News channels NDTV and CNN-IBN are all set to present their “Indian of the year” awards of this year, to controversial journalist of 55 years, eminent thinker, orator, man of ideas (etc etc) and Baba Ramdev aide Ved Pratab Vaidik, following his strongly aggressive conduct against Times Now editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami in a high-decibel episode of The Newshour that saw fireworks all around.
“Since we’re no longer under a secular central govt, where we could award people like Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Nitish Kumar or Arvind Kejriwal and given that Times Now is persistently beating us to pulp in viewership, we were thinking of nominating well-known Arnab-rebels like Raj Thackeray or Meenakshi Lekhi, but after we saw Dr.Vaidik on fire yesterday, there was no doubt at all. It had to be him! So, for the first time, in a unanimous choice from both NDTV and CNN-IBN, Dr.Vaidik it is! What a rockstar he is!” read a joint statement issued by NDTV chief Dr.Prannoy Roy and CNN-IBN editor Bhupendra Chaubey.
“Also, declaring Dr.Vaidik as the winner makes our job a lot more easier – we don’t have to try hard to write special lines about who he is, his background etc – every bit of information about him is available on that one episode of The Newshour, thanks to his recitation of his entire biodata. While presenting the award, we don’t have to introduce him, he will do it himself!” Chaubey added. “We’ve even heard that Rahul Gandhi might be visiting Arnab to have dal-chawal with him, after that one Newshour episode! Hahaha! Can you imagine?” a thrilled Chaubey told The UnReal Times.
“I was totally missing ‘Blow to Modi’ headlines for a while, yaa! Now, with Dr.Vaidik getting an award, he is sure to say that Modi is his very close friend and might even dedicate the award to him. In the present circumstances, what could be a bigger blow to Modi than that? Tee hee!” exclaimed NDTV editor Barkha Dutt.
In an exclusive call to The UnReal Times, Dr.Vaidik said “Of course it had to be me! I have been a journalist for 55 years! I began journalism at the age of 16, I once did an interview that went on for 3 and a half hours and it was widely watched,” following which our correspondent hung up. But according to sources at the telephone exchange, Dr.Vaidik is believed to have gone on for an hour about his greatness, despite hearing a disconnect beep at the other end.
Unconfirmed reports, however, suggest that in what seems to be a last-minute change, the CNN-IBN award might actually be presented to Mukesh Ambani.
