Fiction - Varsha Rath

Disclaimer - This is a work of fiction, any resemblance to any person dead or alive is purely co-incidental and unintentional.

A time not long back, lived a woman named Varsha Rath, a smart and cocky journalist. She was passionate about her profession, and would risk anything to get what she wanted. This ofcourse meant that any kind of detractors were mercilessly done away with. With a burning passion to make herself popular, she went on to cover wars and terror attacks, sensationalising, and emotionalising them to the core, no matter what the cost. The only thing that mattered was that she sell well.

In the brand new liberated world of blogs, many people expressed their dislike of her work, and quite rightly so, since everyone has a right to their opinion. Ms. Rath of course took great offence to all this and launched a tirade against the world of blogs. With her clout in her news channel, she organised talk shows, expressing her clear dislike of blogs, steering all credibility away from bloggers. Her pick of bloggers were mostly people who wrote about sex in someway or the other in their blogs, whether a gay man expressing his emotions, or an ultra chic babe writing about her sex life(along with other things) or a lady who writes factually about sex amongst other things. So you see, after seeing a show like that, people who are not a part of the blog world, would believe that it is basically all about sleaze. As I said before Varsha is a smart chic, she got most of the bloggers on her show on the defensive, one way or the other, asking questions like, "Oh! Do your parents read this?" or "Don't you feel any discomfort sharing everything about your life publicly?". The few bloggers she mistakenly invited who did not mention sex in any form on their blog, were casually ignored, while the ones who did write about sex were focused on. The attempt to discredit bloggers from any kind of credibility was rather cheap, but then she was highly biased.

A couple of years down the line, Varsha covered a terror attack on one of the prime cities in her country. As always along with appreciation, also came well informed criticism. By now, power, popularity and fame had really gone into her head. She could not handle it. Varsha was outrightly annoyed with her critics. So much so, that using her clout as a journalist working for a well established news channel, she filed legal suites against bloggers who had written against her, forcing them to withdraw posts, that they had written based on their own observations, believing they had the right to speak their mind.

And the whole blog-world was shocked by this, because all bloggers believed blogs were a space for free expression. The poor blogger who was cornered, had to submit an apology, because a person who blogs to express his opinions in his own space and time, could not afford either the time or effort required to fight a long drawn legal battle. But the whole incident did bring out the true face of Varsha Rath, who had been steadily climbing the ladder of success, which seemed to have gone to her head, rendering her incapable to accept any kind of criticism in the right spirit. She believed herself beyond reproach or any kind of censure, and with the power she had gained, went out hard and strong to crush anyone who dared to do that.

What she did not realise is that legal notices can affect the style of expression, but never the individual thoughts or emotions of people. So everytime she tries to crush the spirit of free expression, more and more ways would be devised to continue to do just that, whether she can deal with it or not. So cheers, to free thought, and free expression.