Yamuna flood becomes a media tamasha

OFF-TRACK

Amitabh Shukla

The monsoons might have left the Yamuna thoroughly cleansed of the sewage, arsenic waste and polluted water, but it has left an amusing after effect.

TV channels thronged the place with strategically parked Outdoor Broadcasting Vans and shouted hoarse from the rooftops and ferries about an impending doom which was slated to overtake the spirits of the national Capital.

The prediction of a catastrophe was so much aggressive and competitive amongst the channels that it forced many relatives to call their near and dear ones in Delhi to enquire if all was well, whether they knew how to swim in the flood, if their colony had a boat service, whether choppers have been pressed for emergency evacuation, if they had ration left in the house and what not.

A visit to the “happening place”, where catastrophe was supposed to strike, was well a Comedy of Errors. What Aamir Khan conceptualized through Natha in Peepli Live was happening right in front. The reporters and anchors, oblivious of the comedy they were indulging in, were so serious in front of the camera while describing the flood that one thought some of the better ones could have chosen acting in Bollywood as a career instead of the media.

All the OB Vans of the channels were perched only near the Old Yamuna Bridge, built by the British in the late 1860s to bring Railways to the walled city. It was only from this spot that the river actually looked “menacing” in the TV shots as the bridge is quite low and even on non-monsoon days, the water level of the river looks relatively close to the under surface of the imposing iron girders.

The entire 22 km stretch which the Yamuna traverses in Delhi otherwise looked splendid, a treat to the eyes, something one could stare at for hours at a stretch as it was a rarest of rare sight. None of the channels bothered to post their reporters in these areas to show the lifeline of the city in its pristine glory.

In their eagerness to prove that they are right about their predications of a catastrophe and to grab more eyeballs, the TV Reporters talked to anyone who was present in sight. The priests of the temples on the banks of the river near the old bridge were in great demand as their predictions sounded much more serious.

“They (TV reporters) were harassing us like anything. They wanted us to predict that the entire Delhi would be submerged and devastation similar to that of the Tsunami will take place. I ran for my life,” recalls Chandrakant, a priest of a temple in Qudasia Bagh, who refused to give further interviews as the reporters only wanted the answers of their choice.

His fellow priest at the temple Rameshwar was asked to enter knee and belly deep water for an interview. “Why should I oblige you by entering the water. If I slip, will you rescue me? Do you know swimming?”, he asked a bewildered lady, new to the profession, holding the mike like a sword, ready to be shoved in front of the mouth of any obliging person who wants to speak on floods and only floods.

The “targets” of the reporters were soon running helter-skelter as they did not know how to answer the absurdities, posed as journalistic questions. Some of the reporters thought that when sufficient targets for such interviews are not available, they could well bring “actors” from their offices and dress them appropriately for the occasion.

To dramatise the event, some reporters hired boats as the owners did a brisk business. Some of them took a ride in the motorboats run by the Flood Department of the state government, wearing colourful life jackets. Some others perched themselves belly deep in the water to report the deluge while the cameraperson was knee-deep in the water, cursing the reporter and his employer what the hell was going on.

People and kids living in the colonies close by, Shastri Nagar, Gandhi Nagar, Seelampur, Welcome Colony, Shahdara and the slums nearby rushed to the area to see for themselves the antics of the reporters and if doom was here to strike as “TV was showing” Live coverage of their neighbourhood.

“The reporters themselves were not serious of their predictions. It was as if they were driven to predict a catastrophic event by someone. They all were laughing, smiling, munching just after live recording,” said a Shastri Nagar resident, who was at the bridge, watching the drama unfold with his friend and getting a first hand experience of the media-nama.

The so called danger mark, which the Yamuna crosses as a ritual almost every alternate monsoon, was the talking point of most of the doomsayers. “Now it is 206.7, it has risen a centimeter, a millimeter, it will be 207 metre. The city is going, going an going…. ” the doomsayer shouted at the top of his voice.

The name “Hathni Kund” was the new villain in the entire script. The name cropped up in every conversation of the reporters and they made it immensely popular in Delhi and the rest of the country though their channels like the villain “Ghajini” in the Aamir Khan film titled with the same name and before that Gabbar Singh of Sholay fame and the blood sucking Dracula of the horror movies.

Hathni Kund is actually a barrage in Haryana from where the Yamuna river water is regulated and otherwise there are constant bickering between the Delhi and the Haryana governments to have a bigger share of water from the river through this barrage. Sometimes, the charges and counter charges go to absurd length with one state charging the other of “stealing” water in the summers.

When the “predicted deluge” did not take place, the reporters put up a brave face, finding it difficult to explain why their astrology has gone off the mark. They gave all the reasons they hurriedly could and quickly removed themselves and their OB vans from the banks of the Yamuna and moved on to “some other story”.

ashukla.mail@gmail.com

(October 2010)