Just when we thought the news was dead and long since buried under heaps of ceaseless drivel (sorry, but it is often that) about film actors, cricket players, mythological and supernatural personalities and the latest, most bizarre criminal activity in some corner of the country, we are asked to think — again.

Zee News, like a leading soap character, has been reborn. In its new life, it invites us to contemplate (it, we presume). ‘Zara sochiye’ it pleads — provocative but insulting to our intelligence as well since it suggests we, and not they, were thought-less and mindlessly watching them. Zara sochiye, Zee, what’s there to think about your Monday Manthan which describes how the gods remain cool in summer (with chandan, naturally, but any fool would know that, right?)

Zee says it’s now an all new Zee. Its colour combination certainly is: pale blue, with vanilla yellow, and a bit of black (like News X). Cool, yes. New? The next equally visible change is Prasun Bajpai as chief anchor and mentor, there to make us think as of Thursday night. He delivered a long and very likely, sagacious lecture on the grey matter between our ears, in chaste Hindi, momentarily forgetting that he was on the channel which invented Hinglish. A decade after that mix-up, we’re unable to comprehend anything that isn’t English, every second word. Zara think, Prasun.

There followed a lengthy report intended to make us do that. Political parties allegedly injure, maim and amputate rival party members in Kunoor without a second thought. This was a ‘khulaasa’ (‘yeh khulaasa nahin hai’ insisted Prasun so often, methinks he protests too much) that didn’t illuminate anything but blurred parts of the body that were injured, maimed or amputated. We were startled. Not merely by the condition of the injured but that this is what we were being asked to think about — was this new? Was it topical? Where was the substantive, supporting evidence?

... contd.