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“Can I ask you a question?”

Sniggers.

“So I can’t ask you a question?”

Sniggers.

“Just because you represent authority means I can’t ask you any questions?”

Gibberish replies, angry stares, more sniggering.

Ordered by the government to black out its screens for a day on November 9 as a punitive measure for its coverage of a terror attack, NDTV India responded by putting two mime artists on air. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting action is ostensibly a reaction to the channel allegedly revealing “strategically sensitive information” during a terror attack on the Pathankot airbase in January.

In response, the Hindi channel’s star anchor Ravish Kumar sat across from two performers with white paint on their faces. Ravish Kumar asks all the right questions:

“Who is that burly chap with you, is he a troll?” “What will you do when you run out of notices?” “Where do you tweet from, Uzbekistan or Nepal?” “If we don’t ask questions, how will we get answers?” “Have you transferred authority to the trolls?”

All he gets is gibberish and gesticulations. As responses to draconian measures go, this one is up there with the blank front pages of newspapers that followed the imposition of the Emergency in 1975.