Penblunt & Hogwash

Life in the times of Ashoka and Television!

Penblunt

Goaded by the missus, at the ripe old age of 48, I decided to take the masters in history examination, and the other day, I was reading about the tremendous times of Ashoka the Great.

I was reading and rum-ming, and rum-ming and reading when suddenly, I came upon the chapter, “Outlines of the electronic media: 304 BCE to 232 BCE”.

Apparently, from the time of Mahabharata, India had a distance vision-narration system… if you remember, in the Bhagvat Geeta, there are constant mentions of Dhritarashtra uvacha and Sanjay uvacha… Uvacha meaning, “Said”.

In fact, the Geeta starts off with this:

Dhritarsahtshtra uvacha:

Dharma kshetrey Kurukshetray samaavetaa yuyutsava

Mamakapandavashchaiva kimakurvat Sanjaya?

The blind king asks Sanjay, sitting far away from the scene of battle: “Oh Sanjaya, in the holy battlefield of Kurukshetra, where have congregated the fabled warriors, pray, what are my Kauravas and the rival Pandavas doing?

To which Sanjaya uvacha, or Sanjay says… and so it goes on.

So I was not surprised that there was a more advanced electronic media during Ashoka’s time, and don’t you be either, and let me just get along with the Hi-story….

There were several channels, apparently: the Sanskrit language elite RPTV (Rajdhani Pataliputra TV); Bhavishyatak, which was in the layperson’s Prakrit language channel which used a red backdrop in all its news reading studios; then there was Bharat TV, which in fact always showed a saffron emblem on the right hand top corner and the divine Aum would flash before and after every commercial break.

There was also a small channel, called Dridakalama (meaning something like “penblunt”) TV, which often went off air due to paucity of funds.

There was also a Breaking News concept, but each had distinct visuals for that:

RPTV: a pair of scissors would swiftly slice through a curtain, and the news would pop out.

Bharat TV: A mosque like structure comes crumbling down and from each brick comes out the bits and parts of the Breaking News.

Bhavishya-Tak: An earthen pot would come flying in and crash on the ground with a deafening roar, and Lo! The news would splinter about, read by a man looking like a Dasyu, with a menacing grin from twisted lips.

Dridakalama did not have all the money, I guess, for such fancy stuff, so its editor officially held that News itself is a break with the past, so there cannot be Breaking News. It is just news.

Anyway.

Before the great king went to war, coverage on RPTV mostly related to conditions of roads and lack of drainage, business for the community of Vaishyas going down or coming up, and so forth.

Instead of Vaishyas, Bhavishya-Tak channel concentrated on Veshyas (sex workers) and how certain ministers of the state were caught coming out of their houses… for comments, the ministers said that sex workers were part of the society and their well being also needed to be looked into.

There was the odd suicide, and the odd student turned out from Gurukul, in which case the Bhavishyatak channel went sneaking on to the ‘abominable conditions’ of Gurukuls in the Kali Yug.

Bharat TV showed the kingdoms spiritual attainments, the espose on the nastiness of Greek theatre, which often dealt with offensive subject like Electra and Oedipus complexes, and it also showed news from the Gurukuls and temples, but refrained showing anything to do with the Devadasi system, which employed thousands of meritorious women well versed in the arts.

Dridakalama was more scathing on health conditions and corruption, but unlike Bhavishya-Tak, which had the image of snakes creeping about for corruption stories, Drida just quoted general people on their problems and got hold of officials to get promises out for quick rectification.

When Ashoka declared war on Kalinga, RPTV slashed the curtain and announced, all in Sanskrit, but for you here is the English version: The King has declared war on Kalinga, and has geared up a massive army of one lakh soldiers. The war could begin anytime now.

Bhavishyatak was furious and the pot crashed viciously this time: “The king has all the world at his feet, but the poor tribals of Kalinga are not being left alone, and with health sector investments down and hospitals suffering, this war is just a hogwash to divert the attention of the people from the (the snake crept out now on the screen) of total Veshyagiri of the nobles and other sordid affairs of state!”

The channel also brought in analysts and said that according to Hindu astrology, if the king started the war on the latter half of a Thursday, he would lose!

The king had already announced that the war would start from a Monday, after full rest from preparations for the war.

But that was part of Bhavishyatak’s strategy, worked out by its brand managers, because it knew the might of the Maurya empire would crush Kalinga and it would later take credit, saying: “In fact, Bhavishyatak had already predicted that the king would win if he did not start the war on a Thursday afternoon.”

(Much like when just before the World Cup, every channel said “Dada mein dum hain” and predicted Saurav Ganguly would get into the team, and every channel claimed exclusive Breaking News even after all the channels had said the same thing, and all claimed Breaking News through morning, afternoon, evening and night!)

Drida managed to pull in some loans to go on air after a financial breakdown, and announced that the king was indeed going on war, but analysed that the tribals of Kalinga were becoming notorious war mongers and perhaps the king had no option, but of all the channels, stating the correct reason got Drida the lowest rating on the LP (Lokpriyata) Matra or popularity scale.

Then the war started and Ashoka got a helluva initial beating.

Bhavishyatak: Kalinga has smashed the assault by the Mauryan army, and as we had already revealed in a sensational disclosure last month, the problem is the wheels of the chariots are all asymmetrical… it may be recalled that Bhavishyatak had shown details of the wheeling deal was done on the wheels by the Yuddh Mantri’s secretary. 10,000 Mauryan soldiers dead in two days.

When Ashoka’s media manager sent him the transcripts of the channel war news, he smiled and said: “Good, they have quoted six times the number, and hope the Kalingans have seen this so they will be over confident tomorrow and we shall have them.

He tossed a bag of silver coins, and gave it to his messenger for the editor of Bhavishyatak: “Give to him as reward as Best Inverted News Leading to War Effort Award.”

And now here is the commercial break!

Dekhtey rahiye agley haftey tak!