Stung by the camera

Even at the best of times, am no admirer of kamikaze-style television journalism, having seen at disgustingly close quarters the near-cannibalism of some members of this tribe. If you have ever seen a chirpy young, brilliant-smile-in-place teevee anchor ad lib her piece into the camera minutes after she has tried, in vain, to grab a `byte' from a mother who has just buried the bloated corpse of her child with her own hands, then you too would know what I mean. Am speaking of post-tsunami Nagapattinam and have no intention of sounding holier-than-thou. You've gotta been there, is all I can say. It needed Times Now TV's Dhanya Rajendran to change that perception. It needed her kind of guts, presence of mind and sensitivity to try and crack the web of nepotism and cheapstaking that one of the oldest universities in the country seems to have fallen prey to. Where others where thrusting cameras through bedroom keyholes, DR dared to turn it on to an issue that involved the future of lakhs of students. Not that the varsity suffered a major shake-up after this. If anything, the wheeling-dealing seems to have only gone underground and more acrimonious. The behemoth bungles on. But then, in the likes of Dhanya rests the future of teevee journalism. And I have never felt prouder in calling anybody `friend' than I do her. Her stunner may not have created the kind of ripples that one would legitimately expect it to: had this been, say, the Delhi University or even a third-rung north Indian university, then hell-breaking-loose would have sounded quite mild. Despite a high-level DVAC probe and two employees in the slammer, Dhanya's painstaking work seems not to have made it to the big league yet. All the more is the pity. But then, she's still around...