On my monthly annual pilgrimage to the grandparents I am greeted with by a feeble walking-stick supported old lady with the mighty conviction of a Greek hero when it comes to religion.
I am also greeted by a sporting and fanatical television with an inclination towards the ham. But today, I would like to explore just one of it’s character flaws: profaning unsuspecting victims with godly propaganda.
The television wakes up sharp at 6AM IST tuned to one of the channels offering spiritual salvation for TRP ratings. One god-‘person’ after another drums the same messages of universal truth with a twist of personal interpretation like a good bartender takes an old recipe and adds a dash and a splash of color and flavor.
But like every discerning patron, my grandmother waits till her favorite spiritual mentor appears and delivers his message to the loyal flock. His delivery is astute, poignant, and pursuant of the many ills that pockmark the general collective consciousness of this nation. Is the distil any different from the previous speaker? Not really. Just that this one has an ethnic appeal to a certain sect of society that my grandmother belongs to.
This brings us to my question.
Is it the message that is important or the medium?
What are we laying more emphasis on? What weighs more in our mind? If the messages are the same then any speaker, despite caste, cult, or religious inclination should be as popular as the other (assuming the fact that all of the creed are oratory maestros). Each messenger should be as popular as the other. Each flock intermingled with the other.
Had such been the case, this would have truly been a great win for the god-people. But to ensure their personal coffers flow unrestrained ensure that their subjects remain their own. Like a milkman with his bovine herd. He brands them, he milks them, he profits of them. But at the end, they are just a heap of lard swayed by the mournful ministrations of a melancholic bard.
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