We want our cricket, the latest from Sydney, no matter how bad. We want to know what’s happening, not what Madan Lal, Sandeep Patil, Saba Karim, Kapil Dev, Ajay Jadeja, Atul Wassan, Chetan Sharma, Mohinder Amarnath, Ashok Malhotra, Kiran More (phew!) think what’s happening. Post match discussion, yes, non-stop analysis throughout the day? A no-no. During the India series, news channels become cricket channels and create a media madness, inciting rather than dousing passions. That’s not news, it’s not cricket and it sure isn’t nice.

Also, please, less noise, we’re not deaf. Tune down the volume in the voice box. Read slowly, speak slower so you can think quicker. Avoid pre-emptive strikes with pronouncements or announcements a second will reverse. Especially during elections — and we’re going to have plenty of them this year. Desist from questions which mean nothing or cannot be answered in a jiffy. You know: how does it feel to lose your entire family in a terrorist attack? What will happen to Pakistan now that Benazir is dead?

Above all, stop making news, report it. Find it. Send out search parties with newshounds who can sniff out stories we seldom see or hear about. Currently, the news veers between hard national, international news-terrorism-violence, elections, national disasters, 123, political scrimmages (BJP complained Congress said BSP attacked...) — and news softer than a baby’s belly (Is Ranbir cuter than Shahid?).

We want what lies between the two. And news from the countryside, as of now largely related to crimes, caste conflicts, ghosts or little children stuck in village wells. Surely, there’s more to us than that?

... contd.