Beyond the headlines in Pune

A problem employee
A female conductor, during an overnight journey, was unable to control her sleep. The passengers who wanted to get down on the way kept on waking her up saying, “Please stop the bus. We are to get down here.” The conductor sleepily rang the bell to signal the driver to stop. 

After a while she got irritated and told the passengers, “Please ring the bell for yourself wherever you want to get down and let me sleep.” 

The passengers were surprised. They then started ringing the bell every now and then just to irritate her. The conductor got up and shouted,

“Whoever rings the bell for no reason will be fined.” Thanks to such employees, the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) is so unpopular with the people.

Election blues
With the civic polls knocking at the doors, politicians are finding new love and respect for scribes. This at times leads to hilarious situations. 

Recently, there were two press meets, one called by the civic body and the other called by a political party to discuss the elections. 

Our colleague had attended the one called by the civic body, and was amazed to find a thin attendance of political parties. 

He sent a message on the cellphone to the party president, whose representatives had failed to show up for the meeting. However, the party president thought the reporter was talking about the meeting called by her to discuss intra party strategy. She frantically explained that there was no intra party strife, and the leaders did not come as they were not invited. After hearing her out, our colleague gently pointed out that he was talking about a different meeting.

The other side of PR-scribe relations
Even though it is true that people working for public relation (PR) companies can be of great help to journalists, sometimes their behaviour is so annoying, we wish they never existed. Recently, this reporter had a harrowing time with pushy PR agents hounding her by the minute. 

While one PR person wanted to ‘sell’ the story of a 14-year-old undergoing an obesity surgery, another wanted us to include her client in any story that we do. 

The worst was a man who called up to fight why his client’s story didn’t get carried despite another newspaper obliging him. Not just was he accusatory, he started throwing names trying to intimidate. No dirty tactics please.

Don’t send a wrong message
The election season is an opportunity for political parties to woo journalists, along with the electorate, to get a good coverage. It goes without saying how much the scribes enjoy it. 

At one such press meet, the reporters were waiting for the party leader who was to address the media. The leader was late and the party’s city chief urged the reporters to have snacks by the time the leader arrived. “You all would be in a hurry to go back and file the news after the press conference. In that case the food will be wasted,” she said cheerfully. 

But the journalists were embarrassed when a party worker told her that some journos had already put the snacks in their bags. This sends a wrong message my journo friends.

— Contributed by Chaitraly Deshmukh, Partha Sarathi Biswas, Alifiya Khan and Bhagyashree Kulthe. Compiled by Bhagyashree Kulthe