Good news or Bad news

 Good news or bad news! (published on MSN in 2007)

I never knew until recently that our English news channels could be so mellifluous to transport me to a forced siesta thanks to their reporters pouring out to the respective news desks in their characteristic sing-song monologue and yet fluent accents.  

But I only knew about their sonorous and verbal baritones of the debaters who could as effectively nudge me out of the gentle embrace of my post-dinner naps. News transform according to the times like new wine in an old bottle.  News used to be different back then in my youth. Those were the days when I waited eagerly for the 9 o’clock news on the radio. I used to listen carefully to the newsreaders' diction and accent and tried to learn avidly. I used to see the reported actions as if they were happenings before my eyes through the newscasters’ vocal cords. 

 News channels have now spoiled all that. Say, it's bad news for me.   

They ruined my appetite for news. These days I imagine myself going to a restaurant (say, to consume news for a change). The waiter would give me a brief (but at length) on each of the items on the menu, including how these dishes were made; how they would be presented and served; how I would relish them; and also he could foresee what kind of an aftertaste each of those exotic dishes would leave on my palate even before they appeared on my plate. Like adding fuel to the fire, I would be treated to other side attractions/distractions (fillers they would call on the TV) until the waiter presented my order. 

 Once I started attacking the long-awaited fare of dishes, my meal would be interrupted by those ad breaks. They force me to check how a particular washing powder acted whiter and toilet cleaner magically turned out brighter surfaces. That would leave a bad aftertaste to the food until breakfast time the next day. 

 Oh, we have an overdose of news channels, not speaking an excess of news with exceeding one-uppance of stinging stringers exhausting my patience!   News on TV is but a veritable à la carte containing different sections like Mogul, Chinese, Punjabi, south Indian cuisine. Competing news channels give almost the same analysis with different footage bringing along various commentators and experts who air their opinions (opinionated rehashes). Well. Maybe after few days, I need not wonder if the news channels go to that length when they put up some animated characters from the dead as victims of crimes speaking their own minds to the audiences a to how they felt like when dying. 

 I feel it is best to read the highlighted news lines on my web browser. Back in my days, those one-liner news lines used to be a godsend, be they from Reuters, etc. which dish out news on our fax-like machines in the offices I worked. 

 But long live news, be they of any kind. I hope they better be healthy. Well, while I am on health, the health news is proliferating like cancer these days, and sometimes in gruesome visuals of vivisections (news as they happen in real-time), dissections, and dreaded postmortems. 

 Maybe the news-hunger is exploding like never before and it is high time an index is invented for that. Social media keeps tabs on news through posts and tweets and other updates, thus enhancing the freedom of speech all over the globe. From now on we can see 'news chips' bottled up and thrown in the sea for the posterity to know about us better or put in a capsule in a satellite to circle our globe for eternity. 

 Just I got a mobile notification saying that someone was attempting to open my page that I kept on ‘cloud’ nine. Better I went there and cleaned my draft.