Everybody knows what this country’s older obsessions are. Up there on top of the list is of course cricket, cricket and more cricket. It seems that this country just cannot get enough of cricket, even though one would have thought that viewer fatigue would have set in by now. But it seems that no matter how much cricket is seen live, or is covered by TV, our country’s Dil always Maange More, as far as this game is concerned. Through decades, indeed, through generations, the lust for cricket, in all its forms, has only grown stronger. What has changed has been the technology to deliver it to the fan. So, from the unwieldy radio around which entire families sat some decades ago, through transistor radios glued to fans’ ears, from live and continuous coverage on numerous specially designated TV channels to cricket alerts on cellphones, technology has kept pace with this great national obsession of ours.

Then there is Bollywood, yet another vintage mania. Jab we Met our heroes and heroines on the silver screen for the first time decades ago, it was Love Aaj Kal, and ever after. These days, one may be vague about what one’s neighbour looks like, but one cannot escape knowing that Kareena is now Size Zero. We are bombarded day and night, relentlessly, by all the minutiae of the lives of our beloved stars. And do we lap it all up!

Besides, there are the songs. Ah, the beautiful songs, all down the decades. No matter that ours is a country of such diversities. We shake our hips and hum along to all the Bollywood hits whether we live in Kashmir or in Kanyakumari, in Guwahati or in Gujarat . Indeed, Hindi film songs have effortlessly conquered pockets of linguistic resistance such as the southern states. Besides, remixes are heard even in the insular hill states of the North-East, making this truly a national obsession.

But of course all this is well known. The intriguing thing is that as we evolve as a nation, and a society, newer obsessions of the most unlikely kind seem to have us in thrall. Much of this is thanks to media coverage, specifically TV, with their need to find content to fill their 24 hour news channels. Perhaps it is slick marketing by them, but the fact remains that Indians have fallen for these baits hook, line and sinker.

One of the most unlikely obsessions that surfaces annually, without fail these days, is the presenting of the Budget in Parliament by the country’s Finance Minister. This is invariably a dry document, understood in its entirety only by the very few who have a specialized knowledge of economics and finance. But no matter. Lack of comprehension is never a hindrance to the rest of us suspending all work during the hours when the Minister presents his budget, and rushing to the nearest TV set. Finance Ministers doubtless feel like Shah Rukh Khan on that day when the eyes of the nation are on them. No wonder they smile so much when they are captured thus on camera on their Big Day. Obviously, they are aware of the fact that during these hours, they will have upstaged even Katrina Kaif as far as pulling in viewership is concerned. Besides, casting away their normally serious persona, they charm viewers with all kinds of quotations, and poetic asides. Delightful, indeed, though most of us don’t understand a word of the document itself.

Of course it’s the media that is to be congratulated on making the presenting of the Budget into such a riveting spectator sport across the country. For weeks before the budget is presented, they diligently drum up the tempo by constituting panels where things are discussed and explained in very “viewer-friendly” ways. Even while the Budget is being presented, pie charts and opinions from People Who Matter are shown in separate windows onscreen. Besides, these 24 hour news channels milk the Budget for content for weeks afterwards, showing the mandatory housewife and “man on the street” as they grumble about the hikes that will hit their budgets.

Politics has always been an obsession with Indians. Unlike other countries, our newspapers have always put politics on the front pages, in acknowledgement of this. But when it comes to elections to the Lok Sabha, today’s electronic media have surpassed themselves. No wonder elections become a national obsession of unprecedented dimensions in the weeks preceding a General Election. It is a reality show of the most riveting kind, a Morality Play with huge rewards and swift punishments. Besides, it is so comforting to watch the mighty and powerful canvass humbly for votes.

Another fixation that has grown into the proportions of a National Obsession is, these days, the weather. Specifically, the monsoons. Of course India , and its agriculture, has always depended heavily on its monsoons. Besides, the rainy season has always provided inspiration for poets, musicians and painters on the one hand, and pulled up the economy on the other. Even then, the kind of attention the monsoon gets these days in our country is amazing.

The buildup starts from weeks, even months ahead of the actual event. The Met offices around the country send out bulletins that are lapped up avidly by the country as it swelters under a summer sun. The monsoons will be normal. No, they will be deficient. Wait a minute, there will be an El Nino effect this time. Immediately, the media gets busy explaining through charts and diagrams what El Nino and La Nina are. Horror of horrors, there will be a drought! All this is still in the future, but we have implicit faith in our Met Men, and the technology they use, never mind that it has so often been shown up as flawed. The sensex plummets, photographs of farmers contemplating the empty skies are splashed all across the front pages. The country talks of nothing else but Global Warming, the destructive habits of the Evil West, and the melting glaciers, as they mop their brows.

Never was the monsoon tracked as minutely as it is these days, while it makes its journey across the subcontinent. There’s been a forty percent shortfall! Okay, thankfully, the monsoon is progressing! No, it’s halted! (Once more, the sensex plunges.) There are drought-like conditions in these states! Oh all right, it’s raining again, thank goodness the rains have come. Wait a minute, the region is flooded! Ah, overall, then, the monsoon is normal, again, this year.

The thing is, we are so into micro analysing the progress of the monsoons annually that we forget that we are talking of the weather, which is in any case a notoriously fickle entity. Yet we expect the monsoons to behave like English gentlemen of the old school, and be bang on time, each year. Still, this minute-by-minute analysis of the rains makes for a fine national obsession, one which grips all sections of society, from farmers to fashion designers, from factory workers to finance heads of companies. (Fashion designers? Yes, because a failed monsoon brings in its wake a ruined economy. Who in this scenario would be able to afford pricey designer wear?)

All Things Considered, these national obsessions serve an important purpose. In a society as plural and diverse as ours, it is good to have such things as the monsoons and cricket, which are followed avidly by all Indians, irrespective of caste, creed, colour and class. They knit us together, and bond us in our worries, our joys, and our anxieties.

MITRA PHUKAN