Column

It is wonderful how the Internet removes all inhibitions. At least it does for letter writers to this and other papers.

In all my years (many, many, don’t ask) of reading ‘letters to the editor’ as a journalist in Mumbai, I have come across only one gent who truly entertained us with his variety of profanities, expletives and combinations thereof especially when it applied to editors. He was so inventive with his invective that you could not be offended.

He is very famous and every newspaper and magazine in Mumbai knows him. But he was a character, a one-of-a-kind. Everyone else who went through the postal system was forced, apparently, into behaving with civility. Even the rage, ranting and raving was done politely, or with wit and sarcasm. No @@##$%^ you *(&^%^.

Welcome to today’s world. The unimaginative do go: @#$$^& you %%$#$#8 and the same to your mother@@$% and father. The rest leave out the expletives and immediately go for what they think is the jugular. In my case, they attack me for being fat. That’s so silly - I say it all the time so clearly it means nothing to me when you call you “You fat Bong”.

And it’s true, besides. I am fat and I am a Bengali. Yar boo sucks to you, I say. Shows no imagination and only a desperate attempt to insult. Others get insults ranged at their parents, children, especially daughters and so on.

Then there are those who decide to lecture. “Clearly you know nothing and as a journalist it is your bounden duty to learn about aerodynamics” or some such. This is the superior person, who then goes on, in full flow, to reveal his or her own lack of knowledge, civility, manners and belief in a rollicking good argument. It’s hard to have an argument with someone who goes %$#@^ and ^%%$#@ or the equivalent.

I have an idea that if you met any of these people in real life, they would be mousy and meek. Which is where the Internet comes in: Anonymity and no time to deliberate. When you write a letter, you have to compose it - putting pen to paper demands a certain discipline.

When you write an e-mail, you can press ‘send’ without thinking and it’s gone. Don’t think I’m offended. I’m amused. I apologise in fact to those I have replied to. I should not have. I should have allowed you the pleasure of wallowing in your own incoherent display of bad manners.

And please, keep them coming. We love all responses, good, bad, ugly, %$#@^ and %$$@% too!

Pick of the week
Some nasty person I know (which could be about 95 per cent of my acquaintance) suggested that TV news channels make sensational news events happen just to get good TRPs. Hmmm. Let’s immediately have a reality show on the subject, ‘Kiska news sach hai?” (See, I got the K word in too!). They all look the same to me so I won’t be able to judge them.
b_ranjona@dnaindia.net