The Discussions

This should be really titled ‘from a hospital bed’

Naradaa had to leave the lazy chair and undergo a surgery 3-4 days back. Let the reasons for the surgery wait. Being a maintenance man, Naradaa should have been practicing preventive maintenance; but when it comes to once own body, it ‘ardly hever ‘appens’....

Once the operation was over, and a day was spent in ’asleep and half-asleep’ condition, the next day started posing problems ....

‘Here i am the full day for you. What you want to do with me?’ the day kept asking.

People came visiting, yes... but still there were few hours where the only course of action was to keep looking at the ceiling.

Then someone came to my rescue. He brought a bunch of old magazines and a couple of books.

One of the book was a favourite of mine – Sanjayan – some of the best humourous writings in Malayalam. I kept it aside for reading after 5-6 days because reading it at that stage would invariably make me laugh and probably the stitches the doctor put on may open up.

Another book was an excellent book by a doctor about his experiences and I realised that also was to be kept aside for reading later because hospital stories are probably not the best to read in a hospital bed.

So, I turned to the magazines.

The first one I took had a feature on ‘Vaikkam Muhammad Basheer’. For non-malayalees and uninitiated Malayalees – Basheer was one of the best story-tellers/ novelists. His many works had been translated to English and published. Anyway, the study was quite in-depth and I enjoyed reading it. But the main thing I wanted to tell here is something else.

In that magazine, I read a discussion. There were four or five panellists and a moderator and it was all very nice. The moderator asks the question to A, then A answers, then moderator asks B to respond and so on and so forth. The subject was how television influences the common people and I could read the different opinions and understand them very well.

So I told this to a friend who came to see my recovery.

Me: See discussions should be like this. Nobody butting in when the other speaks.

Friend: I don’t agree. Where is the entertainment? How can you watch four people sitting and talking without a fight?

Me: But you don’t understand anything they talk.... because all of them talk together.

Friend: Why do you want to understand anything?  Who watches TV for understanding? We want good entertainments and an escape from some of those serials. If we want to learn and understand, we will go to.....

This has pushed me down to deep thoughts.

How can we make these discussions as interesting and as close to non-understanding as the TV discussions?

The problem did not baffle me long and I had come with this idea. I am now writing down here a sample of the discussions where M is moderator A,B and C are panellists.

M: welcome to this discussion on how TV programs affects A:who says M:please, please..let B: of course I strongly M:me finish the.A:says TV programs C: who says they.B:feels about the subject. M:statement about the C: affect the M: Please... please... subject! A: B doesn’t understand C: affect the. M: please, a moment, allow me B: of course I understand M: you will get your chance. A: B does not understand. M:Gentlemen, let me take a short commercial break here. Don’t go away .....

Added to this, we can have a few caricature sketches of the participants..... and a few advertisement lines to boot....