By Friday afternoon, though, I could partially get back to the television news consumption equivalent of substance abuse. NDTV, CNN-IBN, Times Now were all carrying warning flashes of a new terror threat to India. But they were also faithfully reporting that the home secretary had politely rubbished the US embassy terror assessment as nothing more than an advisory to American citizens in India. Did the US embassy claim something more than what its advisory contained? Did the home secretary under-react? Did the media overreact? How could one even ask these questions - forget about answering them - when TV news had decided on the headline, the angle and the blurb without fully understanding what it was reporting.

As I was writing this last paragraph, breaking news on NDTV was MK Narayanan, national security advisor, saying Al Qaeda is present in India in many forms. And CNN-IBN was promising an evening special on “new age terror” and India’s ability to cope with it. I was going to get my fix.