We saw blood on the tracks. Strangled cycle rickshaws, twisted into the shapes of death, floodlit streets empty of anything but deathly shadows.

Television news channels were there moments after the bombs exploded in the old city of Jaipur. You were watching IPL-Delhi Daredevils against Kolkata Knight Riders when this devastating intrusion forced you to switch channels. Between eating dinner and devouring cricket, we became consumers of a terrible tragedy. Another one.

Had you watched Tuesday night’s coverage of the Jaipur bomb blasts, for any length of time, you would have experienced an urge to get up and correct the angle of the picture, rather like you might have straightened a photograph or painting hanging on your wall. The picture was tilting too heavily to one side.

There’s the initial shock, dismay, sadness, a statistical deconstruction — 7 blasts, nay 8, maybe even 6, 50 dead, maybe 100 injured... TV news pursues those figures like shadows that always elude them: was it 50 or 60 dead? Nobody knows. Nobody will know till the next day. Or the day after.

The reporters, the anchors are busy with interviews — Rajasthan Chief Minister Raje, Minister of State for Home Affairs Jaiswal.

Then the blame game: correspondents on different channels, perhaps depending on the authenticity of their sources or their affections for a particular political party, blame the Centre (“no information was forthcoming from the Centre to the state government”) or the state (“the Centre had provided ample warning of the possibility of attacks in Jaipur”), and each one speculates on the identity of the perpetrators, in the absence of facts.

... contd.