Like night and day

It is better to watch TV news during the day — then, one can see the news; later, one simply gets views on the news

Often, it is better to watch television news in the daytime. During the day, you get to watch the news; in the evening, you simply get views on the news.

And so it was on Tuesday. Throughout the morning and afternoon, TV news went after the rapists who had committed the rarest of rare sexual crimes against women. There was nowhere to hide from TV for the men who had raped a young woman in Delhi, Sunday night. Wherever those men may have been on Tuesday, they could not have escaped the sound of TV sets blaring the news of their brutish violence.

They would have heard the commotion in Parliament and Speaker Meira Kumar, Sushma Swaraj, Mayawati, Girija Vyas, Smriti Irani and above all, Jaya Bachchan, cry and cry foul. They couldn't help but see and hear it: news channels in English, Hindi or any other language repeatedly broadcast the outrage in the House. The rapists must have cringed when Swaraj demanded the death penalty for them, a call that gained shrill support on TV as the day progressed.

The rapists would have seen young people protest outside Delhi's Vasant Vihar police station, at India Gate, where TV news joined them. They would have heard the lynch mob hysteria — and maybe, just maybe, their blood ran cold. They would have heard Delhi's Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar describe what they had done to the young woman and the young man on a bus to hell that fateful Sunday night. Did they cover their ears to block out their own terrible crime, or did they try to run further for cover?

If they were watching TV news any time on Tuesday, they would have returned to the scene of their crime as the channels went to the exact spot where their two victims had been discovered, took us down the road the bus had travelled. They would have relived their actions and the memory of their bestiality. Or they might have heard reporters, like the young Aaj Tak correspondent, recount her experiences on Delhi's streets at 2 am with no police barricades, chowkis, or if there were, no checking. Perhaps they laughed, momentarily, at how easily they had made their getaway on Sunday night.

... contd.

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