When a widow weeps: why we must all hang our head in shame

Here is the story of Shruti Gunjan Narang, who lost her husband, and so many others from her family, at the Taj shoot-out.
It broke my heart to read that when her husband's body was recovered from the morgue, only the ring he wore was found. The rest of the jewellry were missing. How can that be? From the Taj to the morgue only so many people could have handled the body: and it cannot be difficult to track down the culprit. Poverty is often cited as an example for such vandalism. But having lived in Mumbai for so long, I simply won't accept that. Oftetimes, it has been the poor who have been the sweetest here. So, whoever took jewellry from a slain man did not do it out of compulsion, but out of a lack of humanity. And under the circumstance, we do not even need to look at why or wherefore, but just seek to pin down and slam that sort of behavior so it never gets repeated again.
Even as the post-terror stories emerge, you can predict the pattern of stories. If the media could kick-butt its journalists to look beyond the obvious. Or read through emerging stories and take leads to chase up certain facts so that the media can, finally, become part of the change everybody is hankering after.

Even if just Narang's case was followed up, with hospital authorities, it would mean the beginning of accountability.

Mumbaikars' anger and their slogans

Somebody sent me, over email, these images from a website: I just cropped the slogans. While I knew that Mumbaikars had turned up in huge numbers for the spontaneously organised Mumbai rally protesting the terror attacks and official bungling in preventing and handling it later on, I never knew the scope of it. Local newspapers seem to have deliberately downplayed it.. Wonder why?

I did not catch any of these slogans in the papers. Or see photo features on these.. That is rather wimpy ...

Media cowardice is part of the current malice we are facing since a watch dog media is what creates accountability -- otherwise citizens do not get a valid platform .... Today, whatever the eruption of anger we witnessed in Mumbai is actually despite all, including the media, a spontaneous affair ...though the way the media is behaving, you think they somehow sponsored the event...

While I was a journalist I remember the shift towards PR journalism had started in full swing -- being wined and dined and being handed out PR releases that they wanted printed. If some of us decided not to take gifts, we became less relevant (to the PR agencies) since we could not be manipulated. But at the time I decided to quit, I realised that this was changing so much so that all of us were becoming bling journalists...Often I was bored that I was only made an `event organiser' -- asked to organise lunch dates between two celebs, so we can record it, or some such nonsense!! Or land up at the film events only when the actor wanted to give an interview.. stuff like that... Even the more `conscience-keeper' magazines were not averse to PR write-ups...Thus, all of us have contribute to the current rot...