Thank God calendar 2011 will end in the next few days

The year 2011 will be remembered for a lot of noise, especially in the world’s most populous and vociferous democracy. Everyone seemed to be shouting at everyone else and not just on the floor of Parliament, despite the Lok Sabha Speaker’s frequent interjections of “Please sit down”.

When Parliament was not in session, the noise was carried over to TV news channel studio discussions. With Team Anna also adding its voice to the process, it became increasingly difficult to separate the news from the noise. “When shall the softer, saner politics, whereof we dream, have play in each proud land?”, Thomas Hardy asked a 100 years ago, a plea that would have been even more relevant today.

There were, of course, moments to cheer for, like India winning the cricket World Cup again after 28 years. However, such sporting moments were few and far between.

Perhaps the best way of remembering 2011 is by quoting from the beginning of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, first published in 1859 and penned with reference to the year 1775, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”


Did Dickens anticipate 152 years ago the advent and hype of today’s 24-by-7 TV news channels?