RAPE OF THE MONTH

Some days back, someone came to me straight from Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh. With a suitcase in his hands, he was looking desperate. Gave me a reference of one of my older friends in Lucknow, a bhootpoorva journalist who has now joined politics. He had done diploma in media writing from Lucknow University and wanted to work in Jansatta. He asked me to get a learning space in Jansatta as an intern. I wondered why he was desperate in doing internship and not getting a job. Then he told me that he has made his mind to work in his homeplace only in any publication, but just wanted to learn in the Jansatta's atmosphere for some days to get onhand experience of journalism.

It was 1st of September and coincidently, two news items appeared prominently on the front page of Jansatta...one regarding the Indian Institute Of Mass Communication and the other about Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya. This man had some ideal and he was talking of Jansatta as something very revolutionary which everyone has to go through for doing good journalism. I just asked him to read those two news items. Then told him the plantation process of the news. After some hours of brain wash, he thought that I am misleading him. So, I guided him to the newspaper's office and he very simply got internship...not a big deal.

After one week of internship there, he was being asked to leave. He called me and informed of the same. Raised the question that why these people are not ready to teach him? He is ready to learn free of cost...his commitment stems from he fact that he comes from Baghpat daily to Noida...just for learning. When I asked him what he had learnt in a week's time, he got dumb.

Now, the ideal is getting washed out. Some questions... Who creates these ideals? These icons? Why it takes only a week's time to get the long term nutritioned ideals washed out? What is the use of internship for being a journalist? And, last but not the least, will this aspiring journalist ever work in his place with the same commitment and ideal he was carrying two weeks before? These are the questions which must be addressed right now to save these committed aspiring journalists from getting part of the mainstream slaughterhouses...sorry, media houses, where the commitment, the spirit and the dreams are slaughtered like anything...

Now, his voice is completely transformed. He is talking of starting a magazine in Delhi only...using his contacts to get some ads...although, he is not ready to admit he is been slaughtered...his dreams have been raped...the new dream is heavier than the previous one...and I am stucked in my chair spellbound contemplating over this rape of the month...

Abhishek Srivastava