<p>“...it deserves only half a star,” bawls a pretty young thing in a newsroom that looks like a mediafied Forum Mall. It could well be the rating for this desi Daily Mail or Dina Anjal. The journos are all designer-made. They boogie-woogie, coochie-coochie and hit ritzy restobars.<br /><br /> They are more fleet-footed than those guys on Fleet Street. The man of the moment, Jeeva as a lensman, even calls the shots on the page 1 line-up. He can wheel and whiz around on his motor bike as if he were a motorcross champ who has lost his calling. You can find him all over the place. When a bank heist is taking place he is there to capture the designer robbers. A politician performs a tantric ritual in the middle of the night in a forest, and our sharp shooter is there.<br /><br />With elections the flavour of the season, the copy focuses on poll-iticks. Poor Naxals, what did they do to be shown as coming to power by stage-managing bomb blasts, arson and general mayhem? The baddies are mere sidebars. One even demands an eight-column apology on page one and almost pulls it off. They change the front page any time they want to splash a sensational story. And the circulation jumps by leaps and bounds. You even find a reporter trying to rejig page one all alone in the dead of night. She is the leading lady, Karthika, after all.<br /><br />K V Anand is an ace lensman himself but his Ko, whatever it might mean, is like a newspaper with just banner headlines and posed pics. No body text. The intro lies in the tailpiece.<br /></p>
<p>“...it deserves only half a star,” bawls a pretty young thing in a newsroom that looks like a mediafied Forum Mall. It could well be the rating for this desi Daily Mail or Dina Anjal. The journos are all designer-made. They boogie-woogie, coochie-coochie and hit ritzy restobars.<br /><br /> They are more fleet-footed than those guys on Fleet Street. The man of the moment, Jeeva as a lensman, even calls the shots on the page 1 line-up. He can wheel and whiz around on his motor bike as if he were a motorcross champ who has lost his calling. You can find him all over the place. When a bank heist is taking place he is there to capture the designer robbers. A politician performs a tantric ritual in the middle of the night in a forest, and our sharp shooter is there.<br /><br />With elections the flavour of the season, the copy focuses on poll-iticks. Poor Naxals, what did they do to be shown as coming to power by stage-managing bomb blasts, arson and general mayhem? The baddies are mere sidebars. One even demands an eight-column apology on page one and almost pulls it off. They change the front page any time they want to splash a sensational story. And the circulation jumps by leaps and bounds. You even find a reporter trying to rejig page one all alone in the dead of night. She is the leading lady, Karthika, after all.<br /><br />K V Anand is an ace lensman himself but his Ko, whatever it might mean, is like a newspaper with just banner headlines and posed pics. No body text. The intro lies in the tailpiece.<br /></p>
