Not letting me to act as government’s mouthpiece has deflated my enthusiasm for journalism
Ishtiyaq Sibtian Joo
This week I am all set to write my obituary. Weird! I know. One needs to die before people can portray deceased as a saintly figure. His departure as per their portrayal should see the end of this eternal world. But nothing like that happens. Life goes on.
Coming back to the reason of my belated personification by week, is the recent announcement of selected “Assistant Information Officer Posts” by SSRB. Unlike the twenty odd blued eyed candidates, the majority (read almost 1,500) failed to cross the fine line of pass and fail.
If, ‘Face is the index of mind’, then mine is the open book, where expressions reveal everything, written in bold letters. That could be the only reason why everyone was consoling me, after I heard; couple of my good friends, who worked in the same publication as mine, were in selected list. I was trying my heart out to maintain my calm from outside, yet the tsunami of rejection was withering all the barriers of patience from inside.
R Madhvan rightly said in ‘3 idiots’, a Bollywood blockbuster, “when your friend flunks, you feel bad, but, when he tops, you feel worse”.
And with me, the situation was even worse. It wasn’t one, but two of my friends who had qualified. Though I was not alone in my anguish, I had, almost 1480 journalists, whose name was missing from the selection list. This big number of failures included the veterans, who with a bagful of confidence and handful of experience were sure to see themselves acting as government’s mouthpieces. But, alas! Apart from failure, nothing had come to their hands either.
Results read I missed the ‘Assistant information’ train by some decimals points. I never paid any heed to these fractions. Even my belief is in whole number (read God as in one). But now I read banks make billions from the fractions that they take from us on the name of service charge, account maintenance charge and so many other charges, which we never think of or bother to look into.
If only I could had understood the meaning of this point “decimal” before, today, I would have been spinning good for every bad, a minister would have done.
In order to console me, one of the selected candidates pressing my shoulder said, “There is always a next time.” But in the heart of our hearts, we both knew, there isn’t next time, not at least with these posts and this department.
It took information office almost a decade to advertise, re-advertise, interview and finally come out with these results. Understanding the government machinery, it would be my son, who hopefully would be eligible for these posts, next information office will do the drill.
If one wasn’t enough, another pass out, travelling with me on the same night, in our office van, repeated the same exercise. It reminded of my school days, where my first girlfriend dumped me for my unchanged skeleton figure. One of my real friend, who later on, turned to be her boyfriend, consoled me saying, “Dude, there are enough fishes in the sea.”
Years, later after seeing me with pumped chest and bulging biceps, the girl made every possible attempt to see her revival in my life. Like any other male chauvinist, I would have loved to flaunt one more girl, when I was already dating one. But there was not much improvement in her proportions.
Our mullah in his Friday sermon reiterated for not getting dejected from Allah’s blessing. But who can let this him know that it is not Allah with whom we, common people, get dejected. It is the man made system that has left us tattered.
If 40,000 people are applying for class fourth post and the applicants include 17 MBA degree holders, even the word, “deject”, gets dejected for its existence. No matter how you sugar coat the things, apart from coming out with futile schemes in the name of entrepreneurship, where our holy bank charges with hefty interest rates, no government has ever done any good to eradicate the menace of unemployment in the state.
Not letting me to act as government’s mouthpiece has deflated my enthusiasm for journalism. So if you would not hear from me again, you will read my obituary for sure.
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