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Another New Year.

Top MBAs are preferring to start lingerie stores to taking up one crore packets and are getting featured in the face covers of magazines.
Doctors who gave up multi-lakh packages to serve the rural poor are appearing on face covers too.

Child abuse and more horror tales stare at us from everywhere. Truth is stranger and much more brutal and terrible than fiction. Fingers burn as we take in stories of what the orcs with the human faces commit on innocents. One just doesn't feel like turning the next page or switching on the news channel. It sorts of takes away one's belief in the human race. But the next second one reads about a 'Dayavan' in reality, who rescues a 14-year old from prostitution and helps her back into sunlight. A police constable who takes care of a bewildered 5-year old, thrown away by kidnappers who assumed she was dead. Hope trickles back again.

Blogs reveal intimate bedtime stories and 'Big Brother' and 'Big Boss' show us privileged non-entities wasting their time and ours. Apparently they are the heroes and heroines of the present time. And a scandalized and traumatized face of a woman caught between apocalypse and vacuum stares at us from the background of the Asiad 800 metres track. Heroine or hero? No pun intended, just a brutal reality.

Fashionistas discuss whether the hemline should go up or down and whether the smoky eyes are "in" this season. Designers needle each other with intricate delicacy over designs and drapes. Skinny models still sashay around with boobs looking far too siliconed for their bony frames.

The search for the "perfect figure" traumatizes impressionable teenagers as the media overloads them with false impressions of what it takes to be successful in the world. Put a lot of goo on your face, starve yourself, get into designer jeans, have an attitude that reeks of arrogance, materialism... myself, myself and myself. On the other hand, religious channels are on an overdrive with what one is supposed to do with one's spirituality. Preaching continues as a desperate generation tries to hold onto something in a world of information overload.

Murders happen at the slightest provocation as learning centers become breeding grounds for criminal elements. But someone stands up and says, "No". He will not tolerate this inhuman pressure to succumb to silence and acquiescence. A hundred candles lit up by ordinary citizens quicken the delivery of justice. 'Gandhigiri' blossoms again in the form of red roses and brotherhood. But somewhere, a buffoon aims for trash popularity by making 'Bapuji' do a pole dance.

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* Ministhy Dileep is an IAS Officer working in the UP cadre. She has published two books - 'Unequal Equations' (Pragya Prakashan, 2006) and 'Learning with Tippy Tortoise' - Tales for Kids (Pitambara Publishers, 2006). The third book 'Happy Birthday' - Poems for Kids, is due for release.