After we saw the news about the slap we didn’t witness, we wanted to slap them for showing us Sreesanth’s crying face for the better part of a night and day and every day thereafter till today. After certain politicians in Maharashtra and Bengal slapped the cheerleaders’ cheeky posteriors with their disapproval, we wanted to slap them back. Cheerleaders in body suits? Might as well be clad in sarees. Given the extraordinary gyrations some of our actresses perform with lascivious intent and effect, fully clothed, we may then see something far more lewd than the cheerleaders’ apologetic wiggle-waggle. All this slapping and crying — IPL is fast developing into a soap opera. Is nothing safe?

The news channels welcomed the melodrama with their usual nose for hard news. Sniff, sniff, this way and that till Sreesanth’s tears had been captured from every possible angle. Now, had they shown us The Slap, we’d have gone clap, clap. Oddly, that footage was not released to the media. Odd, because we witness terrible acts of violence, and a hundred slaps a day, thoughtfully repeated in slow motion on soaps, but we cannot watch Harbhajan’s palm strike contact with Sree’s cheek. Boo-hoo.

One news channel that restrained its glee and coverage of the incident was the latest English news channel, NewsX. Mid-morning Saturday, while other news channels led and stayed with the dhamaka tamacha and its implications for India’s national security for close to 15 minutes, NewsX got to the incident 16 minutes into its bulletin and left 16 seconds later (or so). Here’s a channel with a difference. It’s not following where others go. It’s giving you bulletins with brief items, news divorced from views. It presents an uncluttered screen: no boxes, no breaking news, exclusives, no three-striped toothpaste lines, sorry news scrolls, just one. Also, the backdrop is not blue, red, a combination of both, it’s a window on Delhi with a yellow pillar (holding everything together?).

... contd.