me to walk to it every day. Anyways, the point is that, the civic authority has installed this climbing installation right in the middle of a narrow walking track! Couldn’t they install it outside the walking track? There’s enough space elsewhere in this garden! Agree that common sense is scarce commodity, but this was a limit!

No Jay Jay Garvi …. in this!

Aah, I’m a ‘Jay Jay Garvi Gujarat’ kind of person, and look what I am going to write now! Madhya Pradesh Finance Minister Raghavji who was asked to resign last week by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan following a Sex CD showing Raghavji in compromising position with his servant is actually a Gujarati person. His surname is Savla, and he belongs to Abadasa part of Kutch district of Gujarat. He is son-in-law of a family in Mothala in Kutch. He was felicitated in April 2005 in Kutch after he became Finance minister in 2004 in Madhya Pradesh. He has presented ten anual budgets in Madhya Pradesh assembly between 2004 to 2013. 80-year-old Savla paid last visit to Gujarat during the assembly elections last year.

Dalai Lama, Zaverilal and photo frames!

Veteran photo journalist Zaverilal Mehta called me and told that he found my photo taken in 1997 with Dalailama from his old collection. He called me to his place to receive it. Both of us laughed looking at my picture with Dalai Lama(I’m in blue t-shirt in picture). It was perhaps my first week in print journalism. A person standing in middle between me and Dalai Lama is late Shri Ramlal Parikh, then Vice Chancellor of Gujarat Vidyapith. I had interviewed Dalai Lama on that day at Bhavnirjar campus in Amdavad. Swadhyay Pariwar’s controversial head Jayshree Didi was also there. Coming back to Zaverilal, he has now decorated the wall of his drawing room with several photo frames featuring him with dignitaries of his choice. Zaverilal is seen with Balasaheb Thackeray, Amitabh Bachchan, Morari Bapu, Narendra Modi, Kishor Kumar, Indira Gandhi etc in different photo frames. Zaverilal always tells journalism students: “don’t get impressed by anyone while on assignment”. He showed me the photos and said, “look at these photos, I look completely normal while standing with these famous people.” Zaverilal has bought Rs. 1.5 lakh camera. He recently completed a photo shoot of Gujarati lady author Kajal Oza Vaidya. We talked about his last encounter with Amitabh Bachchan, and he said, “I told Mr. Bachchan that his beard looks like a front-side number plate of a car.” Zaverilal has removed “press” tag from his car window. He has replaced it with “media” tag. He said nowadays bootleggers and anti-socials put “media” sticker on car.

Hilarious!

If you were so excited to read about quadcopter ‘Netra’ that Gujarat Police has procured, don’t miss this TED speech video of Raffaello D’Andrea on quadcopters. It is not a boring lecture. It is in fact an interesting demonstration. And if you have a curious little child at home, show this video to him/her for sure.

Social media Wow!

Social media discusses the things in great details. Sometime it is surprising to learn, in what depth the individuals on twitter and Facebook actually go while discussing the topics! The Gujarat High Court asked CBI to probe Ishrat Jahan encounter case. The High Court, time and again extended controversial cop Satish Verma’s tenure to assist CBI. Then there’s social media. And discussions on social media are so elaborate that they cover the names and background of a judge too! Say for instance, there was a tweet describing the fact that one of the Judges in High Court bench dealing with the Ishrat Jahan encounter case is Justice Abhilasha Kumari, and she is daughter of Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Shri Virbhadra Singh and recently elected Lok Sabha MP from Mandi(Himachal Pradesh) Smt Pratibha Singh. The discussions backed by hyperlink went as far to highlight that Justice Abhilasha Kumari was appointed Judge in Himachal Pradesh High Court when her father was Chief Minister, and she served as Additional Advocate-General of Himachal Pradesh after the Congress Government came to power in March 2003! The army of common people on twitter is really great!

Ideal size of speech!

No one has any doubt about Mr. Modi’s oratory skills. But at this stage, he should limit his speeches to around 20-25 minutes. I observe, nowadays his average speech is around 40-minute long. In Mumbai he recently spoke for over one hour, I guess. Longer he speaks, lesser the message is conveyed. And that’s due to too much content. During a social media day meet in Amdavad’s hotel St. Laurn, a gentleman from Delhi told me that major part of content in Modi’s speeches is same, and that’s make part of his speech bit uninteresting. He said initially, we could listen to him either in 1000-capacity auditorium, or read random coverage in newspapers. Later in 2006, DeshGujarat started sharing audio of his some speeches online. Then arrived YouTube and NarendraModi.in which nowadays telecast his speeches live, which is amazing! So till now everything was OK. But lately national TV channels have started showing his speeches live. Due to this new avenue of exposure, lot of people find some content in his speech as common and repeated. In every speech he needs to be focused on a subject, and if he has 20 interesting one-liners or topics to deliver today, he should use 10 in his one speech, and should skip 10 for another speech. After all how many times one would listen to an achievement of dental surgery of cattle in Gujarat?

After Lion roars!!

Do take it lightly, no offense to anybody, I’m just penning down my observations for the sack of humor here. Imagine it’s a jungle. Modi – the lion comes out of his abode and roars loudly in the morning. And then throughout the day the whole jungle reacts to it on TV. I find NiKu’s reaction similar to noisy crow. Manish reacts like a wild dog. Mani reacts like a snake. Zero theory man looks like a polar bear, but reacts like a crocodile. When Dig Dig reacts, it reminds me of a monkey. Baba and madam generally don’t react, but I find them similar to decorated cats sitting in cushioned baskets. And did you read Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s recent piece comparing various types of people in Delhi to different varieties of birds? Read it here.