CHAPTER 9
It had been a perpetual struggle for him.
His overriding sense of redundancy would present the advocacy for the futility of any exercise first up. Mayank was advised by many not to smother initiatives by his penchant for ‘over thinking’. ‘Do it and then regret is always better than regret not doing anything...most wonders of the world are accidental and almost all geniuses are first exercise towards stupidity’, a well-wisher had told him once.
Mayank never believed in such pep talk. He knew it well that humanity had to face the dire consequences of hundreds of accidents before one of them could click as a wonder. The world bore the brunt of loads of stupidity before a miniscule portion of it could stand the test of a genius. One needs to be sure which was the larger evil; thoughtful inaction or un-thoughtful action. He would admit that his preference for former was born out of the fact that he was living in a world where over activity was destroying more than it was creating.
Creativity should ideally be fueled by reason and not necessarily by necessity. The contemporary age of necessity-driven creativity and activity had designed many geniuses which actually deserved the rightful nomenclature of stupidity. He believed in thoughtful inaction because of two simple reasons. First was his adherence to the conservation of energy theory which he had learnt to put to smart use from his favorite cricketer. It said, ‘when the ball is new in the morning session of the game, the bowler is fresh and full of energy and the morning humidity helps the ball to swing both ways; the opening batsman should keep a low profile and conserve his energies in saving his wicket, leaving the ball watching his off stump and avoiding flashy strokes. The batsman would surely have his time when the ball would turn old, the bright Sun would soak away the moisture and the bowler would tire’. Genius was not always in confronting the risks one up but in understanding and managing them well. Patience is a smart wife of a genius. Secondly, he knew it quite well that if one is not sure of the ends, however bright and noble the means be; it cannot be a justification for initiative. Good intentions ending up as bad inevitable and consequent regrets made poor history. Individual regrets get washed away by an innocuous sorry but the overall toll on the body of society is long lasting.
The meeting of the owner with the chief minister had gone well and as it was planned to be. A happy Boss had asked Mayank to mail him all issues which he believed were important for the betterment of the newspaper and the company’s performance; or what he had in his heart. He had his flight the same day but he promised he would come next week and will discuss in detail all those issues which Mayank would mention in his mail.
The sense of futility of the exercise had consumed the whole evening and he could not write a single line as part of his mail to the owner. He slept the whole night allowing his sense of being to drift away. This was his usual practice to arrive at an objective and unattached mindset before launching on a new initiative. He woke up at 4 in the morning; swallowed a waft of morning breeze filling his lungs and assuring him of a sense of well-being. For him, being positive and being bereft of negativity had different meaning. The whole previous evening he felt the unease and could not write a word but the morning brought him the positivity which eluded him earlier.
He could find touch with his objectivity. He had begun to see things in its largest possible perspective. One after one, thoughts came drifting in as he sat near the window, looking at the eastern horizon, where the Sun had heralded its ascent, beaming a radiant orange color in the sky just above where earth kissed the sky --
‘We have drifted too far... so far that the vision of rational objectivity is blurred… truth’s reasonable veracity looks like well beyond average human’s sensory perceptions. Trust of human mind and soul too has its limits... mind and soul just cannot build trust around an idea or object which has lost its chastity and elemental originality way back in human evolution till date. Acquired knowledge, intuitive awareness and transcendental realism, all are bound to be expressed through a very restrictive pool of human-created words, in order to be relocated from one being to another. Words however are the failed media of intention-transference of humanity. Words are at best the most mediocre mode of human communication and at worst the first qualifier benchmark for humans to rise above animalism. Human languages anyway are not the first preference of individual self but a secondary compulsion of collective being and social living. The intellectual contradiction of the universe is that the capacity of human mind is currently amenable only for “known” realm whereas the most important intellectual acquisitions fall in the realms of “Unknown and Unknowable” – the former is still to be understood but can be known on a future date and later is to be realized but cannot be known.
‘If human intellectual acquisitions and perceptional properties are attempted to be shared or bequeathed to others and especially the generation-next, one has to work his or her way around and circumvent this quintessential paradox of contemporary human wisdom. This can happen to a good extent… words can be a reasonably sound media and can carry a lot of true sense if one simple assumption is fulfilled. In contemporary state of affairs of humanity, one thing is for sure – you cannot teach anyone but anyone can learn! You can speak a lot but cannot be sure how little or what the other has actually listened. Human communication has a precarious absurdity. Transmission is no guarantee of equal reception and what finally lands at the end of reception may not always be what was transmitted. If someone is willing and has the necessary mental level, he or she can understand even with the help of the restrictive words from the human inventory. Even silence speaks better than thousand words. A good soul had said, “If a husband and wife are in best of communication, they will mostly be silent. More they talk, less they communicate”. All languages, other than what human mouth speaks, communicate better and breed less strife and negativity.’
Mayank smiled at his own tragedy. He was presented with an opportunity to communicate with a person who needed to understand him and his words in their true sense but Mayank knew he did not have anything favorable. What one has to say to other is like an aircraft and it has to land in the mind of the person for whom it is meant to be understood. The safe landing depends not only on pilot but also on the runway on the ground. If the plane is not provided with good runway facilities, the plane may never land or it would crashland.
He could not resist the sense of history creeping in his mind. He chuckled at the thought that when he would grow old and would have no strength and engagement left but to savor the reminiscence of his past life, he would only laugh at what would then certainly look like a huge stupidity. But he did not let his sense of history get control of him. He allowed the thoughts to come in --
‘We must first understand what our capacity is as human beings to perceive and receive things. How can we say how this world is, what is the cosmic truth if we do not ascertain what our capacities are for understanding things. You can only understand what your sensory faculties allow you to and what your mind can process. Geniuses of the world admit that human brain is still not good enough to understand the larger questions of life and the cosmos. Though, the vast areas of human brain and its overall functioning are still to be understood, still, it can be safely accepted; human mind basically operates through images that it gathers through the most potent of human sensory faculty called eyes. That is why; it is an old human wisdom to believe as true only that which the eyes see. Mind is still evolving… it facilitates many functions for humans but what it seems to do is unleash a self-operative image-mixing as well as image interpolation and extrapolation…! There does not seem any rule and order for such image-mixing; rather it may depend on which particular image becomes lead input and which others become secondary and tertiary ones. This almost free-hand image-mixing of mind keeps most humans in a state of confused realism.
‘It can also be believed that human brain is essentially status quoist. This status quoism emanates out of the instinctive urge of human brain to preserve the body.
Status quoism is a preservatory instinct. But the five senses incessantly feed the brain with new images and are truly the carriers of change. Naturally, the brain responds to them but it has the tendency to settle for a template with fixed spaces for different images, depending upon weight and importance assigned by the five senses, past antecedents and ambient culture. However, this process is not very simple and a human brain needs lots of leisure and time space in a stable environment to create a template after screening the inputs subjectively. Unfortunately, life has been so fast, leisure has become so rare and social milieu is so instable and wildly competitive that brain is in a continuous flux. Therefore, contemporary humans see lots of transitional templates which mind has not fully processed and stabilized as an objective template suitable for status quoism. What people call “wisdom” is essentially a well-processed template which brain marks as final for preserving (status quoist mode). What five senses feed to the brain constantly is just information. The partially-processed templates of human brain consisting mostly of information only and that too the contradictory ones, is the trouble of the contemporary generations. Human brain needs lots of leisure and by denying it to the brain; we have complicated things for us and the world we live in. The lack of leisure and stability has hit hard the very instinctive urge of preservation as the human brain gradually starts producing templates full of images of annihilation rather than preservation. The contemporary brain is probably creating such immature templates which send confused or wrong signals to the body, undermining its own judgment of well-being and preservation. Modern era has witnessed a major surge in accident related deaths, suicides and long-term annihilative lifestyle diseases and anomalies that lead to unnatural deaths. Mental problems and psychosomatic troubles are on the rise. For preservation and good growth human brain needs to create good and stable templates and store them. These templates human brain starts storing from an early age of 4-5. These first set of templates create a “benchmark” within human brain which are usually created within 12-14 years of human existence. These first set of templates in entirety form human conscience. Many people like to call it the “heart” or the “soul”. To most humans, the heart and mind are two different perceptory faculties. They seem to exist separately. Most people believe there is a soul within that is separate from human mind and it is detachable from human body. This soul or what most people perceive as a human consciousness above the body limits is this first set of “fully-processed templates” which works as a benchmark for all future template making and that’s why looks like existing separate from brain.’
Mayank essentially was a man of his first conscience. He understood the social problems of being in a perpetual state of a 12-yeal old mind but he firmly believed his social personality as a 12-year old served him best. At least, it saved him of series of hypocrisy which he believed was the primary sin of humanity. He understood the risk of being labeled an emotional fool, an impractical person and worst as a self-styled martyr but he had the brave heart to rise above the criticism and adhere to his first conscience which so far had fetched him not much success in traditional sense of the term but immense satisfaction. He had decided quite early in his life that he would love to go to the grave with his hard-earned satisfaction and with a 12-year old conscience, whatever be his actual age. He had seen many people die before his eyes and had drawn confidence from the fact that all of them, who died at a ripe age, left for heaven as a 12-year old. He had naturally concluded that something, humans start and end with must be the superior intelligence. Innocence was what humans started and ended their lives with. Innocence naturally was the superior intelligence and he opted to remain with it, knowing very well that this superior intelligence was not profitable by societal definition; often painful but very satisfying.
The communication between Mayank and the owner was a difficult one. His preference always was innocence of his first conscience but for the owner, innocence meant a great shortcoming and a definite burden for business. The templates of brains of the two were diametrically opposed. Naturally, a resultant gap created a huge breach of trust. Making a bridge of true and meaningful communication was very difficult. But, the communication had to happen. The challenge was not in making it a fruitful one (it was a non-starter even as an idea) but was in making it less catastrophic. He knew the owner was habituated to seeing any request or proposal of initiative in business terms; to be valued with an eye towards profitability of the enterprise. The ROI (return of investment) syndrome had become a typical trait of most corporate personalities. He would be reluctant to accept changes which would mean taking risks to attain something not directly linked with profitability in the short run.
He remembered; the sales head had told him after his resignation, ‘It is easy for you to risk your rupees 25 k job but very difficult for the Boss to risk his 250 crore empire for changes that you want him to accept’. The sales head had told him clearly, ‘So far as the boy stands first in his school exams, the parents are least bothered where he spends his nights’. He clearly hinted that as the newspaper was still in good profit, the owner would be least inclined to initiate any changes. Only crisis makes justification for changes. He had listened carefully to what sales head told him and even appreciated his viewpoint on the disposition of the owners. He even accepted it to be a reality with the Boss.
He was now past his first dilemma and had entered a stage where the conflict was not about whether to say or not as he had decided to say irrespective of what fruitfulness it promised. The argument now was to decide what to say. There were lots of issues with media overall and print media in particular about which he would have loved to talk with the Boss. But he had good understanding of the fact that attention span of successful and big people was very short and if he loaded the Boss with too many problems, he would certainly believe that Mayank was a frustrated and insecure guy seeking undue attention and importance. The challenge was to pick up selected issues which could actually hit the interest zone of the Boss. He also had to keep an eye on the personality of the owner to ascertain which style of communication would serve his purpose.
Mayank thought, he would be most pleased and the owner would have been best served if he could talk primarily about media in the cosmic and spiritual sense. If the Boss could understand the root issue, he would be spared of the trouble, time and energy to explain the trunk, branches and leaves. He believed; media needed to be understood in the broadest possible sense. The cosmos is the media; the life itself is the most potent media. The energy, which runs the cosmos, is a media. A media is never an end unto itself; it is just a means. Means empowers, it facilitates, and works as a catalyst for attainment of ends but it cannot be end in itself. And, that’s why; all good media must have two prerequisites; purity and purpose. The chief trouble with contemporary media is the chaos and confusion about the two. There is a tendency to get confused over what is typically associated with media - the objectivity! He had seen enough misuse of objectivity both in life and media he worked in. He had always been very categorical that objectivity is never the best practical benchmark for quality and utility. Objectivity, in its purest sense is near impossible. And if true objectivity is taken into consideration, it often lands things in a state of non-belief. The ideal benchmark, he believed was purity and purpose.
Each human life is also a media and to understand the purity and purpose of media, one should also understand life. In human life also, there is complete chaos and confusion about role and purpose. The defining line between ends and means is blurred and confusion rules supreme when it comes to deciding things with utmost objectivity.
It seemed to Mayank; the very intrinsic urge of every living cell for self-preservation along with this perceptional reality about a soul as something detachable from perishable body has created the templates of hell, heaven, other life and even moksha. Cosmic evolution is a huge astrophysical event-chain and one single human life is such a petty particle of this chain that it hardly matters
. However, the primeval instinct of aping each other has now created a potent force and humans in a collective state of things are in a strong position to at least affect their own petty environment in the world called earth which in itself is like a small particle in the immensely colossal cosmic system.
If viewed on the basis of complete objectivity; it is essentially a cosmic duty and real purpose of life for each human body to pass on the gene to the coming generation which is more evolved and better endowed (not necessarily the Darwinian way) than what one received from the past generation so that the cosmic evolution is powered positively. This process of healthy gene transference itself presupposes all goodness of humanity like, social peace and harmony, healthy family system, personal trust and care, good life & living with sufficient leisure, social equanimity, sound education, collective living, etc. The word “gene transference” as every human’s “cosmic duty” and “purpose of life” sounds quite pedantic and too mechanical to be acceptable but then, objectively the truth looks like only this one. This objectivity however is so beautifully wrapped in a series of sensually appetizing follies, which revealed souls have called “Maya” that most average people would accept this as purpose of life. If we say to a young man that his purpose of life is transfer his best gene to next generation he would term it abject madness. But tell him that the real purpose of life is to attain social peace and harmony, healthy family system, personal trust and care, good life & living with sufficient leisure, social equanimity, sound education, collective living, etc; he would be impressed and accept it. Many others will gladly accept moksha as the purpose of life. Objectivity is for evolved souls but average people do not and cannot see things with such high objectivity. For them, it is better that things are interpreted in terms of purity and purpose. That is why, it is said, ‘all objectivities are not practically sensible and all subjectivities are not ultimately bad’.
Unfortunately, both for humanity and media; there is always a huge confusion about means and ends. Mayank remembered, a great writer had once said in one of his stories, ‘most people spend half their lives preparing for life...’. It was a real tragedy that even today, three fourth of humanity on earth spend their whole life fighting for survival. Of the rest of a quarter, majority waste their lives either stacking resources for good life or indulging in resourcefulness and abundance. The media has similar fate; either struggling for survival or indulging in insurance of abundance. Mayank was part of a media which had no issues of survival. His newspaper group was a large empire; the venture was sitting pretty on a profitability position and had a long secure future. Its marketing instincts and team were both perfectly geared up for any corporate struggle to keep notching up higher profitability benchmarks every year. The media in India anyway was having a good time as literacy and purchasing power were growing much higher than the population growth rate. The overall economy parameters were all in reasonably good health and there was no panic, some cautions apart. This, Mayank felt was the right time for media, especially his own newspaper to think of the purity and purpose.
He did not think changes were always risky. Even if it were, many media houses had enough resource to take the risks but they were not taking it because of lack of knowledge and not because of the reluctance to take risks. The content of all media needed to be reviewed in the light of the new purpose which a vast set of changes had brought forward. Most media leaderships and owners actually did not truly understand the changes that pervaded India and therefore he felt there were little initiatives taken in right direction.
The trouble, as he visualized, with most in media was truly representative of the average person’s psyche. People in general are mostly reactive to situations and not proactive and this was since ages. Civilizations that excelled depended on proactive thinking. The proactive thinking, which necessitates beforehand initiatives, involves risks. Proactiveness usually emerges when there is a calculated risk taking to attain an end which may not seem a probable reality in present but a highly possible yes in near or distant future. Reaction on the other hand creates initiatives mostly for handling current crisis to check damage to a contemporary position. Reaction is for retaining what is there but proactiveness is for attaining which should ideally be there.
Any big leap forward of humanity impacts every human life in some way or other. Nations, civil societies, families and individuals get affected but how and how much depends on lot of factors. Mayank had known, through his knowledge of history that all major developments in the world had three things in common. First, most of these developments were very good-intentioned and originated out of the long struggle or deep pain of humanity to make the world a better place to live. Second, it is a real curse that only a small group of people initiated actions over good ideas but they seldom penetrated and reached to the mass levels. Mayank being a man from media had learnt a hard lesson that all goodness started with a minority voice and needed support from all possible media to reach the masses to ascertain authentication from the majority. He regretted that most goodness in the past had either got a bad media or no media. The ‘no media’ was not as perilous as the ‘bad media’. He learnt the sad reality that in the long history of civilized nations and civil society, the media of their times failed to rise up to occasion and chiefly because the leaders of media were themselves very poorly knowledgeable and aware. The end result was low or unfocused people participation to support the goodness. The third and important thing was the natural corollary of the second. As the goodness could not assure involvement and participation of the majority, a small group of unscrupulous people very cleverly entered the scene as middlemen and usurped the benefits in connivance with the authorities entrusted with the task of delivery of the goodness. Here too, he felt, historically, media failed in its role to preempt and prevent such unwanted usurpation. Rather, in most cases, media and its leaders proved hand in glove with the pilferage mechanism and enjoyed undue heavens.
He realized the importance of two prerequisites for the success of any goodness that was initiated for general well-being of humanity. First and foremost was a very aware and proactive media and secondly, a well-oiled regulatory mechanism for fast and steady penetration and reach to the masses as well as the insurance that goodness reached in the right and avowed shape and size. Human ingenuity for pilferage was instinctive; it cannot be completely done away with. It has been said hundreds of years back by a wise man, ‘nobody can understand and check when a fish drinks water while swimming in water’. Self is an undeniable reality and selfishness is also very natural. It comes out of the genetically designed urge for self-preservation of any living cell. The nobility of human selfishness is however a social product. The fear or care for social approval and reprimand decides the intensity of inclination of selfishness to indulge in ingenuity of pilferage. The basic fear is the fear of majority and the only potent check on human ingenuity. Human beings are social creatures by nature and what they really dread is not hell or law of the land but complete isolation from the society. That is why; the only successful insurance for success of any goodness is the acceptance of majority. Corruption could not be successfully checked in most nations as our society in general not only approved of it, rather also encouraged it. We made the rich our icons eulogizing how he pilfered the whole system. Still, when the father of a bride goes for marrying his daughter to a suitable guy, the father of the groom proudly says, ‘my son is in government service…has orderlies to do all the work…has little work in office and most of the time he is at home…the salary you know is not much but has great scope for other income’. The father of the bride is too happy. Not for a single moment he thinks that he should not marry his daughter to a man who considers no work as a virtue and boasts of his illegal wealth making skills. The father of groom is anyway too proud to have such a son!
Mayank only wished, he could tell all these things to his Boss and he could really understand them so that he would allow his newspaper to become a potent and
proactive vehicle of reaching the myriad face of socio-cultural evolution to the masses. He firmly believed that loads of scientific advancements had taken place and some very good-intentioned people were evolving a new thinking, based on holistic, assimilative and integrative wisdom of old and new for making the globe a peaceful and prosperous place to live for billions of people. But, he was sure human ingenuity had not spared the goodness of the new thinking trends and that is why he was very eager that it gets a proactive and good media to work on the archetypal thinking and attitudes of average and common people.
After much deliberation, Mayank decided against it. He repeated to himself, ‘all goodness has to be practical’. He understood; the owner would have neither the time nor the inclination to listen to things in details. Anyway, even if he would listen, at the end of it he would ask him, ‘so, what you expect me to do?’ He knew it well that the Boss, like all successful people considered thinking and analyzing as sheer wastage of time and energy. They believe in action and that’s why Mayank decided it would be appropriate if he simply told the Boss what action needed to be taken. It was up to his genius to devise an action plan that would contain remedies of all outstanding problems of media in general. He decided and zeroed on one thing that would have such linkages that it would touch the whole spectrum of issues. He picked up his laptop and started writing the mail to the Boss:
Dear Sir,
As I begin to tell you what changes I expect in the place I work, I am forewarned of the peril of the exercise. It is bound to have references of some senior people in our newspaper and the changes which I talk of may look like putting them in a position of disadvantage. At the very outset, I earnestly wish to say that my stand is purely professional, involving no personal biases as I believe, issues are more important than persons.
Media is a strangely specialized field of activity. The work process may not need specialized learning but the profession of media requires a special mindset, aptitude and attitude. It is believed that eligibility and qualification are two different things. In media today, especially in print media, there are more eligible people than the qualified one. Then, qualification and excellence are also two different notions. There are some professions in which only excellence is required as the very sensitivity of the job and responsibilities towards nation demands nothing short of excellence. Like Army.
Media is also a profession like Army. It needs special aptitude, a different propensity towards work. All people, who enjoy royalty and love their nation, cannot join Army. The Army has a very well-designed aptitude test mechanism to pick up the right people with mindsets and aptitude well inclined for a position in the Army. After that, it has a very tough and focused training module which ensures that not only eligible and qualified but excellent people join the ranks before they are part of the very important work of national security. Tragically enough, media has the worst recruitment process in the industry and that is why, media, especially print media has the worst human resource, highly ineligible, let alone qualified and excellent. Worse off, there is no training module in place of whatsoever nature, to ensure a semblance of sanity to the human resource management.
In our newspaper too, the biggest crisis is that of human resource. It would be improper of me to point out the grey areas in our team, especially in the editorial team. It is ideal for you to personally do the reality check. I would however like to register my sincere protest to the fact that in our newspaper, there are four eligibility criteria for recruitment – relatives, personal loyalty, political/bureaucratic connectivity and dubious antecedents. And all should come at a cheap rate. Naturally, it happens with active support of the department heads. So, we make a team of people who have nothing to do with content and media; all they care to do is keep the editor and other bosses in good humor by extending personal loyalty to them. The leaders are well served. Life is smooth.
The crisis however starts when owners demand quality. The hypocrisy is; owners want a newspaper for class people; those who have the money and means. The advertisers also want the same. But the team that most newspapers have is good enough to do only the press conferences and day’s events. They do not have the qualification or the training to produce quality content for class readership.
India is witnessing great many changes at different levels. It is brimming with potential for both smartness as well as stupidity. The new is fast replacing the old and established Indian morality and identities are in for a toss. Where and which way things will finally settle is open only to guess. Media, especially the print media is in for a historical role of being the smart moderator of all these changes to ensure future generations are handed over a new India which has the ideal amalgam of the best of both tradition and modernity.
The human resource we have in our media is completely out of sync with times and badly misfit for the historical role they are entrusted with. Our team needs complete overhaul. Naturally, the renaissance in human resource will necessitate top level changes. I know that would not be easy. There will also be need of continuous training of journalists and that will be more difficult as journalists today have no other possession but their inflated egos. And, despite that, they are still pampered.
Somebody said, ‘I have heard that life in love is difficult...better it is that we do something easy’. We may also say the same. When quality is so difficult a proposition, why not do something easy! But then, love is what humans should always be in; life without love is a long road to drudgery. Quality and excellence is what media should always be identified with; so is our historical duty!
I insist, creativity should not be decided by necessity but by reason. What I propose may not seem necessary to you, at least at this point of time but this is what reason beckons us to do.
It is always said, ‘morning starts when you wake up’. This is immaculate artistry of the hypocrite. Morning always starts at an appointed time, we sleep or are awake is our sole discretion. The bigger reality is; the day also ends at the fixed time, whenever we wake up in the morning!
Yours sincerely,
Mayank Mishra.
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