The end of the world

A news report that some people believe that world would end on May 21, 2011 was the most emailed one on Yahoo! I am reminded of an article about 'boring days' that I had read a few days ago. On 18 April 1930, the BBC news bulletin had said: 'There is no news'. Something similar seems to be the case now. There is only gloom and doom everywhere and people are tired of the news about scams, unemployment, inflation and Chinese aggressiveness. So end of the world seems to provide a bit of comic relief to the readers. It felt good to read it. I mean, it really can't get any worse than this, right?

It has been quite a long time since I watched news on TV. I do not find it worthwhile to spend 30 precious, unrecoverable minutes of my life on some dumb programme which shows the 'twists' in some godforsaken reality show as the breaking news, makes 'expert panels' (yawn!) analyse the issue in between long durations of mindless, gutless and heartless ads. I have more to say, but I fear the censor board. Not the official one, but the all-pervading 'conservers' of Indian culture who think that the utterance of even a word against the established interests amounts to sedition, war against state, etc., etc. Is this what you call a democracy? You will find mass murderers roaming free in this land while the innocent languish behind the bars for crimes that they have never even dreamt of committing.

We have a new controversy in the state: should genetically modified crops be cultivated in Kerala? Now you must understand that Kerala does not really cultivate much of anything that can be used as staple food and that its economy sustains itself through export of rubber, spices and people and sales of services, beverages and lottery tickets. We import everything else - fruits, vegetables, poultry and dairy products and even food grains. If the rice cultivation in Andhra Pradesh is affected due to drought or flood, Malayalis are the ones who are going to go hungry. So we are having heated discussions about imaginary threats. This is not a recent phenomenon. We were worried about the CIA overthrowing our state governments, ETs poisoning our water sources, river water losing its 'life-force' as electricity is generated by extracting the essence from the river waters in hydroelectric power plants, computers making all of us unemployed, Thakazhi indulging in plagiarism, etc., etc. This state is a 'conspiracy theory cluster'.

I too have one, if you want it: The guy who begs in front of the L____ church in Trivandrum is a spy. I have no idea for which country he works, but the fact that he dines in the decent hotels in the city when no one is watching him and the fact that many of the senior officials of the state attend the Sunday Mass in this church corroborates my theory.

Glad to add my bit to this huge prison of phobias and fears we build for ourselves. Really, the end of the world story will appear amateurish to the people of Kerala.