“We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?”

I used to hear this often: You’re a teacher, you should watch what you say.

Now, I wonder, did these people ever tell the teachers in JNU or Jadavpur not to encourage students to abuse their professors on TV channels or social media platforms, their peers, or even the prime minister? Or beat their peers on the head with iron rods? I bet the answer is no. Why? Because they might get abused or even manhandled. And I won’t do any of that. I was rebuked by some of my ex-students and even abused by others for tweets against students. Why? According to them, I did not understand the seriousness of what is happening in JNU. Really! Do the ladies and gentlemen sitting in the TV studios around the country who pass judgement on the state of the country have the courage to tell the political class that it is time the college campuses around the country were cleansed of their filthy influence? Why blame some student union leader for engaging in violence or even abusing people? He or she learns from their political masters.

But, what brought about this blog? Two events. The first was the sight of a JNU student abusing Prof. Anand Ranganathan @ARanganathan72 on air. I was appalled at this entitled brat who had done nothing of prominence except feed off his parents and the taxpayer, thinking it was so woke to abuse a professor, scientist and author on air only because their views didn’t match.

A well known news anchor told me, “Manners, I have realised are now considered old fashioned. ‘Stop trying to be a sanskari aunty’ I was told.”

“It was our parents who would have beaten me black and blue if I dared to talk back to my teacher, even when my teacher beat me.”

But now let’s come to some of my former students who have a special place reserved for me in hell, since 2014 or thereabouts! These former students will either get on social media and abuse me or won’t think twice before calling me up and giving me a piece of their mind because they know I won’t retaliate. They know they can get away with it by blaming it on youthful exuberance. So they keep doing it – on Twitter, on Facebook. First, it was a gentle rebuke, then there were argumentative debates and now its abuse such as calling me a ‘motherfucker’ ‘asshole’ ‘bastard’ – none of which I ever was or ever will be. I guess that is how they address their parents or their parents address them.

I guess it also happens when you are a rich entitled brat, brought up in an environment when you see your parents abuse their servants, drivers or even their employees, even though the latter is much older, and think it is okay to do that. If being liberal and woke means abusing teachers and seniors, I am glad I’m not any of those things that today’s generation prides itself in being. I come from a generation which even today stands up when one sees a former teacher approaching, or addresses ex-bosses as ‘sir’. Of course, there are also those students who apologise to me on the behalf of these uncouth halfwits and we laugh over it.

The latest abuse happened on Tuesday last, when I posted a video of policemen in Delhi forcing rioters to sing Jana Gana Mana. It seemed to have irked some ultraliberal ex-students of mine. My point in posting the video was that these were the ones who were thumping their chests and threatening to decimate India. And now look at them quivering in fear even as a policeman poked them with his lathi. In hindsight, maybe I should have not used it. However, since it is open season for abusing teachers online and offline, I was subjected to the vilest personal abuse from some ex-students online. Then, one student, a polite one, called me up and hinted that I could take it down, which I did without an argument or even a protest. And only because I have tremendous respect for this boy. While we have arguments, he has never resorted to abuse. Which I am afraid I can’t say for the rest.

During the height of the Punjab militancy, I saw my seniors asking for the ‘score’. Later I realised they were asking not about a cricket score but the number of people killed by terrorists that day. The figures decided where the story would appear. Just a couple dead meant one paragraph on the inside page. Five deaths meant 4 paragraphs on the inside pages. Ten deaths sent it to Page 1 in 4 paragraphs. Larger the figure, bigger the story and placement on the page. Sure, we also felt for those killed but we didn’t stand up and swear loudly at the militants and threaten to behead them. Today, of course, there is Twitter for that. Then, I was horrified at the casualness of their approach. It was a hard lesson for me – never take any story to heart.

Here is some advice, if as a media student or even a journalist you take everything you see personally – whether a riot, a picture, a video or a political campaign, then you shouldn’t be in the profession. For a media person, it is better to stay detached to events happening around you otherwise the reporting of events becomes subjective rather than objective. And that is how ‘narratives’ are woven.

Incidentally, the video in question is still being shared on Twitter and various WhatsApp groups including one run by senior journalists from one of India’s largest media houses. And now there is another video doing the rounds. This one of the IB officer’s body being fished out of the gutter. I don’t see too many woke liberals asking that the video not be shown. Wonder why.

Strangely, the abuse against me began only after I started supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and my Twitter numbers began to rise after he began following me. Till I didn’t support him, I was a nice guy and a good teacher – well, at least to some. They didn’t seem to have a problem when I supported a man who presided over a pogrom that massacred thousands of Sikhs in the nation’s capital and around the country. Now that I am neither a journalist nor a teacher, having quit both, over six years ago, I have suddenly become a racist bigot, a lousy teacher and not a nice human to know because I say things that disturb their fragile left-liberal ecosystem. The problem is that a lot of people have lost the ability to look logically at everything around them. And all this because they hate one man and by extension those who support him. And what infuriates them more is that he doesn’t care about what they think of him.

My advice to these people – don’t read me and don’t follow me if I offend you that much. I survived the politics of 40 years in corporate life, of which 30 was in journalism, only because of thick skin and a sense of humour. And it’s a bit too late to change now when I’m through 80 per cent of my life. And, in case you didn’t notice, we are still a democracy where I have the right to say what I want within permissible limits. I hope I don’t live to see the day in a democracy where myopic liberals will decide what we need to say or not say because it offends a particular community – like elsewhere in the world. And look where the rest of the world is today. Also, if you feel so strongly about the issues in the country, if you have the guts, tell that to the politician concerned – politely. If you have a problem with Narendra Modi take it out on him. If Modi is making you a stark raving lunatic, a psychotic or neurotic because he doesn’t respond to your abuses, go see a psychiatrist or buy a punching bag. Don’t make me one because you don’t dare to accept your shortcomings.

If you still can’t do that, please get drunk, get stoned, get laid or drop dead. I don’t care. My responsibility ended once I left the classroom. That’s exactly what the director of an institute, where I once taught, told the parents of a student caught for smoking/possessing a banned substance. When the parents complained that it was the director’s duty to take care of the boy inside and outside college since they had left the boy with him, he politely told them it wasn’t because he was neither the parent nor the guardian. His responsibility ended at 6 p.m. Being stoned and lying in a gutter outside the premises is really not the institution’s problem, it’s just an example of bad parenting and issues that they need to take care of.

And one last thing. If you have allowed your personal beliefs and ideologies to override your professionalism, you are the media profession’s biggest failures. Like I said earlier, a lot of you were the dregs of a crappy parental system that institutions are left to deal with and have no interest in playing a mother. Well, maybe, neither does the media world and they’re just too polite to tell you. Pack up and look for another existence. Just stay off my timeline. I have no interest in reading what badly brought up, abusive, uncouth and ill-mannered brats have to say.

P.S.
The headline is a quote from my favourite book The Lord Of The Flies by William Golding.