The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Reporter's Diary

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 26, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Reporter's Diary

A bit under the weather

THE SEASON for umbrellas, raincoats and hot soup in the evenings is also the time for sniffles, sneezes and coughs. By the time August comes around, half the city is down with some virus or other. Mid-monsoon blues, some call the phenomenon.

It especially strikes reporters with regularity though the symptoms vary. Perhaps, the virus too may be of a new kind each year; you just have to bear it for days together, even with medication. Medical research does not seem to have found a cure yet.

Reporters, who have to be in crowded air-conditioned halls, such as the legislature, at press conferences and even in newsrooms, just cannot avoid getting infected.

Some recover faster than others. For the rest, it is punctuating legislature proceedings or news conferences with coughs and sneezes, delicate or noisy. Only doctors and pharmacists can feel really happy about it all.

Woefully lacking in style

"THROW them out," demanded the elderly chairman and managing director of an apparel company to photojournalists who had assembled for a press conference to announce the inauguration of a new unit near Bangalore.

The livid journalists staged a walkout. They turned a deaf ear to representatives of a public relations agency who tried to persuade them to "forgive and forget" and stay on for the press meet.

The journalists made it clear that they will not do so. Later, when the chairman's son apologised, they said they will attend future press conferences of the company.

Copy or coffee?

DURING THE public viewing of the Bangalore Development Authority's Master Plan 2015, an elderly man asked the BDA Commissioner for a free cup of coffee. The Commissioner, who heard it is as "copy of the Master Plan," directed him to it. But the clearly agitated man demanded that the BDA supply free coffee to every visitor. "If you can give it to journalists and government officials, why not the public," he asked.

When the Commissioner told him that the viewing area would get messy if the BDA began to offer freebies, the elderly man suggested that the BDA hire labourers to clean the place daily. "After all, the BDA can afford to pay a few labourers," he said.

Vidyashree Amaresh

and Divya Ramamurthi

K. Satyamurty, Vidyashree Amaresh and Divya Ramamurthi

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