Apricot Season

Hours before their new Gujarat-related expose had even been aired, Tehelka had cranked up the buzz within press circles to a vociferous, all-hands-on-deck ring. Immediately after the first cycle of the broadcast, though, it vanished, leaving only a disquieting hum in the ears.

Aatish and I had planned to respond jointly to the sting-op, but we ended up on opposite sides of town, and I banged out a post so that we would have something up as an short-term response. The following day, reviewing the scant, 'you go first' response of the mainstream press and the talking heads, I put up another post. The silence after the broadcast felt increasingly creepy, and this second post was compiled largely by drifting around the office of a news-magazine that would not, at the time, deign to respond to the erratic but powerful shots fired by the sting-op (Professional Jealousy was masquerading quite calmly through the halls as Self-Restraint and Disdain).

I had the advantage of scooping up the early pressroom impressions and flinging them at the internet while they were still hot. For this reason, my second post presaged what everyone in the press began to say soon afterwards. Also, Tehelka linked to it early on (between their links to NDTV and the Washington Post), prompting a surge of readers that had made my blog-editor quite pleased.

I also became an early participant in what Shoma Chaudhury rightly identified as an obsession with the motives of the messenger which guarantees the message is never read: "Duck the truth and look for some new depravity to explain it away: that’s become our habitual response as a people. We think it makes us worldly and knowing. We think it makes us sagacious. But in truth, it displays our fallen nature."

Both my posts are on Pass the Roti [1], [2].