Anything Else

Last year around diwali I was trying to book tickets and I did not get it for 4-5 days. I assumed that it is because it is rush period which it was. Then I finally got the ticket and reached home couple of days before diwali. Almost. I sleep in the trains, even if its a 30 hr journey, and I knew I would reach my destination at around 6 in the evening, so was sleeping, train stopped and everyone went out, it was varansi and I stayed in the train for an hour or so dozing off. Went down and realized the train has halted for good. Further enquiry at station told me that that was the first train that was allowed after 4-5 days when trains were completely stopped. I had absolutely no idea, and mind you I check rediff.com and timesofindia.com almost every half an hr [rss feeds]. Why were the trains stopped? Because of ongoing curfew in Mau. I had to go to Azamgarh, tried to take a bus, entire route that went through Mau was blocked. Entire week I tried to learn more whats happening, are the trains running, will I be able to go back on the train I book ticket on etc, I did not find a single mention of Mau in the news channels.

I heard about killings. I heard from my dad, who had heard from other sources. I heard from one of my servants, who claims he has escaped personally from a train, walked some 20kms in farms, and came back to his village, he says most in the train died. Later on trains were stopped. I heard it from nearly everywhere, and yet no mention of these in ToI or Dainik Jagran that I used to get there, dainik atleast used to mention the curfew, ToI had no news whatsoever.

AC(DC) says:

We've had this discussion. First you said that a websearch wouldn't result in anything because it has been censored.

I predicted that websearch also should not result in anything as I had not seen any coverage. I was wrong and there were some mention of such.

Then when the websearch actually yielded stuff, you assumed that to be the truth and said that the mainstream media wasn't reporting it, or was reporting the "censored" version.

That is actually an assumption you are making. I was reading the coverage on web to do further research in what happened, and I could not find anything interesting. A news here and there about wide scale riots, many others about denial. I hard a total of 1 story about some/few BJP MP walking out of parliament during my 5 day stay in a place where nearly everyone on the street is telling me that people are getting butchered less than 100 Km from where I am staying. I do not know which to believe, it was not purely rumor as trains and buses were stopped, but what it was? ToI and TV News failed me on that.

BTW there is an interesting trick, I call it bracketing. You do this, take the person whose view you are going to argue against, and bracket that view to a category that you can easily criticize. Oh you researched on the web, no oh you read stuff on the web, no no no.. oh you assumed you found on the web to be true, yeah that is the perfect statement. You bracket me in the category of people who "assume the stuff they find on the web to be true" and obviously your work is done, no further labour required in equating them to morons. Art of conversational terrorism. What you said *anything* in the favour of religion, you must be the strongest supporter of all religios beliefs, let me criticize you taking the weakest argument made by any religion supporter.

Finally:

Agreed, that the MSM doesn't report everything, but there might be factors like economics, and incompetence rather than a grand-mega conspiracy theory. Or are you just going to contradict yourself here?

I guess you are referring to the grand-mega conspiracy theory I was talking about [as of now]. [Neither is she]. If someone comes and takes any of what I have said in the first two para as evidence I have no problems with that, I stand by it, not all is known on what happened and it should be investigated.